“Das Problem des Stilwandels”: Stylistic Transformation in the Work of Emil Staiger

Abstract

This article reconstructs a theoretical and methodological problem in the work of German literary scholar Emil Staiger, a representative of the postwar school of Werkimmanenz, which called for a renewal of form-sensitive practices of reading. It analyzes Staiger's notion of style and traces its application in his monumental Goethe monograph and his essay collection Stilwandel, highlighting the difficulties that arise from Staiger's attempt to operationalize style in the sense of an artwork's inner unity (“Einstimmigkeit”) for his study of dynamic and changing forms. These difficulties led him to reframe his notion of style in a 1968 paper that, however, ultimately left the problem of how to write a history of literary styles unresolved.