Transcript Proseminar Allgemeine Literaturwissenschaft

Allgemeine
Literaturwissenschaft
Methoden der Literaturwissenschaft
Aufgaben
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Durchdringung der Schichten des Textes
Klärung der Funktion der Literaturwissenschaft
David Lodge: Small World. New York 1984, S. 26:
„Theory?“ Philip Swallow’s ears quivered under
their silvery thatch, a few places further up the
table. „That word brings out the Goering in me.
When I hear it I reach for my revolver.“
„Then you’re not going to like my lecture, Philip,“
said Morris Zapp.
Geschichte der Literaturwissenschaft
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vor dem 19. Jahrhundert Vorstellungen und Regeln der
antiken Tradition
Romantik: Idee von nationaler Kunst als Ausdruck eines
Volkes
ab Mitte 19. Jh. Positivismus
 Sammeln, Sichten und Einordnen von Fakten
 Übertragung von naturwiss. Prinzipien auf GKW
 Suche nach kausalen Gesetzen
 Taine: race, milieu, moment; Sainte-Beuve: tel arbre, tel fruit
Blütezeit-Theorie von Wilhelm Scherer:
 Wellenberge der deutschen Literatur um 1200 und 1800;
Zyklentheorien
Biographien, Quellenforschung, Editionen…
Marxistische Literaturwissenschaft
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Frage nach gesellschaftlicher Funktion der
Literatur
Text ist Produkt menschlicher Arbeit
spiegelt die bestehenden materiellen Verhältnisse
wider und greift in sie ein
materielle Basis bedingt ideologischen Überbau
Kultur eigene innere Entwicklung
Textimmanente Literaturkritik
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verneint Einflüsse von außen auf den
Rezipienten
Interpretation als Auseinandersetzung des
Subjekts mit dem Werk
Einzigartigkeit des Kunstwerks auf subjektiver
Basis erleben
Leser als Tabula rasa
Hermeneutik
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Einbeziehung der Subjektivität der lesenden Person und
des historischen Horizonts
Hermeneutische Spirale (Zirkel)
Interpret verfügt über Vorverständnis
1. Lektüre – Projektion eines Sinnzusammenhanges
Überprüfung dieser Hypothesen durch 2. Lektüre usw.
Ergebnisse an „Vorurteile“ des Subjekts gebunden
Vorurteile sind Produkt unserer Geschichte (Gadamer)
ständiger Wechsel von Induktion und Deduktion
(ausgestreckter Arm – Nase)
System oder nicht ?
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Strukturalismus und Systemtheorie
Dichtung als System
literarisches Werk = Summe aller stilistischen Mittel
Struktur ist das innere Gefüge des sprachlichen
Textes, Beziehungsnetz von stilistischen Relationen
hinter der äußeren Kette (Eiffelturm)
Konstruktivismus leitet aus dem „Gedächtnis der
Wörter“ Sinn ab
Fetisch = Fee + Tisch.
Dekonstruktivismus: Neues aus der Zerlegung
Semiotik
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Verknüpfung der Sinneinheiten im Text
Modelle der narrativen Organisation
Mythen (Cl. Lévi-Strauss) oder Märchen (V. Propp)
Aktantenmodell von A. J. Greimas:
Aktant = Träger von Handlungsrollen, erfüllt bestimmte
Funktion, agens oder patiens
narrative Organisation nach Handlungsregeln
tragische Gefühlskette bei Racine (A liebt B, B liebt C und C
liebt A)
Intrigenstruktur einer Dreiecksgeschichte: A handelt so,
dass B verführt und C betrogen wird; B leistet A zuerst
Widerstand, wechselt aber Position nach äußerem Einfluss;
C rächt sich an B, indem er A beseitigt.
Enthüllung des Sinnes
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To understand a message is to decode it. Language is a code. But every
decoding is another encoding. If you say something to me I check that I
have understood your message by saying it back to you in my own words,
that is, different words from the ones you used, for if I repeat your own
words exactly you will doubt whether I have really understood you. [...]
Reading, of course, is different from conversation. It is more passive in
the sense that we can’t interact with the text, we can’t affect the
development of the text by our own words, since the text’s words are
already given. That is what perhaps encourages the quest for
interpretation. If the words are fixed once and for all, on the page, may
not their meaning be fixed also? Not so, because the same axiom, every
decoding is another encoding, applies to literary criticism even more
stringently than it does to ordinary spoken discourse. [...] The reader
plays with himself as the text plays upon him, plays upon his curiosity,
desire, as a striptease dancer plays upon her audience’s curiosity and
desire. [...]
Enthüllung des Sinnes
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The classical tradition of striptease, which goes back to
Salome’s dance of the seven veils and beyond, offers a valid
metaphor for the activity of reading. The dancer teases the
audience, as the text teases its readers, with the promise of
an ultimate revelation that is infinitely postponed. Veil after
veil, garment after garment, is removed, but it is the delay in
the stripping that makes it exciting, not the stripping itself;
because no sooner has one secret been revealed than we
lose interest in it and crave another. [...] To read is to
surrender oneself to an endless displacement of curiosity
and desire from one sentence to another, from one action to
another, from one level of the text to another. The text
unveils itself before us, but never allows itself to be
possessed; [...]
Wozu ?
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„I have just one question,“ said Philip Swallow. „It is this: what,
with the greatest respect, is the point of our discussing your paper
if, according to your own theory, we should not be discussing what
you actually said at all, but discussing some imperfect memory or
subjective interpretation of what you said?“
„There is no point,“ said Morris Zapp blithely. „If by point you
mean the hope of arriving at some certain truth. But when did you
ever discover that in a question-and-discussion session? Be honest,
have you ever been to a lecture or seminar at the end of which you
could have found two people present who could agree on the
simplest précis of what had been said?“
„Then what in God’s name is the point of it all?“ cried Philip
Swallow, throwing his hands into the air.
„The point, of course, is to uphold the institution of academic
literary studies. [...]“
Englische Schule
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eklektisch, romantische Hermeneutik mit moralischen Ideen
Philip Swallow was the first to speak. He said the function of criticism was
to assist in the function of literature itself, which Dr. Johnson had famously
defined as enabling us better to enjoy life, or better to endure it. The great
writers were men and women of exceptional wisdom, insight and
understanding. Their novels, plays and poems were inexhaustible reservoirs
of values, ideas, images, which, when properly understood and appreciated,
allowed us to live more fully, more finely, more intensely. But literary
conventions changed, history changed, language changed, and these
treasures too easily became locked away in libraries, covered with dust,
neglected and forgotten. It was the job of the critic to unlock the drawers,
blow away the dust, bring out the treasures into the light of day. Of course,
he needed certain specialist skills to do this: a knowledge of history, a
knowledge of philology, of generic convention and textual editing. But
above all he needed enthusiasm, the love of books. It was by the
demonstration of this enthusiasm in action that the critic forged a bridge
between the great writers and the general reader.
Französische Schule
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strukturalistisch
Michel Tardieu said that the function of criticism was not to add new
interpretations and appreciations of Hamlet or Le Misanthrope or
Madame Bovary or Wuthering Heights to the hundreds that already
existed in print or the thousands that had been uttered in classrooms
and lecture theatres, but to uncover the fundamental laws that enabled
such works to be produced and understood. If literary criticism was
supposed to be knowledge, it could not be founded on interpretation,
since interpretation was endless, subjective, unverifiable, unfalsifiable.
What was permanent, reliable, accessible to scientific study, once we
ignored the distracting surface of actual texts, were the deep structural
principles and binary oppositions that underlay all texts that had ever
been written and that ever would be written: paradigm and syntagm,
metaphor and metonymy, mimesis and diegesis, stressed and
unstressed, subject and object, culture and nature.
Deutsche Schule
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idealistisch, textimmanent
Siegfried von Turpitz said that, while he sympathized with
the scientific spirit in which his French colleague
approached the difficult question of defining the essential
function of criticism in both its ontological and
teleological aspects, he was obliged to point out that the
attempt to derive such a definition from the formal
properties of the literary art-object as such was doomed to
failure, since such art-objects enjoyed only an as it were
virtual existence until they were realized in the mind of a
reader. (When he reached the word ’reader’ he thumped
the table with his black-gloved fist.)
Italienische Schule
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marxistisch
Fulvia Morgana said that the function of criticism was to
wage undying war on the very concept of ’literature’ itself,
which was nothing more than an instrument of bourgeois
hegemony, a fetichistic reification of so-called aesthetic
values erected and maintained through an elitist
educational system in order to conceal the brutal facts of
class oppression under industrial capitalism.
Amerikanische Schule: textsemiotisch
Morris Zapp said more or less what he had said at the
Rumming conference.
Expressive theories
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a. have a ‘metaphysical’ conception of the function of
art; they are individualistic (stress originality), antirationalistic, anti-imitative, anti-rhetorical; conceive of
writing as a creative act; accentuate the primacy of the
suggestive, symbolic, image (the use of ‘indirections’);
consider the lyrical poem to be the literary norm;
b. emphasize spontaneity and the role of feelings in the
creative process;
c. the poet in their view is entirely subjective; he
expresses his individual feelings and thereby the essence
of life and the universe (poet as prophet); the poem is
the result of organic growth.
Objective theories
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a. share the aspect mentioned sub a. with expressive
theories;
b. emphasize conscious, cool workmanship in writing;
strive for clearness;
c. consider the poem itself, separated from its author
(‘un objet de consistance propre’ – Valéry) as the
potential incorporation of the metaphysical secret; the
poem creates its own reality; the poet uses words as raw
material, but at a certain stage he surrenders the
initiative to the language; the poem has to be clear, but
cannot be simple (‘une énigme de cristal’ – Valéry); the
poet often is obsessed by the possibilities and
limitations of language – numerous poems are centred
upon the writing of poetry.
Mimetic theories
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a. have a practical, worldly, conception of the
function of art; they aspire at an objective
representation of reality, at impersonality, stress the
typical rather than the individual; are often didactic,
moralistic - non-lyrical;
b. to a certain extent they often share b. with
expressive theories (no preoccupation by conscious
elaborate craftsmanship);
c. show no special concern for genre, for the
separation of levels of style, or of subjects.
Pragmatic theories
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a. / b. share a. with mimetic and b. with objective
conceptions;
c. pursue their effects by a consciously applied rhetoric
strategy, orderly and well-defined, often ignoring the
social implications – though not the moral aspect – of
mimetic theories, and show a particular concern for
consistent use of language.
It goes without saying that the four diachronic columns are
not without their interrelations. [...] any reasonably
adequate theory takes some account of all four elements.
Herbert Seidler
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Was ist Vergleichende Literaturwissenschaft ?
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Vortrag, Akademie der Wissenschaften 1973
Einführung
Aktualität, gegenwärtige Lage
Fragen
Historischer Rückblick
Weltliteratur bis zur Romantik
ab Romantik patriotische Fixierung auf
Nationalliteratur
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Historische Entwicklung
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Littérature comparée:
Einflussforschung
bilaterale Bilanzen
positivistisch
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Comparative Literature:
multikulturelle Gesellschaft
der USA
Stilvergleiche und Theorie
New Criticism
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Deutschland nach 1945:
Bewältigung des
Nationalsozialismus
Stoffgeschichte
Osteuropa:
Kontakt- und
Wechselbeziehungen
typologische Analogien
Begriffe ? Gefahren ?
Möglichkeiten ?
Argumentation
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Begriff: Objekt Literatur,
über eine Sprache hinaus
Literatur eines
mehrsprachigen Staates ?
Allgemeine /
Vergleichende
Literaturwissenschaft ?
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Gefahren:
Veräußerlichung
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übertriebene
Anforderungen
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oberflächliche
Einflussforschung
zu großes
Forschungsgebiet
ideologische
Vereinnahmung
Möglichkeiten
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Wirkungsforschung
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auf Epochen begrenzte
Projekte
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gegen Veräußerlichung
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gegen übertriebene
Anforderungen
Bedeutung der Sprache
und ihrer Unterschiede
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gegen Ideologisierung
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Ausblick:
Konzentration auf
Homologien der
Entwicklung, Epochen,
Gattungen usw.
Regionale Spezialitäten
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Mitteleuropa
Ergänzung und
Zusammenführung der
einzelnen Philologien