The present volume tries to do justice to the variety of selfrepresentational strategies in the art and literature of the late medieval and early modern period by focusing on both the traditional contexts of selfdefinition such as courts schools and religious institutions and the more innovative contexts of humanist art and literature. The essays collected in this volume represent some of the scholarly approaches to historical testimonies of selfrepresentation and selffashioning and hence deal with the literary artistic philosophical and theological conceptions of the self. They are preceded by a more general essay indexing the ways in which selfrepresentational texts egodocuments and selftestimonies should be defined.