The Traces of the 'Little Ice Age' in Early Modern Literature (1570-1780)

• Applicant: Dr. Joana van de Löcht
• Subject Area: German Literary and Cultural Studies (Modern German Literature)
• Term: since 2023
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 528773473

The temperature patterns of the last 1,000 years - as reconstructed from historical sources, dendrochronological and palaeobotanical data, sediment analyses and ice cores - show that the warming of the climate that began with the start of the industrial age was preceded by a long cold phase: the so-called 'Little Ice Age' (ca. 1350-1850). While the temperature patterns and historical consequences of the 'Little Ice Age' have already been extensively explored, research into ist cultural impact remains a desideratum. Within the framework of the project, which can be classified as part of the Environmental Humanities, we want to use both contextualizing-interpretative methods and technically supported analyses to find out whether and to what extent the adverse climatic conditions of the 'Little Ice Age' had an impact on the development of literature as well as on the genres and themes of texts between the second half of the 16th century and the second half of the 18th century. In addition, workshops and a colloquium in cooperation with the interdisciplinary project partners will expand into the late Middle Ages and the early 19th century. The project is based on the peak phases of the 'Little Ice Age', i.e. it uses an intense cold period determined by climate historians as the basis for dating. The literary interpretations, however, also include examples from times of better environmental conditions in order to make differences and continuities visible. Since knowledge about the mutability of climate is a recent development, the weather, which has always been experienced by humans and documented in texts, lends itself as the primary object of investigation. In the project, weather is not considered as an isolated phenomenon but is always placed in a larger discursive context of weather justifications and weather consequences. The diachronic approach is intended to reveal discursive changes, such as the influence of a measuring meteorology emerging in the late 17th century as well as the persistence of 'disaster memories' and possible habituation and resilience effects during the investigated period. The project thus contributes to research on cultural coping and adaptation strategies when dealing with climate-related extreme events and prolonged adverse environmental conditions. In addition to the work on three monographs and accompanying articles, the project plan includes the indexing and presentation of texts within a database. On the one hand, this database serves to compare the literary texts with the historical weather data; on the other hand, it gathers a first corpus of early modern literature, which is to be examined by digital methods and will be made accessible to the scientific community.

• DFG Programme: Independent Junior Research Groups