At the end of the 11th c., intellectual circles increasingly exhibit signs of a deeper, more complex interest in the conditio humana. Against this historico-anthropological background, the dissertation project deals with three of the five senses – smell, taste and touch – in examining the theoretical achievements of 12th and 13th c. scholars, as well as the influence exerted on theories of poetics and, last but not least, on the functionalization of sensory perception in literary texts.

This Ph.D. thesis is being written within the program “Ancient Languages and Texts” (ALT) of the Berlin Graduate School of Ancient Studies (BerGSAS).