Dr Jan Loop
Academic Co-ordinator of CHASE
I studied German Literature, Islamic Studies and Philosophy at the University of Berne (Switzerland). During my studies and my PhD, the history of Arabic-European relations and the idea of a comparative approach to Arabic and European culture has always been at the centre of my interest – from a methodological as well as philological point of view. In 2004 I published a comparative analysis of Christian and Islamic hermeneutic concepts in early modern times. The book, which was written in the context of a DFG project on traditions of hermeneutics, has the title: Auslegungskulturen. Grundlagen einer komparatistischen Beschreibung islamischer und christlicher Hermeneutiktheorien. The intellectual, religious and institutional development in the Arabic world between the 17th and 18th century and Arabic-European relations in this period are still of main interest to me. As a Frances Yates long-term Research Fellow I am currently writing on a book on Confessionalism and Orientalism. Johann Heinrich Hottinger (1620-1667) and Seventeenth-Century Oriental Studies. Hottinger, professor of Church history and oriental languages in Zurich, is an outstanding figure of early modern oriental scholarship, whose published work and whose collection of letters and manuscripts at the Zentralbibliothek Zurich are remarkable remains of orientalist erudition in an age of bitter confessional rivalry (Johann Heinrich Hottinger and the Historia Orientalis).
Driven by polemical and theological incentives, the 17th century showed an enormous interest in the history of Islam, its origin, development, and theology. In my current reseach I am also trying to show, how, in the 18th century, interest in Arabic poetry and literature is starting to replace this religious preoccupation (see my recent seminar, and publication). It is in particular the German perception of oriental literature and its deep implications to the formation of the Romantics that my work is focused on.
The history of modern European literature is another area of my comparative research and my teaching. Following recent incidences, my latest article in this field was devoted to the description of financial bubbles, stock market crashes and the apocalyptic fears they created in 19th century novels by Zola, Dickens, Heinrich Mann and others.
Publications in Print
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