Includes bibliographical references and index.

Acknowledgements -- List of Illustrations -- Contributors -- Introduction: Ways of Knowing, Mary Lindemann -- Part I. Creating and Organizing Knowledge -- 1. Mad Mares and Wilful Women: Ways of Knowing Nature-and Gender-in Early Modern Hippological Texts, Pia F. Cuneo -- 2. From Insect to Icon: Joris Hoefnagel and the 'Screened Objects' of the Natural World, Janice L. Neri -- 3. The Management of Knowledge at the Electoral Court of Saxony in Dresden, Helen Watanabe-O'Kelly -- 4. Facts or Fiction: Reading and Writing in Early Modern Popular Literature, Elisabeth Wåghäll Nivre -- Part II. Evaluating and Using Knowledge -- 5. Are the Cranach Luther Altarpieces Philippist? Memory of Luther and Knowledge of the Past in the Late Reformation, Susan R. Boettcher -- 6. Medicine and Pastoral Care for the Dying in Protestant Germany, Mitchell Lewis Hammond -- 7. How to Do Things with God: Blasphemy in Early Modern Switzerland, Francisca Loetz -- 8. "Our Diligent Watchers and Informers": Official Surveillance, Private Denunciation, and the Limits of Authority in Sixteenth-Century Ulm, Jason Coy -- 9. The Eclipse of Usury: Bankruptcy and Business Morality in Eighteenth-Century Germany, Robert Beachy -- 10. Public Church Penance in Saxony, Terence McIntosh -- Index.

Knowing itself is a problematic concept and what was once seen as the clear objective of "knowing," that is to discover "truth" or "reality," has become increasingly less certain. This is even more the case when scholars move from the present to examine epistemology in the past. Two fundamental questions arise: What constituted knowledge in the context of early modern Germany and how was knowledge gathered, assembled, organized, deployed, and interpreted? Ways of Knowing seeks to answer these questions. Taking their cues from a range of interdisciplinary perspectives, including art, German literature, social, political, medical, and religious history, the contributors offer readers a rich and insightful portrait of knowing and knowledge in early modern Germany. Investigators look at what people "knew" in early modern Germany and how they "knew" it. Four essays in part one consider how knowledge was created and organized. In part two, six authors examine how knowledge was evaluated and how it functioned, especially in the realms of belief, law, politics, and medicine. Contributors include: Robert Beachy, Susan R. Boettcher, Jason Coy, Pia F. Cuneo, Mitchell Lewis Hammond, Mary Lindemann, Francisca Loetz, Terence McIntosh, Janice L. Neri, Elisabeth Wåghäll Nivre, and Helen Watanabe-O'Kelly.

Description based on print version record.