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| Question | Answer |
| The historical object | ie. the entirety of literary phenomena within a given time-span; comprising texts, aesthetic trends, authors, literary institutions, the literary market, criteria & practises of canonisation, marginalisation & censorship etc. |
| representation of the historical object | ie. literary historiography = the reconstruction and narrative presentation of past literary facts and events; frequently in book form (‚to buy/read a literary history‘) |
| naive reading hamlet in a literary context | (without consideration of lit.hist., historical, cultural context): Highly innovative (ghost, revenge, play within the play as plot-relevant device, comic elements) Sole focus on the individual (tragic choice; psychodrama within Hamlet‘s mind) |
| Reading Hamlet With / Without Its (Lit.)Hist. Context | Informed reading considering lit.hist., historical, cultural context: Highly imitative (ghost, revenge, madness, play within the play as plot-relevant device, comic elements) Focus on issue of royal succession (extinction of Tudors at death of Elizabeth I) |
| functions of literary history | Transforms a mass of isolated, monadic data into stringent lines of development, into a story of literary evolution |
| literary evolution 1 | Constitutes order, provides explanatory frameworks and makes literary history accessible Explains isolated phenomena as part of larger aesthetic trends and movements Provides historical innerliterary context so that we can assess what is new, innovative, specific, unique, original… about a text |
| literary evolution 2 | Unearths, evaluates, appreciates texts, gages their relevance & historical impact and introduces them to a modern readership Explains literature as an active player in the historical process and as inextricably bound up with its surrounding historical contexts |
| literary hiSTORY features 1 | As any other type of knowledge: lit. hist. as theory-driven construction Insurmountable gap between objective historical reality and its narrative representation |
| literary hiSTORY features 2 | Lit. historiography makes use of literary narrative patterns, superimposing them onto the disjunct historical data in order to constitute order, teleology, meaning (Hayden White: ‚emplotment‘) |
| Lit.hist. as result of selection and construction: | Selection of texts, authors, dates, events, which at a given point in time are deemed relevant, seminal or representative (‚canon‘) Construction of chronological, causal and teleological development; division into epochs (diachronic dimension) and genres (synchronic dimension); application of narrative templates and explanatory patterns |
| literary hiSTORY claims to be... | Lit.hist. claims to be providing faithful, neutral representation of fictional texts, but is itself fictional Not reconstruction, but construction of literary history writing authors into/out of the canon (eg. Charlotte Turner Smith) |
| literary hiSTORY culutre /meta | Lit.hist. is itself largely determined by cultural context Lit.hist. is itself subject to change and development (-> meta-history) |
| Perspektivengebundenheit | perception determined by the historical/ ideological position of the onlooker |
| account of Eng. lit. determined by | Our account of Eng.lit. determined by factors of academic identity sociohistorical identity personal identity |
| master narratives | narrative of: modernisation, increasing subjectivity, interiority, difficulty, formal self-reflexivity, diversification, liberalisation… |
| the principles of coherence | causality, linear development and teleology (eg. dialectic structure: thesis, antithesis, synthesis) |
| traditional literary hiSTORY: trends | Tends to attach less importance to trends which cannot be integrated in the master narrative Tends to be less interested in trends which have become ‚extinct‘ (ie. whose influence can no longer be discerned in today‘s culture) |
| multifarious characters | Tends to ignore the multifarious character of cultural phenomena and the simultaneous co-existence of contradictory trends (E. Bloch: ‚Gleichzeitigkeit des Ungleichzeitigen‘) clearly demarcated ‚phases‘/‘epochs‘: reduction of complexity |
| perspectives and principles | Tends to adopt a small and stable set of selected analytical perspectives and principles to apply to the entirety of cultural phenomena |
| a functional approach, Less on ‚deeper meaning‘ or aesthetic value of literary works, than on: | Ways literary texts interact with, react to, exert influence on and in turn are influenced by cultural issues (‚discursive formations‘) prevalent at the time of their conception |
| functional approach interested in | Interested in the ‚work‘ of literature, in its cultural impact (functional approach) forming of mentalities, ways of perception, concepts of thought, providing orientation and meaning |
| functional approach sees literature as | as one among other historical text types (albeit one with special features) |
| functional approach: historicity & culturality | Focusses on ways literature is in parts determined by its historical and cultural position (‚Historizität & Kulturalität‘; historicity & culturality) |
| functional approach: media history | Considers literary history as part of larger media history: (C18 – early C20: print as most influential medium (‚Gutenberg galaxy‘); since then print in decline) |
| literary history: general models | Extrinsic (focus on contextual factors) vs. Intrinsic (focus on aesthetic, innerliterary factors) approaches New extrinsic approaches as synthesis: Literature as social practice; social functions interact with literary conventions; complex reciprocal relationship between the social and the aesthetic |
| Extrinsic | focus on contextual factors |
| Intrinsic | focus on aesthetic, innerliterary factors |
| New extrinsic approaches as synthesis | Literature as social practice; social functions interact with literary conventions; complex reciprocal relationship between the social and the aesthetic |
| Models of Periodisation: Mixed Categories | The Beginnings of English: Old and Middle English 600-1485 The Renaissance: 1485-1660 (Battle of Bosworth ends War of the Roses, beginning of Tudor Reign Henry VII) Restoration to Romanticism: 1660-1789 The Romantic Perion: 1789-1832 (French Revolution to Sir Walter Scott’s death) The Nineteenth Century: 1832-1900 The Early Twentieth Century: 1900-45 (WWII) The Twentieth Century: 1845 – the present |
| The Beginnings of English | Old and Middle English 600-1485 |
| The Renaissance | 1485-1660 (Battle of Bosworth ends War of the Roses, beginning of Tudor Reign Henry VII |
| Restoration to Romanticism | 1660-1789 |
| The Romantic Period | 1789-1832 (French Revolution to Sir Walter Scott’s death |
| The Nineteenth Century | 1832-1900 |
| The Early Twentieth Century | 1900-45 (WWII) |
| The Twentieth Century | 1945 – the present |
| models of periodisation: | Extrinsic: early modern period, enlightenment, victorian period Intrinsic: renaissance, neoclassical period, romatic, modernist, postmodernist |
| extrinsic periods | old english middle english elizabethean jacobean caroline puritan restoration long 18th ct. edwardian georgian 20s,30s, ww 2 new english litratures |
| intrinsic periods | augustan age of sensibility realism pre-raphaelites aesthticism / decadence |
| Functions historically attributed to literature | Mimetic expressive self-reflexive (in actual fact NOT a linear development: backlashes, counter-movements!) Mimetic: Plato, Aristotle, Horace; art should hold up mirror to the world, prodesse et delectare (teach and delight), pragmatic view of literature Expressive: expresses inner self of author (focus on subjectivity, individuality, originality, interiority) Self-reflexive: l‘art pour l‘art, focus on form and aesthetic structure |
| mimetic function | Mimetic expressive self-reflexive (in actual fact NOT a linear development: backlashes, counter-movements!) Mimetic: Plato, Aristotle, Horace; art should hold up mirror to the world, prodesse et delectare (teach and delight), pragmatic view of literature |
| expressive function | expresses inner self of author (focus on subjectivity, individuality, originality, interiority |
| Self-reflexive function | Self-reflexive: l‘art pour l‘art, focus on form and aesthetic structure |
| literatue: a definition | Fictional, imaginative writing (vs. factual) In print Self-reflexive language (form-orientated; draws attention to itself) Non-pragmatic discourse (text as aesthetic object; no immediate practical use) Intertextual relations (works as part of and refers to ‘autonomous’ literary system) |
| some features of culture | Man-made complex of thoughts, feelings, value systems and hierarchies, norms, forms of behaviour, processes of meaning making Man-made - social reality as a social construct To do with the construction of meaning (Max Weber: „selbstgesponnenes Bedeutungsgewebe“) Semiotic system – hence shares features with literature Dynamic – changes over time Not constricted to artistic objects of high aesthetic value Doesn‘t need to be a material object mental & social dimensions of culture Mental dimension accessible through its material manifestations, eg. literary texts |
| a defintion of culture | Semiotic and constructivist concept of culture Man-made complex of concepts, patterns of thought, feeling and behaviour, of values, norms and processes of meaning-making Patterns of meaning-making, esp. with regard to construction of (individual & collective) identity Consists of three dimensions, which intersect, interact and influence each other |
| three dimensions of culture | mental dimension material dimension social dimension |
| concept of episteme | ‚Naturalness‘ vs. ideological construction Michel Foucault (Les mots et les choses/The Order of Things 1966) |
| episteme | discursive formation which enables/shapes experience historically determined organisation of knowledge and thought structures the way we make sense of the world is internalised by individuals operates at an unconscious level is contingent and changes over time |
| criteria of selection: cultural issues | cultural issues which were prominent and widely debated in their time, which give insight into the specificity of the period and which shed a new light on the literary texts in question cultural issues which were vital in the construction of identity (gender/collective/national identities) cultural issues which are specific to British culture |
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