Von der Liebestragödie zur Tragödie der Liebe: Jean Racines Phèdre

From Love Tragedy to the Tragedy of Love: Jean Racine’s Phèdre The article focuses on Jean Racine’s last secular tragedy Phèdre and argues that the drama is based, on the one hand, on the French concept of love tragedy, established in the 1630s and reconfigured in the 1650s as a gallant tragedy. On the other hand, Racine radicalises this dramatic concept and fulfils it by combining different models of this dramatic concept in one tragedy. Instead of a modern gallant love tragedy, like Nicolas Pradon’s Phèdre et Hippolyte, Racine stages a tragedy of love that ends with the decline of two (royal) families, produced by the revenge of the goddess of love, Venus. According to this, Phèdre is not an exemplary tragedy of French classicism but rather a radical endpoint of French tragedy in the 17th century.

Mandel’štam. Rom. Pasolini

Mandel’štam. Rome. Pasolini In 1972 a small volume presented for the first time a varied choice of poems by the Russian poet Osip Mandel’štam to the Italian public, translated by Serena Vitale. One of the book’s first and most enthusiastic readers was the poet, film director and intellectual Pier Paolo Pasolini, who immediately reviewed it for the Italian newspaper Il Tempo. This review shows the great significance that Mandel’štam’s poetry acquired for Pasolini in the very last years of his life. So much so, that the first verse of Mandel’štam’s late poem, With the world of the powerful …, became the motto of Pasolini’s last, unfinished novel Petrolio. While offering a reading of this poem by Mandel’štam, the present article investigates the reasons for Pasolini’s passionate interest in the Russian poet, and sheds light on the political dimension of both Mandel’štam’s and Pasolini’s œuvre.

Vom Problem einer demokratischen Ästhetik zur Ästhetik einer problematischen Demokratie

From the Problems of a Democratic Aesthetic to the Aesthetics of a Problematic Democracy In analyses of poems from the 18th, 20th and 21st century, this article juxtaposes different degrees of trust in a democratic political order and the role of poetry in it. Philip Freneau, who supported a radical interpretation of the American Revolution as initiating a new and better social order, searched for a democratic poetics commensurate with the value placed on common people. For Muriel Rukeyser and even more so, Langston Hughes in the 1930s, democracy felt threatened not only by fascism abroad but by racism and exploitation at home. In 2014, Claudia Rankines Citizen: An American Lyric registers, like Rukeyser and Hughes, the difficulties in constructing a consensual reality and pushes this notion much further; surprisingly, perhaps, her work continues to see art as important to alert us to this difficulty of modern democracies and divers societies.

Neue Blicke auf einen ›alten Dichter‹

»Old Poet«, New Readings: Recent Work on Hans Sachs and Perspectives for Future Research Stimulated by the flourishing of research on literature and culture of the early modern period in recent decades across the disciplines, interest in the body of literary works by the Nuremberg author Hans Sachs (1494–1576) is also on the rise again. This paper offers a report on scholarship devoted to his wide-ranging creative output and published between the re-emergence of Sachs studies in the mid-1970s up until the present day. Beginning with a retrospective that is primarily thematic in structure, it then turns to a discussion (in terms both of methodology and of content) of the focus and findings of studies to date, including the consideration of continuing gaps and desiderata. The latter are in the main related to textual problems, but also touch on many other aspects (literary, historical etc.) yet to be properly examined. There follows, finally, a delineation, based on the status quo as presented, of four highly relevant fields of study: the report thus provides a thematic and methodological framework of potential use for future research.

Echo, Narcissus, and the Translator’s Distress

This article argues that the story of Echo and Narcissus as told in Ovid’s Meta­morphoses can serve as a fruitful, suggestive metaphor or ›myth‹ of the translator, especially of the driving passion and the unavoidable frustrations characteristic of the translation process. The connection between Echo and the translator seems obvious – they both share the principle of repetition, »echoing« a primary text – but there are also interesting differences between the two: whereas Echo’s repetition is forced, partial, and mechanic, that of the translator is a creative and holistic choice. As for Narcissus, I suggest that both Narcissus and the translator are engaged in a magic yet futile dance of intimacy, reflection, and passion with their beloved (image or text). They both try to get as close as possible to their beloved while risking its loss paradoxically from getting too close. I conclude with a table, mapping important similarities and differences between the story of Echo, Narcissus, and the »story« of the translator, emphasizing that, unlike the tragic ending of Echo and Narcissus, the activity of the translator is a vital and fertile part of literary life.

Im Sog des Untergangs

Drawn into Doom. On the Conception of Narrative Suspense in the Nibelungenlied This paper examines the potential and the structure of narrative suspense in the Nibelungenlied, as it specifically evolves in the final part of the Middle High German epic, beginning with Kriemhild’s treacherous invitation. Due to the inevitabi­lity of the catastrophe, the expectations of the reader or listener are directed at those details of the plot which are part of the text’s distinct interpretation of the traditional story, so that possible anticipations reside in the questions of ›how‹ and ›when‹, while not completely disregarding the question of ›what‹. The complex and extensive build-up of suspense towards the end can be regarded as a genuine pro­duct of the literarization of oral lore.

Zweifel, Skeptizismus und das Dilemma der Wahrheitsfindung in der höfischen Epik des Mittelalters

Doubt, Scepticism, and the Dilemma of Establishing the Truth in Middle High German Epic. An Outline of a Research Field The article reflects on the specific uses of doubt as a productive method of ascertaining truth in Middle High German Epic (12th to 14th centuries). Intra-tex­tual debates on the correct interpretation of alternative claims to truth and the presentation of opposing points of view trigger a cognitive and emotional effect of doubt which strongly resonates in metaphors, images and rhetorical figures. Additionally, doubt inspires poetic (and narrative) techniques, motifs and character types which extant research has failed to recognise as interconnected. The purpose of this article is to introduce a research field that is concerned with the analysis of courtly scepticism in secular traditions of literature.

Schatten des Lichts

Shadows of Light. Giordano Bruno’s Promethean Dialectic This article examines the status of shadows, in particular in Giordano Bruno’s ars memorativa. As ›traces of light‹, shadows not only embody the universal substrate of an infinitely extended material universe, but human action, thought and communication also necessarily depend on the medium of the shadow. Bruno’s mnemonics teaches the targeted, deliberately steered – if not even deceitful – handling of the shadows. In contrast to the Platonic tradition, he ascribes shadows a status that is independent of Platonic ideas. This article argues that Bruno thus develops out of a Platonic dialectic a specifically Promethean poetics, a universal art of the shadow. This, in turn, enables the embodied individual to shift the boundaries of knowledge and to arrange the things of this world.