Since its publication, the age of the protagonist in Christian Kracht's Faserland has been widely discussed. While this discussion has often been accompanied by a devaluation of the novel, the childlike aspects of the first-person narrator and the role of childhood memories have not yet been systematically examined. This essay analyses the extent to which the idealisation of childhood proves to be regressive and futile. The investigation of the connection between the literary motif of the eternal child and current criticisms of tendencies towards infantilisation can help explain the polemical reactions of the literary public following the novel's publication.
Machiavelli's Mandragola, his most famous comedy, is structured around a complex web of intrigue. A carefully constructed narrative drives the plot, luring the victims into a trap. This narrative framework allows the audience to understand the characters' motivations, as it forms the foundation for key plot decisions. As this article demonstrates, the play makes functional use of implied consent - deceiving the victims while simultaneously entertaining the audience. The analysis focuses on the role of silence in comedy and its function in non-verbal behavior. This perspective highlights how, in drama, narrative often aligns with legal reasoning. In this sense, Machiavelli's Mandragola serves as a paradigmatic example of the strategic use of silence, illustrating how it creates implied-in-fact contracts among the protagonists.
Sonic experiments in lyrics are more than just nonsense. The sound has its own poeti-cal meaning which supports the semantics of the words, opposes them or works inde-pendently of them. This applies to both pre-modern and modern texts, but it seems to be a particular challenge for medieval songs, which have mostly survived without melody (d & ocirc;n), making the sound a kind of rudimentary substitute for the lost music. In this article, Walther's von der Vogelweide `Vokalspiel' (L 75,25), consisting of five monovocally rhymed stanzas, is claimed as a test case for a dense reading attuned to the sense of the text as/and sound. Further questions arise from this case, such as the evidence for a genuinely pre-modern sound poetics and-theory, the limits to the translatability of sound, and the effects of Walther's impulse on further medieval and even (post-)modern poetry.
This essay reconstructs Christian Hermann WeiEe's "System der Aesthetik", published in 1830, as well as his early writings on myth theory, and, with particular reference to WeiEe's examination of the pastness of art (Hegel) and his ,,theory of ugliness", outlines perspectives for a history of aesthetic theory "after Hegel".
The essay explores Shakespeare’s playful revision of Petrarchan conventions in Venus and Adonis and Twelfth Night . It is particularly interested in how these works engage with social contingency in the arena of love. In contrast to critical reflections on the subjectivity of the lyrical lover in Petrarchan poetry, the essay focuses on the beloved and their freedom to reciprocate or reject the lover’s attentions. In Venus and Adonis and Twelfth Night , the beloved is neither unattainable in principle nor necessarily willing to submit to persuasion, yet their freedom is contingent on their own desire. Read side by side, Shakespeare’s epyllion and play indicate that the critical engagement with Petrarchism around 1600 played out across different genres, facilitated by a proliferation of love discourses.
This article revisits the origins of reader-response theory by foregrounding the less-known contributions of Kharkiv literary theorist Aleksandr Beletsky of the 1920s. Challenging the traditional genealogies that trace the discipline’s emergence to postwar Western theory, the article argues that Beletsky developed a robust reader-centered methodology decades earlier. Drawing on psychological aesthetics, historical poetics, and sociological approach, Beletsky’s work articulated a nuanced theory of the reader as an active historical participant in the literary process. The article demonstrates how his typology of readers – especially the figure of the “reader who takes up the pen” – provided Ukrainian literary historians of the 1920s with the tools to interpret the phenomenon of Kotliarevshchyna as both mass literature and a key moment in the emergence of a Ukrainian reading public in the nineteenth century. By situating the problem of the reader within a broader theory of literary history, Beletsky and his students forged a synthetic method that positioned itself between Formalist theory and Marxist criticism. The article also situates the phenomenon of stylization and parody within the framework of Yuri Tynianov’s concept of literary evolution, highlighting the theoretical affinities between his work and Beletsky’s concept of the “reader who takes up the pen”.
The secret-society novel is one of the most popular genres of the late Enlightenment. Based on Carl Grosse's influential novel Der Genius (1791-95), this article explores narrative elements and discursive references that define the genre. The focus is on narrative structures that capture and negotiate contemporary theorems from the fields of aesthetics, poetics, and gnoseology. As a narratology-oriented analysis will demonstrate, conspiracy fiction unfolds a meta-perspective from which the supposedly trivial novel engages with issues crucial to modem literature and epistemology, such as concatenation, observation and form-building.
This article combines two questions: the question of the mechanisms of "world authorship" around 1930 in the context of the increasing political tensions between the Communist International, the strengthening fascist and National Socialist governments in Europe and the Western powers; and the question why and in what way the topic of "China" experienced a conspicuous boom on the international literary stage in these years, immediately before literary voices from China itself entered this stage. The focus is on three novels about China written almost independently of each other around 1930: one American, one Russian-Soviet and one French novel. All three were received internationally and canonized in world literature on the basis of translations, although they were quite different in terms of subject, style and aesthetic orientation. Apparently, "China, still marked by European colonialism and geopolitically hotly contested, acted as a trigger for their success. How did these novels portray China, what were their intentions? In what ways were the receptions linked, and what role did the theme of "China" play in their global literary canonization? It will become clear that the three texts, whose connection has not yet been taken into account in research, strove to de-exoticize China through global cultural, social and political contextualization and thus ultimately to decolonize it. And it was precisely with this strategy that they achieved international recognition.
“Transreading” incorporates lento reading, poetic translation, cultural hermeneutics, and creative writing. The interplay of these activities enables the transreader to delve deeper into details and thereby integrate new wholes at a higher level. Franz Kafka and Olav H. Hauge are 20th-century European transreaders of Chinese antiquity. This article transreads how they each use Laozi’s paradoxes to launch an adventurous journey. It uncovers Daoist resonances with pre-Socratic philosophy, biblical mythology, medieval mysticism, the German Bildungsroman, and Nordic modernism.
The transmission of vernacular texts in the Middle Ages is notably variable. The impact of this variance on the understanding and interpretation of the texts has not yet been fully analysed. Variance includes different types of readings which should be distinguished. A starting point is the Nibelungenlied which combines a stable architecture of the whole epic with an extremely variant surface of the single stanzas. It seems that the singers and scribes are able to shape the details of the wording within certain limits. Their interventions in the morphology, semantics, and syntax are mostly ad-libitum, i.e. they do not alter the meaning of the phrase. It is only at the key moments of the story that the text is reproduced exactly, and sometimes even slightly intensified. In general, the text of the epic is not considered sacrosanct. This is also similar in early epics attributed to specific poets, such as Lamprecht's Alexanderlied or Stricker's Karl d.Gr. The different versions indicate that the poet does not exert strict control over the wording of his text in detail. This changes with courtly epics by authors like Hartmann von Aue, Gotfried von StraL burg, or Wolfram von Eschenbach. Their works are transmitted with some variation, too, but only in the ad-libitum-area. The transmissions of their works begin to show an emerging awareness of the poet's exact wording, which would become standard in literary works of art in modern times.
Medieval literary studies, following economic history under the heading of `economic revolution' of the i3th century, have traced the associated socioeconomic transformations under various binary concepts - agrarian aristocratic world vs. urban market they have defined literary texts dealing with economic topics, such as money, market, credit, noble poverty, and bourgeois wealth, as symptomatic testimonies of these socioeconomic developments. The problems of this close interwining of socioeconomic and literary themes will be discussed below using the example of the Richars li Biaus'-novel, which exposes through its protagonist the literary topic of the impoverishment of the nobles threatened by excessive munificence in strikingly detailed concretisation. However, since the protagonist's excesses of generosity unfold primarily in a caritas-/misericordia attitude towards the poor and needy and, in their hyperbolic nature, ignore basic principles of a reason-guided generosity of socioethical and theological doctrines of charity and almsgiving, his periods of extreme poverty figure less as socioeconomic references of aristocratic economic problems of the i3th century, but rather highlight, precisely in their extreme detailing, his salvation path to kingship.
The profound consequences of the Anthropocene pose a colossal challenge to humanity, requiring a reevaluation and correction of the paradigms governing human life. This cannot be accomplished merely by the provision of new machines and technologies but necessitates a reconsideration of science, its system, and its practices. Aur & eacute;lien Barrau, a French astrophysicist, refers in his essay L'Hypothese K. (2023) to the format of interdiscursive theoretical narrative, within which he intertwines the discourse of science and humanities through the linguistic means of rhetorical speech and poetic referentiality. On a narratological level, the theoretical, factual, and constitutive narratives emerge as formats suitable for addressing the Anthropocene, as they can connect scientific facts with literary narration. The preceding exploration of the concepts of the Anthropocene, narration, discourse, and inter-discourse confirms the potential classification of Barrau's L'Hypothese K. as a discourse-oriented theoretical narrative on the Anthropocene. It sheds light on the dramatic situation of the Earth system and particularly calls upon the scientific community to act responsibly. However, its reception by a more extensive lay audience could prove challenging due to the high linguistic and intellectual level of Barrau's presentations.
Ali Smith's seasonal quartet partakes in the recent revival of Shakespeare's romances by creating complex intertextual dialogues between the novels and the plays. The quartet forges a connection between the art of restoration in the romance tradition and the need for regenerative artforms at the present time. Autumn (2016) engages with The Pericles (c.1607-1608), and Summer (2020) with The Winter's Tale (c.1609-1611). Smith's novels form what Rita Felski calls "aesthetic attachments" to Shakespeare's romances by connecting each of the four novels to generic motifs of the plays and turning key characters into nodes that disseminate affective and aesthetic bonds to them. Central characters negotiate the forms and function of attachments to the romances while generic ties are created through the seasonal quartet's focus on temporality and crisis, the transformational power of art, and the quest motif as a source of future hope. Smith ties her quartet closely to Shakespeare's romances, partly to illustrate how times of crises can be confronted with the transformative power of the arts.
Terms like "possible worlds", "erzahlte Welten", "fiktive Welten" are nowadays fre- quently used as substitutes for Gerard Genette's term "diegesis". What one could call "world theory" (by subsuming the fairly different attempts to think story worlds since the emergence of Possible Worlds Theory) has maintained close ties to other branches of research, especially the theory of fictionality. In posing four crucial questions that concern the narratological use of the concept "world", the paper tries to point out new territories which further discussions about narrative worlds could expand on. In doing so, the paper also gives hints for theoretical revisions or designates areas in which a change in function of the concept "world" could proof useful or is apparently already about to emerge.
Bandello's Novelle (1554-1573) plays a central role in the history of literary subjects. His version of Romeo and Juliet became central to his successors not merely by chance but due to his conception of the novella as a specific form of novellistic casuistry. An exemplary analysis of the novella II, g, La sfortunata morte di dui infelicissimi amanti che realism of opposites. Romeo and Juliet is the longest - novel-length - novella of the 214 stories collected by Bandello. To the already existing novella material, he adds the narrative detail of a suspected plague, thus intensifying the analogy of love and (plague) disease, a theme which has been known since Boccaccio. Bandello's Giulietta however, who dies `for love' against all logic, represents the flipside of a fragile and very modern-looking, autofictional narrative voice of the early modern period.
Rudolf Pannwitz (27 May 1881-23 March 1969) is an almost forgotten 20th century author. The Dionysian Tragedies ( Dionysische Tragodien), ), published in 1913, refers in its title to the inspiration for the five plays: s: Nietzsche's Birth of Tragedy ( Geburt der Tragodie, , 1872). Among the Dionysian tragedies, The Liberation of Oedipus. A dionysian picture ( Die Befreiung des Oidipus. . Ein dionysisches Bild) ) has the most points of contact with Nietzsche's work. Against the background of the ancient discussion of the Dionysian and the dithyrambic and Nietzsche's Birth of Tragedy, , the article interprets Die Befreiung des Oidipus as a dramatisation of Nietzsche's understanding of the Dionysian.
Konrad von Wurzburg's Partonopier and Meliur narrates the `minne' between the French count Partonopier and the Byzantine empress Meliur. Irekel, Meliur's sister, also has a crucial part in this love affair. While Konrad in his Tronjanerkrieg uses such potential love triangles, described by Rene Girard with his concept of `triangular desire', to question the semantics of courtly love, Konrad pursues the opposite strategy in his Partonopier. . This article argues that Konrad von Wurzburg, by withdrawing any attempts of triangular desire shown in his French source, amplifies the complementarity of the two sisters and thus binds Irekel and Meliur even more closely together. This has the effect that Irekel ultimately cannot only contribute to the constitution of courtly `minne' between Partonopier and Meliur, but also to the legitimisation of the couple's claim to reign.
This essay takes as its starting point the tension between the biblical role of Alexander the Great and his status as a non-Christian, and explores how medieval texts deal with this tension. Working outwards from selected theories of the secular that establish the term as a representative construct and describe its (modern) functions, the essay analyses the semantics of time and space in two twelfth-century Alexander romances: the German Vorauer Alexander and its manuscript transmission, and the French Roman dA'lexandre in the version of Alexandre de Paris. Through detailed analysis the essay tests the concept of `Heilsgeschichte' (`salvation history'), which emerges as both a productive yet also highly problematic critical terminology and interpretive matrix. The analysis also demonstrates that Alexander narratives (or episodes within them) defy straightforward categorisation as either religious or secular/worldly; the semantics of time and space in the texts create forms of meaning that cannot be grasped through idealised binaries of Christian and `worldly' signification.
The article examines the historiographical concepts of Thomas Abbt (1738-1766) in their polemical references, especially in the Berliner Literaturbriefe. By means of polemics, Abbt outlines his idea of `pragmatic history' in contrast to contemporary historical attempts, namely J.C. Harenberg's History of the Jesuits, C.F. Pauli's Heroic Tales, a historical novel by J.G.H. v. Justi and P.E. Bertram's Spanish History. Therefore, history must unite three claims: a pragmatic one with regard to its political utility, an epistemic one concerning an unconditional claim to objectivity and non-fictionality, and an aesthetic-stylistic one, according to which only a style schooled in classical rhetoric and ancient historiography can guarantee the utility and truth of history. Hence, Abbt's polemic against misguided historiography is essentially articulated as a critique of style.
Directly reported speech and thought are not only deictically and syntactically, but also prosodically less well integrated with the quotative expression than indirect reports. Though not an established result of the longstanding linguistic and philosophical scrutiny of the modes of speech and thought reporting, it was yet something Thomas Hardy noticed, revising his poem Afterwards for re-publication and struggling with some crucial wordings and with punctuation in circumstances where quotative and report had distinct illocutionary force, with the one a question and the other a statement.
