Freiburg Institute for Advanced Studies
Germany
fellow
Robert Spindler
2023-2024
2024-2025
Home institution
University of Innsbruck
Country of origin (home institution)
Austria
Discipline(s)
Language sciences and linguistics
Medieval history
Theme(s)
Cultural Studies
Information & media
Regional Studies
Fellowship dates
›
Biography
Robert Spindler studied English and American literature at the University of Innsbruck, where he received a Mag. phil. and Dr. phil., and German literature at the University of Munich, where he received an M.A. He is the author of Corsairs, Captives, Converts in Early Modernity: Narrating Barbary Captivity in German-Speaking Europe and the World, 1558–1807 (Königshausen & Neumann, 2020) and has published articles in the Jahrbuch der Karl-May-Gesellschaft, in Anglistik, in the Germanisch-Romanische Monatsschrift, and in the Old English Newsletter. He taught at the University of Innsbruck, the Free University of Bozen-Bolzano, and the University of Applied Sciences Salzburg. He received grants and fellowships from the University of Innsbruck; the Austrian Federal Ministry of Education, Science and Research; the Fulbright Commission (Harvard University); the Austrian Academy of Sciences / Max Kade Foundation; and the Austrian Science Fund (University of Oxford and University of Freiburg).
Research Project
Outsiders, Lawbreakers, Apostates, Witches: Figures of Transgression in Narrative English Broadside Ballads (1550-1800)
One of the most popular text types in early modern England (c. 1500-1700) is still much overlooked today: the ballad. Thousands of such ballads have been preserved, and still they represent only a fraction of the actual phenomenon of the “broadside ballad”– so called for the single sheets on which these song texts were hurriedly printed and then sold to the masses at very low prices.
The present project aims to establish the position of the early modern English ballad within literary and cultural history and to emphasize its remarkable role in the development of British literature and culture. The core of the project is a representative corpus of ballads that tell of norm-breaking (“transgressive”, “non-normative”) figures. Based on this, a so-called “character typology” of the English ballad shall systematically record and describe the repertoire of protagonists and their typical narrative characteristics. A similar procedure will then examine and map out the typical plot structures and narrative techniques that characterize the ballad. On the basis of this, the ballad genre will be embedded in the social and cultural history of early modern England.
Research Interests:
Early modern English and American broadside ballads; English, American, and German Barbary captivity narratives;
Native Americans and the American frontier in literature and film; Medieval literature and medievalism