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Weimarer Beiträge 57/2011
(2011)
Die Weimarer Beiträge sind eine Zeitschrift für Literaturwissenschaft, aktuelle ästhetische Theorie und Kulturwissenschaft. Zu Ihren Schwerpunkten gehören moderne Literatur im Rahmen anderer Künste und Medien, die Wechselbeziehungen von Literatur, philosophischer und ästhetischer Reflexion sowie die kritische Analyse der Gegenwartskultur.
In the last few years, literary studies have experienced what we could call the rise of quantitative evidence. This had happened before of course, without producing lasting effects, but this time it’s probably going to be different, because this time we have digital databases, and automated data retrieval. As Michel’s and Lieberman’s recent article on "Culturomics" made clear, the width of the corpus and the speed of the search have increased beyond all expectations: today, we can replicate in a few minutes investigations that took a giant like Leo Spitzer months and years of work. When it comes to phenomena of language and style, we can do things that previous generations could only dream of.
When it comes to language and style. But if you work on novels or plays, style is only part of the picture. What about plot – how can that be quantified? This paper is the beginning of an answer, and the beginning of the beginning is network theory. This is a theory that studies connections within large groups of objects: the objects can be just about anything – banks, neurons, film actors, research papers, friends... – and are usually called nodes or vertices; their connections are usually called edges; and the analysis of how vertices are linked by edges has revealed many unexpected features of large systems, the most famous one being the so-called "small-world" property, or "six degrees of separation": the uncanny rapidity with which one can reach any vertex in the network from any other vertex. The theory proper requires a level of mathematical intelligence which I unfortunately lack; and it typically uses vast quantities of data which will also be missing from my paper. But this is only the first in a series of studies we’re doing at the Stanford Literary Lab; and then, even at this early stage, a few things emerge.
This paper is the report of a study conducted by five people – four at Stanford, and one at the University of Wisconsin – which tried to establish whether computer-generated algorithms could "recognize" literary genres. You take 'David Copperfield', run it through a program without any human input – "unsupervised", as the expression goes – and ... can the program figure out whether it's a gothic novel or a 'Bildungsroman'? The answer is, fundamentally, Yes: but a Yes with so many complications that it is necessary to look at the entire process of our study. These are new methods we are using, and with new methods the process is almost as important as the results.
Rezension zu Uta Degener u. Norbert Christi an Wolf (Hg.): Der neue Wettstreit der Künste. Legitimation und Dominanz im Zeichen der Intermedialität. Bielefeld (Transcript) 2010. 269 S.
Im Konnex der Intermedialitätsdebatte werfen die Herausgeber einleitend die Frage nach der künstlerischen Dominanz wie auch der gesellschaftlichen Legitimität distinkter Kommunikationsmedien auf, worauf auch der Fokus dieses Sammelbandes gerichtet ist.
Der Band Grundfragen der Literaturwissenschaft. Theorien, Methoden, Tendenzen. Teil I. von Roman Mikuláš und Andrea Mikulášová ist ein Einführungswerk in die Literaturwissenschaft, wie sie sich in den deutschsprachigen Ländern entwickelte. Auf dem deutschen Buchmarkt gibt es schon mehrere ähnliche Publikationen, die eine Einführung in die Literaturwissenschaft zu vermitteln versuchen. Der Band von Roman Mikuláš und Andrea Mikulášová unterscheidet sich jedoch in mehreren Punkten. Die Betonung auf germanistische Literaturwissenschaft stellt eine Eingrenzung dar, die sich als sehr interessant erweist. Die einzelnen Philologien entwickeln freilich ihre eigenen theoretischen Ansätze. Sie rezipieren auch theoretische Zugänge aus anderen Philologien oder Disziplinen unterschiedlich. Diese Tatsache wird in den meisten Einführungen in die Literaturwissenschaft nicht genügend berücksichtigt (inklusive der den einzelnen Philologien gewidmeten). Der vorliegende Band erfasst gerade diese Besonderheiten der germanistischen Literaturwissenschaft auf empfindsame Art und Weise.
There has been a great deal of uproar about Darwinian approaches in literary scholarship. Statements range from enthusiastic prophecies of a new paradigm for literary studies to acrimonious scoldings of reductionism. Believing that the major challenge is first to find good questions to which evolutionary psychology might provide us with good answers, I outline and critically assess different veins of argumentation as revealed in recent contributions to the field. As an alternative to some simplistic mimeticism in present Literary Darwinism, I put forward the idea of evolutionary psychology as a heuristic theory that serves to resolve defined problems in interpretation and literary theory.
Seit mehreren Jahren ist in der Literaturwissenschaft die Rezeption und Adaption evolutionsbiologischer Ansätze en vogue. Eine wichtige These dieser Richtung besagt, dass Produktion und Rezeption von Literatur und ästhetische Erfahrung auf biologisch begründeten anthropologischen Konstanten beruhen. In diesem Beitrag wird der evolutionsbiologische Ansatz in der germanistischen Literaturwissenschaft dargestellt und eine kritische Analyse einiger Adaptionen geliefert. Die Besonderheit der germanistischen 'evolutionsbiologischen' Theoriebildung wird in Zusammenhang mit der jüngeren Geschichte der Disziplin gestellt und es wird gefragt, wieweit der Zugriff auf naturwissenschaftliche Konzeptionen eine Reaktion auf die Diskussion um die gesellschaftliche Relevanz von Literaturwissenschaft ist.
Este texto tem por objetivo recontextualizar uma das teorias literárias mais produtivas surgidas na segunda metade do século XX, na medida em que ela interagiu com conceitos filosóficos amadurecidos na mesma época. Em particular, pretendemos discutir o modo como a Estética da Recepção, desenvolvida ao longo dos anos 1960 e 1970, na Universidade de Konstanz, pôde e ainda pode proporcionar iluminações à literatura quando associada aos estudos de Jürgen Habermas junto à Escola de Frankfurt, também ao longo daquelas décadas e das seguintes.
Die Grenzen und Möglichkeiten der Philologie im Holocaust-Diskurs : das Beispiel Theresienstadt
(2011)
Philology seems to have come to a crossroads. One path leads back to the save haven of established core strengths and competences, the other path promises new perspectives through further expansion into the vastness of cultural studies. If philology is to continue as a discipline relevant to society as a whole, retreat into pure philology — concentrating only on the text itself, adhering to national boundaries — is no viable option. Instead, by opening itself up for the questions and methods of truly interdisciplinary inquiry, philology can emerge in new shape, powerful enough to adequately address issues of interdisciplinary, intercultural and intergenerational importance. This essay will argue for such an extension of philology into cultural studies through an examination of texts, songs and plays written in and about the Terezín ghetto. The songs of Leo Strauß and Manfred Greiffenhagen, the ghetto opera "Der Kaiser von Atlantis" (The Emperor of Atlantis), as well as Roy Kift's play "Camp Comedy" and Frido Mann's parable "Terezín" will exemplify the potential of philology’s conjunction with history, sociology and cultural studies.
Is there something like a 'scientific' approach to the reading or interpretation of literary texts as is suggested by the German term 'Literaturwissenschaft'? This essay argues that genuinely scientific criteria such as the intersubjective verifiability of a given reading do not apply to the reading of literary texts. The reason is that such texts enable a quasi infinite range of different readings the preconceptions of which are contingent upon the individual readers, their previous experiences, literary as well as non-literary, and their expectations. — What, then, are the tasks of a scholarly reading of literary texts? Firstly, the theoretical reflection upon the status of such texts in comparison to pragmatic texts; secondly, the attempt at reconstructing their historical context (in terms of discursive history), and thirdly, a reading with regard to present-day problems. The 'quality' of a scholarly reading of a literary text would thus be dependent not on its 'objectivity', but rather on its capacity to produce resonances amongst other present-day readers, scholarly and non-scholarly.