Fake News im Mittelalter?

Overview & Synopsis

The “post-truth era” and a new kind of threat from uncontrollable fake news have been central components in diagnoses of the present for several years. However, the question of how historically new such phenomena actually are is controversial. This volume, which brings together contributions from the fields of history and literary studies, aims to provide a fundamental clarification of whether and in what respect we can speak of fake news in the Middle Ages. A theoretical introduction and case studies are used to examine the extent to which structural analogies can be identified for the constellation of phenomena that are currently referred to as fake news in the European Middle Ages and where the heuristic limits of such anachronism lie.