Niklaus Largier

Niklaus Largier is the Sidney and Margaret Ancker Professor of German and Comparative Literature at the University of California. He has published on medieval mysticism, the history of ascetic practices, prayer, and aesthetic experience. His books include an edition of the works of Meister Eckhart (Deutscher Klassiker Verlag, 1993); an exploration of notions of temporality in late medieval thought (Zeit, Zeitlichkeit, Ewigkeit); and a cultural history of ascetic practices and their resonance in erotic and medical literature, In Praise of the Whip: A Cultural History of Arousal (Zone Books, 2007). In Die Kunst des Begehrens: Dekadenz, Askese und Sinnlichkeit (C. H. Beck, 2007) and in Zeit der Möglichkeit: Robert Musil, Georg Lukács und die Kunst des Essays (Wehrhan, 2015) he discusses the forms in which decadent poetics and early twentieth century thought about the practice of the essay engage mystical concepts and their specific notion of critique. Most recently, he engaged notions of realism and speculation in medieval practices of prayer and contemplation in Spekulative Sinnlichkeit. Kontemplation im Mittelalter (Chronos, 2018) and published a book on figuration, mystical theology, and aesthetic experience, tentatively titled Figures of Possibility.