Journal of Literary Theory最新文献

{"title":"The Implied Fictional Narrator","authors":"J. Bareis","doi":"10.1515/JLT-2020-0007","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/JLT-2020-0007","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract The role of the narrator in fiction has recently received renewed interest from scholars in philosophical aesthetics and narratology. Many of the contributions criticise how the term is used – both outside of narrative literature as well as within the field of fictional narrative literature. The central part of the attacks has been the ubiquity of fictional narrators, see e. g. Kania (2005), and pan-narrator theories have been dismissed, e. g. by Köppe and Stühring (2011). Yet, the fictional narrator has been a decisive tool within literary narratology for many years, in particular during the heyday of classical literary narratology. For scholars like Genette (1988) and Cohn (1999), the category of the fictional narrator was at the centre of theoretical debates about the demarcation of fiction and non-fiction. Arguably, theorising about the fictional narrator necessitates theorising about fiction in general. From this, it follows that any account on which the fictional narrator is built ideally would be a theory of fiction compatible with all types of fictional narrative media – not just narrative fiction like novels and short stories. In this vein, this paper applies a transmedial approach to the question of fictional narrators in different media based on the transmedial theory of fiction in terms of make-believe by Kendall Walton (1990). Although the article shares roughly the same theoretical point of departure as Köppe and Stühring, that is, an analytical-philosophical theory of fiction as make-believe, it offers a diametrically different solution. Building on the distinction between direct and indirect fictional truths as developed by Kendall Walton in his seminal theory of fiction as make-believe (1990), this paper proposes the fictional presence of a narrator in all fictional narratives. Importantly, ›presence‹ in terms of being part of a work of fiction needs to be understood as exactly that: fictional presence, meaning that the question of what counts as a fictional truth is of great importance. Here, the distinction between direct and indirect fictional truths is crucial since not every fictional narrative – not even every literary fictional narrative – makes it directly fictionally true that it is narrated. To exemplify: not every novel begins with words like »Call me Ishmael«, i. e., stating direct fictional truths about its narrator. Indirect, implied fictional truths can also be part of the generation of the fictional truth of a fictional narrator. Therefore, the paper argues that every fictional narrative makes it (at least indirectly) fictionally true that it is narrated. More specifically, the argument is made that any theory of fictional narrative that accepts fictional narrators in some cases (as e. g. suggested by proponents of the so-called optional narrator theory, such as Currie [2010]), has to accept fictional narrators in all cases of fictional narratives. The only other option is to remove the category of fictio","PeriodicalId":42872,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Literary Theory","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2020-02-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1515/JLT-2020-0007","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45750372","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":"When Not Communicating. The Critical Potential of the Literary Text and the Limits of Interpretation","authors":"A. Iannarone","doi":"10.1515/jlt-2020-0004","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/jlt-2020-0004","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Today, as announced by this special issue, the contest of interpretation against aesthetic experience appears urgent and timely. For surely a critical profession should clarify its sense of how to proceed before actually engaging to do so. But how are we to have any such sense in advance of an encounter with the literary text, ostensible object of the discipline? I argue that it is only within the limits of critique, as met with in the objectivity of the artwork, that we might be confident of our interpretations. To paraphrase Hegel, literary interpretation misses an advantage enjoyed by the natural sciences (Hegel 1959, 33). Although recourse may be made to individual works of formal writing in »evidence« of a theory, still, no literary interpretation can presume its methods to be already accepted. Moreover, purely »systematic or theoretical« discussions of interpretation ring hollow when and, indeed, because they are empty of perceptible content. For the honest reader, the literary artwork remains sensibly resilient or resistant to, not to say frustrating of, systematic discussions – and this must be taken into account. As readers (rather than philosophers) of literature we are in luck, for even (or especially) without determining the meaning of a given work, we have before us something that remains »outside« of us. In sustaining his or her attention to this external object (and in coming to regard it as an »artwork«), and thus compelled to see the qualitative distance within and structuring experience, the reader finds that the text is more than just some thing or technical device to conceal meaning. It is what Adorno calls »the objectivity« of the artwork produced by the »movement of the mind« of the subject that, I argue, critiques the apparent choice of independent meaning or independent sensuousness as alternative bases for interpretive practice (Adorno 1983, 19). The literary work, as it becomes objective for its reader, becomes too a limit upon how that reader interprets it, that is, a limit upon the merely subjective. The trouble with the question of whether to privilege the sensuousness or the meaning of art, is that it is framed as though this were still a choice to be made, as if the one could be isolated from, and be taken without concern for the other. Perhaps we cannot be reminded too often, as Claudia Brodsky reminds us, that not since the »first modern redefinition« of the »aesthetic« in Kant’s Third Critique could »specific content« be »considered in isolation from form«. No more can the critical project be put back into the bottle, than the »dynamism« of form articulated through Kant’s analysis of aesthetic judgment be reduced once more to either static form or content. The consideration of »meaning« isolated from form must remain, alas, the advantage of the natural sciences. If, as Brodsky continues with Kant’s definition, »dynamic, ›purposive‹ form causes our pleasure in the aesthetic«, then the consideration of sen","PeriodicalId":42872,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Literary Theory","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2020-02-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1515/jlt-2020-0004","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44220596","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":"Interpretation and Aesthetic Appreciation","authors":"Wouter T. C. Bisschop","doi":"10.1515/jlt-2020-0001","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/jlt-2020-0001","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract In order to talk and think sensibly about the various ways of engaging with texts, we need to distinguish them by reference to relevant differences and commonalities between them. This paper focusses on the conceptual relations between three ways of engaging with texts that figure prominently in literary scholarship: textual interpretation, literary interpretation, and aesthetic appreciation. Rather than giving a full analysis of these three terms, this paper has two specific concerns. First, it is argued that literary interpretation is best understood as a species of textual interpretation. Second, and relatedly, some theorists argue that the discriminating feature of literary interpretation is its aim of aesthetic appreciation. Aesthetic appreciation may refer to either (i) a judgement about or (ii) an experience of or (iii) an attempt to identify and evaluate the aesthetic properties of something. The idea that appreciative judgements or experiences are the main aims of literary interpretation should not lead to a conceptual confusion of literary interpretation with aesthetic evaluation (or appreciative acts), even if there is a sense in which the idea is correct. Aesthetic appreciation is, at most, a secondary aim of literary interpretation and may function as a motivation to engage in literary interpretation. This aligns well with the idea that aesthetic appreciation has a significance independent from interpretation. Their conceptual distinction notwithstanding, it is argued that there are interesting evidential relations between (literary) interpretation and aesthetic appreciation. These relations of support, evidence, or justification may go either way.","PeriodicalId":42872,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Literary Theory","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2020-02-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1515/jlt-2020-0001","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46174397","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":"Poetik der Kritik – Ästhetik des Deutens","authors":"R. Görner","doi":"10.1515/jlt-2020-0003","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/jlt-2020-0003","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Some of the mainly unchartered territories in literary criticism are the implications of Susan Sontag’s frontal attack on traditional hermeneutical practices in Against Interpretation (1969). This contribution to investigations into the modes of interpretation attempts to draw constructive consequences from this provocation and investigate the notion of a ›poetics of criticism‹ emanating into what can be called the ›aesthetics of interpretation‹. In so doing, it explores the Romantic backdrop of this discourse through examining Friedrich Schlegel’s plea for a ›poetization‹ of critique and his demand to turn critical approaches into aesthetic, if not artistic, acts. Then, these reflections examine notions of perception or Anschauung as a cornerstone of comprehension; discuss poetic renderings of thought with Nietzsche, who epitomizes the fusion of reflection and aesthetic production; single out one of Gottfried Benn’s early poems (»Kreislauf«) as an object for putting aesthetic interpretation into practice given the specific character of this Expressionistic text; and, finally, assess elements of theories of recognition in terms of aesthetic practice with specific reference to a paragraph in early Adorno, which highlights cognitive transformation processes as matters of aesthetic experience. Thus, this essay illustrates the interrelationship between critical theory and practice as an aesthetic act, which takes into account the significance of Sontag’s challenge, exemplifying the necessity of finding a language register that can claim to strive towards adequacy in relation to the (artistic) object of criticism without compromising analytical rigour. The argument developed in this contribution towards an aesthetics of interpretation begins with a critical appreciation of various forms and modes of criticism in literature and other aspects of artistic expression. It centres on the significance of the dialogue as an explorative means of critical discourse, ranging from Friedrich Schlegel to Hugo von Hofmannsthal and indeed Hans Magnus Enzensberger. With the (fictive) dialogue as an instrument of aesthetic judgement, ›experience‹ entered the stage of literary criticism negotiating ambivalences and considering alternative points of view often generated from the texts under consideration. In terms of the ambivalences mentioned above, this investigation into the nature of criticism considers the notion of criticism as a form of art and an extrapolation of aesthetic reason as propagated already by Henry Kames, once even quoted by Hegel in connection with the establishing of a rationale for the critical appreciation of artistic products. It discusses the interplay of distance from, and empathy with, objects of aesthetic criticism asking to what extent the act of interpretation (Wolfgang Iser) can acquire a creative momentum of its own without distorting its true mission, namely to assess the characteristics and aesthetic qualities of specific (poet","PeriodicalId":42872,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Literary Theory","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2020-02-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1515/jlt-2020-0003","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46494116","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":"Aesthetic Appreciation and the Dependence Between Deep and Surface Interpretation","authors":"Bartosz Stopel","doi":"10.1515/jlt-2020-0006","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/jlt-2020-0006","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract The article traces the relationship between what is called surface, aesthetic interpretation and deep, semantic, theory-driven interpretation of literature. The former is identified with how interpretation is typically understood in analytic philosophy of art, whereas the latter as belonging to continental literary theory, thus framing the discussion within the relevant debates that the two eminent philosophical schools engage in. Specifically, the article argues in favor of a number of claims. It discusses the notion of surface interpretation, understood as the informed practice involved in general attention to a literary work with an aim of attaining an aesthetically rewarding experience (appreciation). Surface interpretation locates a literary work in a specific art-historical context and at minimum acknowledges the author’s categorial intentions pertinent to genre, general aims and representational content of the work. The article also argues against the notion that appreciation, which is supposed to be the main aim of surface interpretation, is purely perceptual (Carroll, Lamarque) and that consequently aesthetic experience does not involve affective experiences. Grounding appreciation in affective experiences (Levinson) leads me to acknowledge an important continuity between fully formed aesthetic experience and more instinctive or »effortless« ways of attending to a work, such as when one »just enjoys« the emotions afforded by, say, a horror story rather than with full aesthetic attention to the work, where the affective component dominates, but which are less structured to be properly called aesthetic within the conceptual framework I offer here. As a result, I divide the pleasures of attending to an artwork into the instinctive, hedonic ones and the properly aesthetic ones, which both constitute two basic modes of reading. The aesthetic mode is not fully separate from the hedonic one, but on the contrary, by tapping directly into the hardwired human cognitive-affective architecture, it provides a general framework and parameters for the emergence of the higher-order aesthetic mode where more prominence is given to art-historical knowledge and more attention to the design and form/content interrelation. Importantly, aesthetic mode does not operate with the absence of the hedonic one, though they can simultaneously produce different evaluations (e. g. hedonically positive, aesthetically/artistically negative). The two modes could be said to have distinct model readers with corresponding levels of competence. The hedonic reader, as opposed to the aesthetic one, would be largely oblivious to art-historical contexts and would be more selective in terms of attention to the work, relying on direct affect-triggering textual cues. Interpretive effort would be reduced, too. I also discuss my model with reference to the psycho-historical framework for the study of art appreciation as developed by Bullot and Reber which attempts to explain ","PeriodicalId":42872,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Literary Theory","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2020-02-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1515/jlt-2020-0006","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49132002","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":"Historisierung des Diskurses und Potenzierung ästhetischer Erfahrungen in der Literatur der (Post-)Moderne","authors":"Corinna Dziudzia","doi":"10.1515/jlt-2020-0002","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/jlt-2020-0002","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract The paper is based on the assumption that modern art centralises aesthetic experience in a specific way, why it as well be may regarded – in contrast to the rather forced interpretation of art already opposed by Susan Sontag (Sontag 2001, 10) – as an appropriate mode for encountering art. However, the theoretical discourse on aesthetic experience is characterised by opposite poles, which will be examined in the first part of this paper. On the one hand, there is the utopian conception around 1800, in which the reflection on aesthetic experience originally is rooted, in Friedrich Schiller’s On the Aesthetic Education of Man (cf. Noetzel 2006, 198) or Friedrich Schlegel’s imaginations of a life in art in Lucinde (cf. Dziudzia 2015, 38sqq.). On the other hand, the reflections in the German discourse at the beginning of the 20th century are marked in a conspicuously negative way, which can still be seen until the 1980s. In the theoretical first part of the essay, a few cursory positions on the ›problem of the aesthetic human being‹ will be considered initially, which reject aesthetic views in everyday life and evaluate such tendencies as forms of social decay. Concerned about morality on the surface, these positions indeed aim at criticising individual lifestyles in a modern world, which, in particular, are opposed to conservative and collectivist ideas of society and morality. These discourse positions, which are ultimately ideologically grounded, then lead to the deliberate reflections on aesthetic experience, as they unfold most notably from the 1970s onwards, where they form the implicit background. As will be shown, the explicitly negative evaluation expressed in the earlier positions then shapes the assessments of aesthetic experience of Hans-Robert Jauß (cf. Jauß 2007), Peter Bürger (cf. Bürger 1977) and Rüdiger Bubner (cf. Bubner 1989) as a fundamental, rather implicit scepticism. For the most part, their positions seem to make it impossible to think of the aesthetic experience as enrichment or to evaluate it positively, as is common in the US-American discourse, for instance. The latter stance, which is, in essence, initiated by John Dewey and his consciously non-strict separation between art and everyday life as well as his decidedly anti-elitist understanding of art and aesthetics, is more in keeping with the utopian concepts of around 1800. However, his writings only find late distribution in Germany (cf. Dewey 1980). In contrast to Dewey’s position – and Susan Sontag’s explicit rejection of the interpretation as a violent act and the omittance of the sensual experience of the artwork (Sontag 2001) – the critical condemnation of aesthetic experience, which ultimately remains unfounded in the German discourse (because of its implicit ideological origin), now appears challenged. In fact, attentive observation in an aesthetic stance becomes part of the aesthetic programme in modern art across the board (cf. Dziudzia 2015b). Bürger r","PeriodicalId":42872,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Literary Theory","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2020-02-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1515/jlt-2020-0002","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47318506","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":"Deduktive Schlüsse in der literaturwissenschaftlichen Praxis","authors":"Stefan Descher","doi":"10.1515/jlt-2019-0005","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/jlt-2019-0005","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract It is sometimes suggested that deductive reasoning has no place in literary studies, particularly when it comes to the justification of literary interpretations. The thesis is that deductive arguments (almost) never occur and deductive reasoning plays no or at most a marginal role in the actual practice of interpretation. In this essay I will argue that this thesis is false. Using counterexamples, it can be shown that deductive arguments are de facto used in the practice of literary interpretation. Although only an exemplary and not comprehensive investigation of argumentative practices in literary studies can be made here, it can also be made plausible that deductive arguments are not exceptions, but a normal, regularly encountered and legitimate phenomenon of this practice. Furthermore, it can be shown that the thesis criticized here is based on a too narrow understanding of deductive reasoning. Finally, I will argue that (from a methodological point of view) it would be an unnecessary restriction to exclude deductions from our methodological toolbox: to abandon deductive reasoning from the practice of interpretation would be tantamount to renouncing a useful method of justifying (and refuting) interpretive hypotheses. Therefore, a fundamental methodological scepticism about deductive reasoning is unfounded. The essay is structured as follows: First, I will present a current example of how the sceptical attitude towards deductions in literary studies is motivated (Section 1). I will show that the concept of deduction underlying this scepticism is usually based on the assumption that deductive arguments contain ›general rules‹ or ›law-like assertions‹ in their premises. Second, I will confront the concept of deduction assumed there with the understanding of deductive arguments as it is usually assumed in logic (Section 2). It will become apparent that a conception of deductive arguments based on general rules or law-like assertions is (though not false) too narrow. After a short caveat concerning the reconstruction of ›real‹ arguments in general (Section 3), I will present some examples of deductive arguments in interpretations of literary texts (Section 4). These arguments have the logical form of arguments from modus ponens, modus tollens and disjunctive syllogism. The examples not only show that deductive reasoning actually occurs in the practice of literary interpretation, but also make it plausible that deductive arguments are an unproblematic and legitimate method of justifying and/or refuting interpretations. After considering what causes may have led to the dissemination of the thesis that deductions do not occur in practice (Section 5), I conclude with a plea to accept deductive arguments as a legitimate tool of justification among many others (Section 6).","PeriodicalId":42872,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Literary Theory","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2019-09-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1515/jlt-2019-0005","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48453043","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":"Fiktive Figuren als Träger von Wissen und als epistemische Autoritäten","authors":"Rico Hauswald","doi":"10.1515/jlt-2019-0006","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/jlt-2019-0006","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This essay examines the question of whether and under what conditions a fictitious character can be an epistemic authority for (real) readers; more precisely: it asks whether and under what conditions readers can acquire (propositional) knowledge from the character, thus learning something from it. In answering this question, the essay brings together two debates that have so far hardly been related to each other: an epistemological debate on the concept of epistemic authority and a literary-theoretical debate on aesthetic cognitivism, i. e., the discourse about what can be learned from the reception of fictional texts. In order for a person to be an epistemic authority for another person, two conditions must be met: 1) the first person must have an advantage in knowledge over the second person that the second person recognizes and acknowledges as such; and 2) the second person must have appropriate access to this knowledge. In order to clarify to what extent a fictitious character and a real reader can be related in this way, I first examine what it means to attribute knowledge to a fictitious character. To do so, I suggest the following analysis: In story S, character C knows that p if and only if C believes in S that p; p is true in S; and C is justified in S to believe that p (this suggestion, based on the classical definition of knowledge, can easily be adapted for other suggested analyses: all that is required is that all conditions in the analysis – whatever they might be – lie inside the scope of the fiction operator). Furthermore, a knowledge attribution of the form »In S, C knows whether p« is true if and only if in S, C knows that p or knows that not-p. On the question of the correctness-conditions for knowledge attributions of the form »In S, C knows that p« and »In S, C knows whether p«, I will then enter the debate about fictional truths. This is necessary for two reasons. On the one hand, the attribution of knowledge is nothing but the assertion of a particular fictional truth. And on the other hand, an attribution of knowledge involves another fictional fact, namely the fact p (which I call the »underlying fact«). The view that is largely held in the discussion about fictional truth following Lewis is that what is true in a story does not result solely from the explicit assertions in the text, but also from plausible consequences [Plausibilitätsschlüssen] that we can be further justified in drawing. More precisely, the following possibilities arise for both facts – the underlying fact as well as the attribution of knowledge: Either the text explicitly contains a reference to the fact. Or it does not contain such an explicit reference, but the question of whether the fact obtains can still be answered on the basis of plausibility conclusions. Or there are no explicit references and plausibility conclusions cannot be drawn. In this case, there is a point of indeterminacy. These distinctions result in a number of possible co","PeriodicalId":42872,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Literary Theory","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2019-09-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1515/jlt-2019-0006","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48367980","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":"Gattungsgeschichte und ihr Gattungsbegriff am Beispiel der Novellen","authors":"Juliane Schröter","doi":"10.1515/jlt-2019-0009","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/jlt-2019-0009","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract The discussion of genre theory since the middle of the twentieth century has been marked, among other things, by two conflicting endeavors: on the one hand, there are attempts to semantically regulate generic terms for the purpose of a clear scientific language by defining them as types of texts (cf. Fricke 2010, Fishelov 1991, Zymner 2003); and on the other hand, there are attempts to accustom literary studies to the factual indeterminacy of generic terms and to comprehend this indeterminacy by adapting Wittgenstein’s concept of family resemblance or the semantics of prototypes (cf. Strube 1986, Hempfer 2010a). The essay is intended to show that both positions – that of strictly regulating and of merely descriptively comprehending practice – as they have been advocated so far hinder the foundation of genre-historical research. This essay aims to more precisely formulate the productive ideas from both positions and thus to provide a robust foundation for the historical study of genres. This foundation is to be structured by two core questions that until now have not been clearly separated: first, how one ought to define, before and during historiographic and empirical work, the concept of the genre that is to be examined; and second, how one can synthesize the historically changing semantics of a genre at the end of this empirical work. Answering these two questions becomes a problem when one is dealing with historically discontinuous and heterogeneous genres. This essay pursues this problem using the example of novella history, because research here is particularly divided as to how the concept of the novella can best be understood. The guiding idea of the essay is to reverse the usual sequence of steps: in genre theory, the dogma is often advocated that the concept of genre must be defined a priori, i. e., before the investigation begins and independently of empirical work. The first section of this essay rejects this dogma and recommends that we make the use of the concept of a specific genre dependent on the concrete epistemological interest of the investigation. With the help of an argument by Kendall L. Walton, the essay shows that aesthetic innovations and the historical development of literary procedures can only be understood if a hermeneutic interest in the references of individual texts to historically established generic expectations is at the forefront of the investigation (cf. Walton 1970). The essay recommends that generic historiography serve this hermeneutic interest. It aims to answer the first core question of how the concept of genre ought be used before and during historiographic work for two central procedures: for reconstruction from, on the one hand, historical poetics (second section); and, on the other hand, from text groups (third section). In both procedures, the thesis is that the concept of the genre to be examined should not be regulated before or independently of empirical work by defining a concept of a t","PeriodicalId":42872,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Literary Theory","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2019-09-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1515/jlt-2019-0009","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44443718","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":"On the Origin of the Epic Preterit","authors":"Katja Mellmann","doi":"10.1515/jlt-2019-0008","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/jlt-2019-0008","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract The use of past tense in narrative discourse at first glance seems to imply that the narrated events are lying in the past as compared to the act of narration. However, this intuitive notion was doubted by several scholars in the mid 20th century, among them Käte Hamburger, Harald Weinrich, Émile Benveniste, and Ann Banfield. This article investigates the temporal constitution of literary narratives from a perspective of the biological evolution of Human cognition. My analysis begins with Hamburger’s most disputed claim that in epic fiction the past tense »loses its grammatical function of designating what is past« and proceeds by testing a derived hypothesis against a cross-cultural sample of (mostly oral) folklore. Hamburger denied any temporal relation between the speaker and that which he speaks of, assuming instead a fictitious neverland in which the narrated events are situated and to which the preterit refers. If Hamburger’s model is correct, so the derived hypothesis goes, then the use of past tense in fictional narratives is merely a cultural convention, and different narrative traditions should expose different conventions. Indeed it can be shown that in other cultures stories are told in the present tense, in infinitive verb forms, or in forms indicating abstractness or remoteness. It can be followed that Hamburger was right at least in presuming that reference to the past is not a necessary constituent of verbal storytelling. Actually, instead of referring to the past, the epic preterit rather seems to indicate a change in the modality of speaking, thus adhering to the category of grammatical mood rather than tense. In some languages of oral cultures, however, this presumed mood shows up instead as a way of indicating the source of information. This kind of source information – fully grammaticalized in a quarter of the world’s languages – is called ›evidentiality‹ by linguists. In a phylogenetic perspective on the evolution of cognition, source information only becomes necessary with extended inferential and communicative capabilities and may thus have emerged as a cognitive tool in early humans when entering the ›cognitive niche‹. Evidentiality markers in language may thus be the linguistic reflex of a very ancient cognitive scope category in the innate architecture of the human mind, one which served to separate first-hand experience from reported knowledge. In oral storytelling, evidentiality is marked not only by specific verb forms but also by specific formulas (›they say‹/›it is said‹), intonations, or rhetorical devices. From this perspective, the phenomenon observed by Hamburger and others can be said to originate in the beginning of Tradition – that is, of verbal transmission of cultural knowledge. My hypothesis is that literary narratives in literate cultures still use this ancient cognitive scope operator of ›tradition‹ when employing the epic preterit. Admittedly, in literate cultures it often suffices to put »A n","PeriodicalId":42872,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Literary Theory","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2019-09-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1515/jlt-2019-0008","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47796921","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}