Wilhelm Poetters

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Wilhelm Pötters (born August 28, 1941 in Sevelen ) is a German Romanist . 

life and work

After graduating from the Friedrich-Spee-Gymnasium in Geldern in 1961 , Pötters studied Romance and German philology, general linguistics, philosophy and education at the universities of Bonn, Cologne, Grenoble and Lisbon. In 1970 he received his doctorate from the University of Cologne with a dissertation on a comparison of the vocabulary of the Ibero-Romance languages . The fruit of his commitment to university teaching is an introduction to French linguistics , written together with Annegret Bollée and published in several editions from 1974 . He completed his habilitation in Cologne in 1981 with a thesis entitled Boccaccio concessivo on syntax and text structure in the novellas of the Decameron , which he published in two separate volumes. Since this study, which was both linguistic and literary, he has interpreted other central works of medieval Italian literature with a similar interdisciplinary approach.

From 1971 to 1982 Pötters was a research assistant in the Romance Department of the University of Cologne and an academic advisor in the dean's office of the Faculty of Philosophy there. From 1982 to 2003 he represented the Romance Department for Linguistics of Theodor Berchem at the Julius Maximilians University of Würzburg . Then he occupied this chair until his retirement in 2006, but taught there until 2013 and has been teaching in Cologne again since 2008. He turned down a professorship for the “History of Romance Languages ​​and Literatures in the Middle Ages” at the University of Leipzig in 1993 .

He is an honorary member of the Società Dantesca Italiana in Florence.

Pötters caused a sensation with the thesis that a definition of the circle number Pi and the key number of the golden ratio (1 / Phi ) was incorporated into the original structure of the poem form of the sonnet , created in Sicily around 1230/40 and in the cycle of Laura poems by Francesco Petrarch is. In numerous studies - most recently in 2018 in an extensive mathematical-cosmological exegesis of Dante's Divina Commedia - he has shown that the poet-philosophers of the Italian Middle Ages for the two irrational numbers Pi and Phi , the indeterminability of which they sang about with the inaccessibility of the put donna in an allegorical relationship, knew surprisingly precise approximations. By elevating these numbers to the aesthetic principles of the composition of their poetic texts, they saw themselves in a position to imitate two central instruments used by Deus geometra in his creative work with the corresponding concepts of circular form and harmonic division.

Works (selection)

  • Differences in the vocabulary of the Ibero-Romance languages. Contribution to a comparative Spanish-Portuguese semantics , Kleikamp, ​​Cologne 1970.
  • (with Annegret Bollée ) Basic linguistic course for first-year French students. Materials to introduce French linguistics . Narr, Tübingen 1974, 7th edition 1995.
  • Chi era Laura? Strutture linguistiche e matematiche nel "Canzoniere" by Francesco Petrarca . Mulino, Bologna 1987.
  • Concept and structure of the novella. Linguistic considerations on Boccaccio's "Falcons" . Niemeyer, Tübingen 1991.
  • Negated implication in Italian. Theory and description of the linguistic expression of concession based on the prose language of the Decameron . Niemeyer, Tübingen 1992.
  • Nascita del sonetto. Metrica e matematica al tempo di Federico II. Longo, Ravenna 1998.
  • Circolarità e armonia. Principî geometrici nella poesia medievale - Dai Siciliani a Dante, in: Claudio Bartocci / Piergiorgio Odifreddi, La matematica . Vol. 3: Suoni, parole, forme . Einaudi, Turin 2011, 703-762.
  • Chi era Beatrice? Teoria e allegoria del cosmo nella poesia di Dante. Aracne Editrice, Canterano (RM) 2018.

literature

  • Philological borderline cases or the squaring of the circle. Festschrift for Wilhelm Pötters . Edited by Joachim Christl, Sandra Ellena and Andrea S. Landvogt. Ibidem, Stuttgart 2005, 2012.

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Poters, Wilhelm
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Pötters, Wilhelm Karl
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German Romanist
DATE OF BIRTH August 28, 1941
PLACE OF BIRTH Sevelen