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Borges : philology as poetry
(2018)
The titles of many of Borges's poems refer to canonical texts of world literature. One poem, for example, deals with the ending of the Odyssey and is simply called "A scholion"; others are called "Inferno V, 129" and "Paradise XXXI, 108", referring both to Dante's "Divine Comedy". These titles indicate that in his poems, Borges often keeps his distance from traditional poetical matters such as love, or, more generally, immediate emotions. Instead, he writes poems that gloss other texts, some of which actually relate love stories. Thus, Borges's poems stage themselves as philological commentaries rather than as poetry in its own right. In a similar vein and on a more general level, Borges likes to present himself in poems, interviews, and essays as a fervent reader of world literature, playing down his role as an original author. [...] In the following two sections of his paper, Joachim Harst tackles this question by commenting on two of Borges's philological poems, namely, the two texts on Dante's "Comedy". A ready objection to the idea of "philological poetry" is that despite Borges's selfstaging as reader, his texts obviously aren't philological in any academic sense. [...] The fundamental role of love for Dante's cosmological vision leads Harst to another understanding of the term "philology," namely, its more or less literal translation as "love of the lógos," the "lógos" being the cosmic principle and the divine word. Dante's Comedy can be considered a "philological" text in the sense that it is fueled by the "love of the lógos," and it discusses this love by citing, glossing and correcting other texts on love. Returning to Borges, Harst suggests that his two "philological" poems on Dante refer to this understanding of "philology." But by modifying the epic's theological underpinnings, they work to integrate Dante into a larger system which Borges calls "universal literature." Harst claims that this notion of literature, just like Dante's cosmos, is also centered on a lógos—albeit differently structured—and in this sense "philological."
"Das Aussereinander", schreibt Gustav Teichmüller in seiner Abhandlung "Die wirkliche und scheinbare Welt", "bedeutet bloss, dass die Vorstellungen verschieden bleiben und nicht verschmelzen sollen." Wenn aber Räumlichkeit dergestalt relativiert wird, sind nicht nur die Bedingungen jedes objektiven Koordinatensystems und jeder subjektiven Orientierung a priori abgeräumt. Denn die Möglichkeit eines entscheidenden Kriteriums für die Trennung zwischen Innen- und Außenraum wird ebenso außer Kraft gesetzt, im wörtlichen wie im übertragenen Sinne. Ausgegangen wird in den folgenden Seiten von der Frage, wie nach dem Aussetzen oder Einstürzen jeglicher statthaften räumlichen Ordnung weiter erzählt wird. Durch eine Auseinandersetzung mit Friedrich Nietzsches "Also sprach Zarathustra" und Edgar Allan Poes "The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym" soll auszugsweise angedeutet werden, wie diesen desorientierenden Schriften anders charakterisierte Räume eingeschrieben sind.
In the age of globalization, we cannot reflect about Comparative Literary Studies and "Languages of Theory" without contemplating how cross-liminality and transculturality might be lived in a mobile, medialized and rapidly changing world. Art and literature have always mirrored, transmitted and evaluated critically social, moral, and aesthetical values. How, then, can this task be fulfilled on a transnational literary and cultural level in a rapidly growing world community of letters, authors and readers? In this paper, Dagmar Reichardt promotes the notion of "transculturality", first proposed as a basic model of conviviality by the Cuban sociologist Fernando Ortiz (1881-1969) in the 1940s and then, from the 1990s onwards, taken up and adapted, both terminologically and conceptually, to Third Millennium culture by the German philosopher and theorist of postmodernity Wolfgang Welsch (b. 1946). Reichardt argues that at this moment in history, in the interest of peacemaking and sustainability and for the sake of humanity, transcultural skills and a shared understanding of transcultural coexistence, both theoretical and practical, are indispensable. From a methodological point of view that is related to the History of Knowledge, Reichardt begins chronologically by introducing the work of Fernando Ortiz and then briefly tracing the reception of his most crucial cultural analysis in order to connect, in a second sub-chapter, its theoretical interests to Wolfgang Welsch's publications. In a third step, Reichardt briefly demonstrates the potential of the transcultural approach by showing paradigmatically its applicability to a colonial (Italian) novel, reread, as it were, through a transcultural lens, before coming to her conclusions.
Diverse museum diversities
(2018)
'Diversity' has become a lively key word in contemporary museum discourse and practice, with numerous policies and initiatives being conducted under its banner. Achieving 'diversity' is seen as something to be celebrated - a good thing in itself. But quite what 'diversity' refers to is itself heterogeneous, with this only rarely explicitly articulated or even recognised. As such, what exists is a shifting field of diverse diversities, which variously interlink and reinforce each other but which may also mask critical discrepancies, disconnects, incompatibilities and even contrary ambitions.
Genealogy and philology
(2018)
The present paper deals with the use of the term "genealogy" in theory. Markus Winkler first tries to highlight the hidden metaphorical status of this use and the ambiguity that it conveys. In doing so, Winkler tries to outline how this metaphoricity and its inherent ambiguity may be brought to fruition in the philological analysis of texts and in theory itself. The paper is subdivided as follows: 1. The use of the term "genealogy" in theory and the interest of this use to philology. 2. A philological comment on the metaphorical status of this use and its inherent ambiguity inherited from mythical genealogy as a form of founding narrative. 3. The imitation of mythical genealogy and its inherent ambiguity in theory (Nietzsche) and literature (Goethe). 4. Genealogy's ambiguity in theory: an example taken from current political discourse. 5. Conclusion.
Koselleck has repeatedly rejected the existence of a collective memory. All memory derives from individual experiences which are not interchangeable. Any person has the right to his own memories, without which he could not live and which cannot be collectivized. Only the conditions under which they are realized and recollected may be referred to as supra-individual. For this reason it is advisable to distinguish between the primary experiences of those who have lived them as a first person and who bind them to their own memories, and the secondary experiences after the fact of those who were not present in the situation which gave rise to the immediate experience. This distinction also applies to memorials. The messages of monuments are open to a double exegesis: they evoke the unmistakable occasions that have led to death. Like primary experiences they are not interchangeable. But, even so, artistic responses to incomparable occasions repeat themselves. There is only a limited repertoire of aesthetic solutions for fixating violent death – which individually is always unique – in the memory.
Theory's engagement with language on the one hand, with literature's potential to generate knowledge that is theoretically relevant on the other, has a long history. One of its roots lies in the approach to culture and society developed by enlightenment anthropology and philosophy. In this paper Christian Moser intends to analyze the function attributed to language in eighteenth-century theories of the origin of culture and society. What we nowadays call 'cultural theory' is genealogically related to these early investigations into the constitution of human society. Social theories of the enlightenment first emerged in the contexts of a secularized universal history and the nascent discourses of anthropology and the philosophy of history. They often took the form of a 'conjectural history': speculations about the origin of society and its institutions; the origin of government, of law, and of social inequality; all of them linked systematically to the origin of language. While present-day cultural theory no longer harbours this obsession with origins, it still carries with it a rich legacy of enlightenment thought, not least its idea that social structure and linguistic structure are interconnected. Therefore it seems apposite to trace back current 'languages of theory' to eighteenth-century 'theories of language' and their interplay with 'theories of society.'
In recent years, the interest in theory which has once been a moving force of academic research in the field of literary studies appears to have decreased. The status of theory, its relevance and appropriateness for the understanding of literature have been put into doubt. Faced with this observation, some critics have even suggested that we have now entered into a new era of research which can retrospectively be identified as the era "after theory". Against the background of such pronouncements and to a certain extent in opposition to them, the investigations proposed here wish to uphold the idea of the utility and indeed the need for theoretical approaches to literature. To appreciate the status of theory and its possible contribution to a deepened understanding of literature, it is useful not to focus exclusively on the distinction or supposed divide between literature and theory. Instead we should pay attention to what links and unites them. This common ground or common denominator of literature and theory consists in the dimension of language. Furnishing, so to speak, the intellectual material from which both domains of articulation are formed, language constitutes at once the key element of literature and a principal concern of theory.
On July 10, 1798, the German ensemble at the Vienna court theater presented the premiere performance of 'Die Hochzeit des Figaro', the first production of Mozart and Da Ponte's 'Le nozze di Figaro' – and indeed of any Mozart-Da Ponte work – at the court theater since Mozart's death and Da Ponte's departure from the imperial capital. A few months later, on December 11, 1798, a new production of Don Giovanni, titled Don Juan, arrived at the court theater stage. On September 19, 1804, a production of Così fan tutte followed, under the title 'Mädchentreue'. Although the productions were not extraordinarily successful in terms of performance numbers, they represented important trends in the Viennese reception of Mozart's operas that were to continue throughout the early nineteenth century. In particular, these productions left behind numerous records about the convoluted processes through which theatrical works were approved, re-approved, and revised before reaching the stage in Vienna around 1800. Particularly prominent among these processes was censorship. Yet, as this article shows, Viennese censors worked in tandem with numerous private and public agents who likewise contributed to the final shape of pre-existing works' adaptations. An examination of the censorial approaches to Mozart's Don Giovanni and Così fan tutte in Vienna around 1800 shows that late Enlightenment censorship was contradictory and multidirectional and should be considered not as a force of restriction but as an element that affected artworks in ways similar to other social, political, and cultural factors, such as patronage, audience structure, and various social and political ideologies.
Berühmt sind Benjamins Überlegungen zum bürgerlichen Interieur vor allem im "Passagen-Werk". Weniger bekannt hingegen sind seine Reflexionen über eine eigenartige Form von Erzählraum, der sich in der Mitte seines Erzähler-Aufsatzes lokalisiert. 'Eigenartig' ist er, weil es dort weniger um mündliches oder schriftliches Erzählen geht, als vielmehr um filmische Projektionen. Was projiziert wird, sind nach Benjamin "Ansichten der eigenen Person, unter denen er ohne es inne zu werden, sich selber begegnet ist". Solche Begegnungen gehören weder zur Erfahrung dieser Person noch zu ihrer Selbsterzählung oder Autobiographie. Diese "Out-takes eines Lebens" werden unwissentlich aufgenommen, unbewusst aufbewahrt und am Sterbebett mechanisch projiziert. Benjamin modifiziert in seinem Erzähler-Aufsatz die geläufige, entscheidend filmische Vorstellung, dass einem kurz vor dem Tod noch einmal das ganze Leben vorgeführt werde: Die Vorführung, die hier stattfindet, projiziert nur die Momente, die nie wirklich zum eigenem Leben gehört haben. Um diese andere Erzählart und diesen anderen Erzählraum zu erkunden, muss die betreffende Stelle im Erzähler-Aufsatz zusammen mit Benjamins Schriften zum buckligen Männlein gelesen werden. Was sich durch diese Lektüre manifestiert, ist eine andere Theorie der erzählerischen Autorität und der Tradierbarkeit von "unvergesslichen" Erfahrungen.