Journal of Literary Theory最新文献

{"title":"Network Analysis in Literature and the Arts: Rethinking Agency and Creativity","authors":"Gundela Hachmann","doi":"10.1515/jlt-2023-2010","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/jlt-2023-2010","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract The essay proposes to think of the creative subject as an actor in a network, that is, following Bruno Latour, as a »moving target of a vast array of entities swarming toward it« (Latour 2005, 46). It explores what it means to bring a network analysis to lectures on poetics by employing both a structuralist visualization informed by a computational method and a sociological method according to Latour’s Actor-Network-Theory (ANT). ANT is used to make traceable what with Hugh Kenner is called »elsewhere communities« consisting of spirits and minds along with objects and spaces. This serves to defend a method of criticism that is not oriented towards unearthing deep textual meanings, but which foregrounds the arts’ relatability and potential for provoking association and attachments. Network analysis in the arts and humanities, so goes the argument, has the potential to be much more than a formalist description of connections made. It offers means for detecting the implicit and explicit presences of a variety of different actors in or relating to works of art and challenges us to move beyond established analytical categories such as intertextuality and intermediality by opening the inquiry to a wider diversity of actors and to redefine our understanding of creativity. The article focuses on networks that emerge in lectures in which renowned artists from around the world share with general audiences their views on work processes, motivations to create, and artistic self-understandings. These are known as Poetikvorlesungen in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland, but do not have a distinct label outside of the German-speaking literary scene. The article departs from the observation that making connections and forming artistic associations are key components of these lectures as this feature can be found frequently. It first outlines genre characteristics of lectures on the arts with particular focus on networks that such lectures participate in. Emblematic examples are the Frankfurt Lectures on Poetics by the German novelist Daniel Kehlmann (given in 2014) and the Tanner Lectures by the Canadian writer and critic Hugh Kenner (given in 1999). Kehlmann depicts his artistic influences, sources of inspiration, and references to existing contexts by pretending to summon spirits, a rhetorical gesture akin to a necromancy. Kenner calls networks that evolve from making such connections »elsewhere communities«. The essay explores what a network-oriented analysis of this genre could look like by turning to the Norton Lectures by the German filmmaker Wim Wenders (given in 2018). These serve to test two different analytical approaches. The article relies both on network visualization and on tracing of networks according to Actor-Network-Theory (ANT). The article thus offers both a graphic representation of references from Wenders’ lectures and a textual tracing of associations according to the methodology outlined by Latour. An important finding is that net","PeriodicalId":42872,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Literary Theory","volume":"17 1","pages":"221 - 240"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2023-08-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49634102","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Kopräsenz-, Koreferenz- und Wissens-Netzwerke. Kantenkriterien in dramatischen Figurennetzwerken am Beispiel von Kleists Die Familie Schroffenstein (1803)","authors":"Benjamin Krautter","doi":"10.1515/jlt-2023-2012","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/jlt-2023-2012","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract In my contribution, I argue that a fruitful integration of computational network analytic methods into literary studies depends on how the ›interaction‹ of two characters in an abstract character network is formalized. I support this hypothesis by using the examples of co-presence, co-reference, and knowledge networks, which I analyze in Heinrich Kleist’s tragedy Die Familie Schroffenstein (1803). I assume that the co-presence of characters can provide the basis for more specific formalizations of interaction. But due to its basal specification of interaction, co-presence networks can only be integrated into rather limited questions of literary studies. I illustrate this circumstance by examining Franco Moretti’s approach in his essay Network Theory, Plot Analysis (2011): How does he connect his network analyses to concepts of literary studies? How does he reflect his methods? Which observational stance does he adopt? How appropriate is his approach to the object of study? And how does he tie his results back to literary theory? Moretti’s explorations show that his network analyses seem to be incompatible with established conceptions of characters – at least partially. Therefore, he demands a new conceptualization of dramatic characters in literary studies. To me, however, it seems to be more productive to put into perspective or enhance – under the auspices of network analysis – existing quantitative aspects of established character presentation (configuration, constellation). I therefore propose two additional formalizations of character interaction to create dramatic networks: co-references and knowledge transfers. Regular co-presence networks, which have widely been tested and discussed among (computational) literary scholars, will serve as a ground of comparison. I illustrate the merits and limitations of co-presence networks on both a single text analysis of Die Familie Schroffenstein and a larger corpus analysis of 587 German-language plays. Cursorily, I present the operationalization of co-references and knowledge transfers. The linguistic concept of co-reference means that two or more linguistic expressions refer to the same entities. A knowledge transfer, in my understanding, is a transmission of new information from at least one literary character to at least one other character. Manual annotations of co-reference chains and knowledge transfers serve as basis for the subsequent network creation. I compare these different manifestations of character interaction in terms of the resulting network visualizations as well as of various mathematical network metrics. The goal is to elicit how useful these two criteria are regarding drama analysis, e. g., the analysis of character properties, and to what extent they can complement, differentiate, or even replace the established co-presence networks. Co-presence, co-reference and knowledge networks reveal different aspects of the characters under consideration, picture different dramati","PeriodicalId":42872,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Literary Theory","volume":"17 1","pages":"261 - 289"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2023-08-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46123023","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Beyond the Metaphor: Conceptualizing Children’s Literature as (part of) a Rhizomatic Network","authors":"Maureen Hosay","doi":"10.1515/jlt-2023-2011","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/jlt-2023-2011","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract If, as George E.P. Box puts it, »all models are wrong, but some are useful« (Box in Ahnert et al. 2020, 79), what then, would be the merit and concrete gains of such an ambivalent model in the field of literature? This article stems from a hunch: that the use of the network metaphor to describe children’s literature (in the broad sense as referring to any cultural product developed for children) is not insignificant. Starting from that postulate, the goal of this article is to look beyond the metaphor and explore how the rhizomatic network could serve as a concrete model, supplementing the current toolbox used to study children’s literature. Indeed, many characteristics of the rhizomatic network – namely its unlimited, simplified, non-hierarchical, random-access, and visual nature – lend themselves to a broader and more inclusive conceptualization of children’s literature. Translator study scholar Rebecca Walkowitz makes a strong case for this approach, stating that »[i]n the future, we will need to read comparatively, by which I mean reading across editions and formats and also recognizing that any one edition and format contributes to the work rather than exhausts it« (Walkowitz 2015, unpag.). Concretely, I argue for the use of the rhizomatic network as a visual model of multimodal children’s literature at three levels: 1) a given storyworld as a network of interconnected versions; 2) the context of any given version of the storyworld as a network; and 3) the text (or multimodal ensemble) of any given version of the storyworld as a network of meaning-making resources (modes). I illustrate the network model at these three levels through two case studies: We’re Going on a Bear Hunt (Rosen/Oxenbury 1989) and the Gruffalo (Donaldson/Scheffler 1999). In Cathlena Martin’s words, children’s texts »refuse« to stay confined (Martin 2009, 87), whether it be to one medium, or to one language. As a result, any storyworld of children’s literature can be conceptualized as a network of interconnected works, each of which expands it in a different direction depending on its features. This approach thus emphasizes the multidirectionality of influences between works and the »new set of relations« whereby »something unique is produced« (Cartmell/Whelehan 2010, 22). These new sets of relations involve not only the features of the work, but also its context, which can too be contextualized as a network of interconnected agents and organizations involved in the production and reception of the work. At the level of the multimodal ensemble, the model aims to map out the combinations of modes within any product of children’s literature. Since multimodality is inherently hierarchical, as it consists of modal categories, modes, and sub-modes, I propose a hybrid model (after Ban-Yam 2002) that combines the tree (hierarchy) structure and the rhizome structure (lateral connections). While it is important to keep in mind that the audience experiences meaning as a wh","PeriodicalId":42872,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Literary Theory","volume":"17 1","pages":"241 - 260"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2023-08-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43035123","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Voicing the Terrestrial: Theory of the Lyric and the Pressures of the Anthropocene","authors":"Wit Píetrzak","doi":"10.1515/jlt-2023-2013","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/jlt-2023-2013","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract In the present essay, I argue that lyric ecopoetry is particularly suited to alter our worldview in favor of a more ecologically-aware stance. In itself this position has been announced by numerous ecocritics, with some doubts as to its adequacy expressed by Timothy Clark in his Ecocriticism on the Edge. Partly in response to his critique, it is here argued that poems do offer a viable way of altering human modes of thinking not by what or how they evoke but by the way in which they register in the reader’s consciousness. To this effect, I depart from the theories of the lyric advanced in the last two decades by the likes of Jonathan Culler, Derek Attridge and the poet Don Patterson, all of whom argue that lyric poetry differs from any other form of linguistic expression in being itself the event it evokes rather than a representation of an event. This is because by dint of being performed by readers, lyric poems compel one to embrace the voices that comprise them as one’s own, as a result helping one interiorize an experience of ultimate otherness. It is this modus of poetry’s existence that makes it a particularly apt literary form for impelling one to appreciate the complexity of and one’s imbrication in the networks of planetary ecosystems. In this way, as I claim further on, poetry may be conceived of as a vehicle for instilling a form of thinking that Bruno Latour has recently theorized as Terrestrial. For him, the Terrestrial is characterized by what he calls the system of engendering, a way of dwelling in the interrelated systems of the Earth that is reciprocally beneficial for human and non-humans. After an overview of Latour’s idea, which is put forward as a potential political platform, and its relation to the extant theories of environmental humanities that emphasize poetry’s role in conjuring the awareness of the intricacy of natural processes, I suggest that lyric poetry offers not only a means of linguistic expression of the interdependence of all elements in any given ecosystem but also constitutes a language capable of swaying human modes of thinking in favor of the Terrestrial.","PeriodicalId":42872,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Literary Theory","volume":"17 1","pages":"290 - 304"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2023-08-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47035714","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Titelseiten","authors":"","doi":"10.1515/jlt-2023-frontmatter2","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/jlt-2023-frontmatter2","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":42872,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Literary Theory","volume":"31 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-08-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135265078","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Theorie und Praxis der Literaturvermittlung. Erläuterungsreihen und Textkommentar bei Heinrich Düntzer, Albert Zipper und Georg Witkowski und ihr Nachklang bis zur Gegenwart","authors":"Sebastian Susteck","doi":"10.1515/jlt-2023-2009","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/jlt-2023-2009","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract The paper develops ideas for a theory of the transmission of literature, or Literaturvermittlung. It connects a historical with a systematic perspective and focuses mainly on educational institutions and especially school. At the center of the historical analysis is Heinrich Düntzer, an early protagonist of German studies who, from 1855 onwards, publishes a series of reading guides called Erläuterungen zu den deutschen Klassikern. Düntzer’s ideas are repeated, yet modified, by Albert Zipper and his series Erläuterungen zu Meisterwerken der deutschen Literatur, which appears as part of Reclams Universal-Bibliothek between 1896 and 1922. Düntzer and Zipper draw from a European tradition of literary commentary while developing a genre of study guides, or Lektürehilfen, that is still existant and influential today. Although in the long run schools prove to be the primary institutional address of these guides, this is not clear when Düntzer begins his project in 1855 and only becomes obvious in the 1890s, when Zipper publishes first texts. Both authors explicitly address educated readers in general, yet also, e. g., actors. Since literature in German is a new subject in schools in the 19th century, this is not completely surprising. The historical part of the paper takes an additional look at Georg Witkowski’s book Textkritik und Editionstechnik neuerer Schriftwerke from 1924, which is skeptical of written commentary in teaching literature. Düntzer and Zipper both write texts which accompany their series of study guides and explain aims and intended usage. While Düntzer does so in quite some length in 1862, seven years after beginning to publish the Erläuterungen, Zipper adds short opening paragraphs to his first guide in 1896. Both authors are interested in supplying cheap publications to readers of literature. These publications are supposed to explain literary works and their qualities in detail. Düntzer also wants to help readers develop advanced aesthetic judgment. He outlines that the Erläuterungen are supposed to be studied carefully while also reading the literary works. Although an understanding of literature is possible without relying on study guides, these guides, according to Düntzer, provide a comparatively quick access to literature. He also makes clear that his study guides are to provide readers with a coherent text which does not convey information in isolated chunks or jumps from one aspect to another. The rather short introductory paragraphs by Zipper are less ambitious than Düntzer’s, yet also stress the aim to explain literary works in depth. An exemplary analysis of Düntzer’s and Zipper’s study guides on G.E. Lessing’s Nathan der Weise shows strong similarities between the different Erläuterungen. They both present contextual information on the literary work, its creation and background, information on its characters, its language and, most importantly, its plot. At the same time, there are differences when Düntzer comp","PeriodicalId":42872,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Literary Theory","volume":"17 1","pages":"193 - 220"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2023-07-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48087993","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Digitale Mittler und literarische Vermittlungen. Clemens J. Setz’ Bot. Gespräch ohne Autor","authors":"N. Binczek","doi":"10.1515/jlt-2023-2003","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/jlt-2023-2003","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract How ›literary mediation‹ is observed from the perspective of literature is discussed in this paper on the basis of Clemens J. Setz’ Bot. Gespräch ohne Autor. It is described here as a network of multiple operations and interconnections that take up excerpts of what has already been published and combine them with something new, and, at the same time, it is made recognizable as a fundamental moment of literature. What is reconstructed here on the basis of and from an exemplum is systematically relevant. The systematic connections that are of interest here, in turn, can only be made plausible by means of the text. This constellation is theoretically indissoluble. This paper discusses this using both the notion of ›epitext‹ and incorporating the concept of ›mediation‹ unfolded by Bruno Latour. It brings the two together and opens the theoretical territory of ›literary mediation and promotion‹. It follows that mediation is defined as an operation that transforms, that is, not conserves and preserves, transferred into terms of literary mediation: not simply explains and comments, but transforms by inscribing and imprinting itself on what it mediates, is emphasized here. For the understanding of literary mediation, it follows that – instead of being in the service of a literary text conceived as an unchanging entity – it is always modifying and translating it in order to continually bring it forth as something new. While peritexts, however supplementary, constitute compact units, the epitextual perspective brings about their spatial and temporal dispersion. Literature is to be grasped epitextually not as a unity, but as an ensemble or network of different elements, references, and functions that project into a virtually expanded environment of a text. With such a reformulation of the concept of literature, it is stated that epitexts are not attributed to the mediation of literature, but to literature, and that the boundary between these areas is thought to be permeable. The article examines how a text file becomes a printed text and how this shapes the understanding of ›digital literature‹. This also addresses the problem of big data, which requires distant reading procedures and to which Bot. Gespräch ohne Author reacts in a specific way, by capturing context-independent »word distributions« (Piper 2018, 43) to use them for new connectivities. The article reveals the shifts between the possibilities of digitization, its literary adaptations, and a literature oriented to the categories of work, author, and book. It is not concerned with replacing texts designed according to traditional criteria with digital surfaces, but rather with pointing out the untranslatability of one system into the other. An untranslatability, however, that can only be demonstrated in the process of translation, the médiation. By taking up concepts of digital culture and incorporating them by quoting, reflecting, and parodying them, the book, consisting of printed pape","PeriodicalId":42872,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Literary Theory","volume":"17 1","pages":"38 - 61"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2023-07-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47035889","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Nacherzählen. Versuch über eine Kulturtechnik","authors":"A. Schäfer","doi":"10.1515/jlt-2023-2008","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/jlt-2023-2008","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract The article discusses the position of retelling in literary studies. Retelling does neither play a role in narratology, nor raises further questions for text theory. In the focus of literary didactics retelling is often limited to the pragmatics of use. ›Retelling‹, however, is not a term used in literary studies. Although the term denotes a widespread cultural technique, which is used in schools and is accordingly also discussed in the didactics of literature, it has not yet been able to be acknowledged in the discipline. The greatest obstacle standing in the way of a conceptual version of retelling probably lies in its distinction from narrative. Narratology has not found any specifics in retelling that fundamentally distinguish it from narration. And the tools of trans-textuality and intertextuality developed especially in structuralism to describe textual relations are available for narrative texts anyway. Thus, literary studies already apply theories and tools that are useful for analyses of retelling: narratology, text theory and classification of a second-order literature, the theory of trans-textuality and intertextuality, and material history, as well as research on media transposition and adaptation. Defining retelling as a second-order narrative, or meta-narrative, inevitably raises the question of what is being repeated at all, and how, by means of narrative. Medieval studies particularly emphasize the aspect of repetition (›re-telling‹), which precedes a specific mediality of narration. Retelling as a variety of repetition neither presupposes a pre-text nor requires that a narrative be repeated. Rather, in retelling, the narrative procedure enters into the service of repetition. On the one hand, it is a variety of repetition, but not every repetition is also a narrative. On the other hand, one and the same text can be described from the point of view of narration or that of repetition. Literary studies that focus on the uses of retelling will pay attention to the varieties of repetition and should look at the relationship between the act of narration and repetition. Obviously, in retelling, the modes and ways, but also the degrees of reference to the pre-text can vary, so that it remains to be discussed which varieties of reference count as valid repetitions. In addition, there is the fundamental question of what falls under the concept of narrative and what components constitute it. Is narrative to be understood as a turning back with linguistic means? As an organization of events, which in turn are to be understood as displacements of actors across semantic or even physical boundaries? As little as a repetition by means of narration is linked to a preceding narrative text, it is equally questionable where and how a boundary between narrative and non-narrative representation could be drawn. In this respect, the following discussion of retelling touches, on the one hand, on the distinction between describing and narrating, w","PeriodicalId":42872,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Literary Theory","volume":"17 1","pages":"167 - 192"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2023-07-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42333987","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Schwierige Texte in Kritik und Vermittlung","authors":"Hanna Engelmeier","doi":"10.1515/jlt-2023-2004","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/jlt-2023-2004","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This article deals with constellations of critique and the critiqued in conflicts over difficult texts. To this end, conflicts are observed in which difficulty is treated as a problem of comprehensibility of texts, which not only concerns stylistics, but also has an ethical dimension. However, the fact that difficult texts require explanation rather than being mediated conveyed is not only a cause for criticism, but also an occasion to prove the competence of the critic. Criticism of obscuritas or obscurity is a familiar topos in the history of rhetoric. The discussion of texts designated as difficult has taken place mainly implicitly in research on intelligibility and incomprehensibility. The relevant works deal primarily with the rhetoric and aesthetics of not only literary, but also philosophical texts. Difficulty emerges as a phenomenon that makes special demands on competence in reading texts (in the emphatic sense), a feature that can irritate readers. This irritation is by no means always judged negatively, as research has shown, particularly with regard to modernist literature, and here especially with regard to poetry. The difficult text, in its manifestation as an incomprehensible text, has been rehabilitated once again since the 20th century as evidence of special poetic quality. At the same time, difficulty also fulfills a function for hermeneutic and aesthetic theory formation, initiating new approaches again and again. Discussions about the comprehensibility of texts – and high or low difficulty as a criterion for comprehensibility – exhibit a strongly self-reflexive character: What appears to be in need of explanation is not only what a text has to offer in terms of form, aesthetics, or content (and what may make it incomprehensible or difficult), but also the role of the person who comments on this text as a critic or defender. The paper discusses this constellation on the basis of cases in which the normative dimension of the criterion of difficulty is mobilized in politically charged academic disputes. In the process, it becomes clear that accusations of tactical difficulty are made again and again. George Steiner described tactical difficulty as a procedure that he attributed primarily to literary avant-gardes, which he did not necessarily regard as negative. For Steiner, this meant texts whose authors use references, vocabulary, and rhetorical devices to force their readers to approach the work through other mediating texts such as commentaries. Steiner sees another motivation for the application of such tactical difficulty in the pressure for artistic innovation on the part of authors, who, against the backdrop of literary history, are left with only the path to particularly complex codifications in order to lend their work an original signature. In the first part of the paper, tactical difficulty is reconstructed alongside the other types of textual difficulty that George Steiner developed heuristically in his essay","PeriodicalId":42872,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Literary Theory","volume":"17 1","pages":"62 - 87"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2023-07-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44376423","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Ubiquitäres Publizieren. Zur Theorie und Geschichte des Selbstveröffentlichens","authors":"Dorothea Walzer","doi":"10.1515/jlt-2023-2002","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/jlt-2023-2002","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract The article argues that today publishing is no longer solely an institutionally bound professional practice of so-called gatekeepers. Through self-publishing via digital infrastructures, it has become a format of action for both amateurs and professional authors alike. The widespread possibilities of self-publishing arise, on the one hand, from the establishment of self-publishing platforms such as Kindle Direct Publishing, Lulu or Wattpad, the acceptance of which has increased significantly due to the development and successful marketing of reading apps such as Kindle or iPad. On the other hand, they arise from the omnipresent possibilities of interactive online media, i. e. through self-publishing on social media platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, etc. Both forms of self-publishing are part of what has been referred to as the ›appification‹ and ›platformization‹ of knowledge economies. The determination of the relationship between publishing and posting remains a gap in self-publishing research, which this article seeks to address. The article defines ›ubiquitous publishing‹ as the sum of self-publishing practices that are situated within a continuum of publishing and posting and give rise to hybrid publication models. The concept of ubiquitous publishing is to be determined from the coexistence and linkage of everyday and professional self-publishing practices. The goal is to understand ubiquitous publishing as a platform-based modeling of self-publication that competes alongside institutionalized publishing landscapes, shapes them, and questions them. With the multiplication of self-publishing, an intertwining of literary production with its infrastructural conditions, of literature and its mediation, takes place. In the first section, the text argues that self-publishing is an everyday competency or literacy, and that it is accompanied by new forms of professionalization and legitimization. The historical classification of self-publishing within the service economy is considered in the second section. This reveals a dependence of professional self-publishers on the audience’s needs, mediated by the market. New procedures for generating resonance and increasing publication frequency result from this dependence. Analyzing the self-publishing and subscription project Der Teutsche Merkur by Christoph Martin Wieland in the second section shows that these procedures were already essential for self-published journals in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Through constellation with Rupi Kaur’s Instapoesie in the fourth section, common determining aspects of self-publishing emerge despite fundamental media-historical differences between analog and digital self-publishing. These include, above all, the procedures of serialization and (self-)commentary as well as the addressing of the audience. All of these procedures generate feedback between author and audience and allow mediation to become a constitutive component of the l","PeriodicalId":42872,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Literary Theory","volume":"17 1","pages":"11 - 37"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2023-07-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47354843","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}