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The article provides a comparative analysis of the similarities of arguments put forward by discourses on mass imagery in the Renaissance and modernity. In particular, emblem theories are quite striking in the way they advanced similar arguments to theories about television. In both cases we find iconoclast and iconodule arguments, and in both cases we find an implicit, holy or unholy theological connection being made between mass medium, the image, and technology. The article will argue that the condemnation of or fascination with images in mass media is a form of discursive, i.e. textual, self-protection.

Throughout history, the concepts of phantasia (Greek) or imaginatio (Latin) have been linked to the concept of the human body and in particular to our sensory perceptions. But phantasia/imaginatio have also always been linked to the mind and how the operations of the mind are connected with bodily sensations. Functioning as interface between the senses and the mind, phantasia has predominantly been exemplified with the notion of the visual image, rather than a tactile or oral depiction. But as emphatic as discussion of the image has been, in particular throughout the Renaissance period and again in modernity, it has hardly been linked to the contemporaneous technology of imagery that accompanied the theoretical discourses on imagination. The article will flesh out central historical and systematic aspects of the concept of imagination (I), but instead of submitting them to a history of ideas it will turn to a comparative study of the first monograph on imagination by the Renaissance philosopher Gianfrancesco Pico della Mirandola from 1501 and Sigmund Freud's Interpretation of Dreams from 1900 (II) to investigate their respective understandings of imagination and inner images in the light of the technology of imagery (III).

The article situates Kittler's view on the question of visual technology within his general media theory and critically examines Kittler's optical paradigm with regard to questions of (visual) technology, discourse, strategy and style. Focus is given to the link between visual technology and the Renaissance period.

The text consists of two parts. Part one puts the works of Hans Blumenberg, as far as they tackle the problem of rhetoric, into their historical context. Relevant here in particular is the tradition of topological philosophies of the Renaissance and their different types of revival in the 20th century. Part two analyses three main 'absolute metaphors' or 'topoi' Hans Blumenberg has investigated, the metaphors of 'light', 'shipwreck', and 'book of nature', in order to add to the philosophical perspective taken by Blumenberg a hidden philological perspective, which shows the shortcomings of conceptualizing rhetorical techne (how does a metaphor work), which does not always account for philological techne (how do we write texts).

This text focuses from a philological perspective on media theories and their impact on traditional text-based disciplines. Therefore it looks at the problems that have emerged for Media Studies as well as for traditional studies in philology when reflecting on the concept of self-reference, since their subjects can seemingly no longer rely on the purity of the written word. If research work in the field of humanities is still mainly documented by texts, how does the advance of images as a challenging research subject affect the text that is referring to that subject? Speaking in media terms: how is the medium `text', which still remains text when it is concerned with the medium `image', affected by the `other' medium? This question deals with the problem of self-reference, hence the construction of disciplinary limitations in various academic fields. Beginning with this question, I try to find out how the difference between self-reference (text) and reference (image) has been and still is being organized in texts. How can we compare different types of theorizing images in texts? These abstract problems will be exemplified by situating the word—image bias in a wider historical context. The text concludes by developing some possibilities for future research within this area of visual culture and academic writing.

Der diesjährige Limbus-Band versammelt Aufsätze, die sich auf unterschiedlichste Weise mit dem Topos »Mord« auseinandersetzen. Die Beiträge schlieẞen u.a. die Perspektiven der Rechtsphilosophie des 19. und 20. Jahrhunderts, der modernen Kriminalistik, der Literaturgeschichte als auch der marxistischen Philosophie ein. In der Literaturgeschichte ist Mord nicht nur ein Handlungsstimulans, sondern eine »Gemütserregungskunst«, ein anthropologisches Rätsel, das für das Projekt einer literarischen Anthropologie von besonderem Interesse ist. Einige Beiträge nehmen die Figur des Mörders bzw. der Mörderinnen ins Visier, während andere sich der Frau als Opfer eines Mords zuwenden. Außerdem finden die ›Mord-Literatur‹ der Nachkriegszeit und die zeitgenössische Kriminalliteratur Beachtung. Abgerundet wird der Band durch einen Aufsatz, der anhand von Science-Fiction-Texten mit dem Fokus Atomkrieg, das Thema des ›planetarischen Mordes‹ untersucht.