Entgrenzte Figuren – bewegte Erinnerungen. Migration im Spannungsfeld von Literatur und Begriff

My paper discusses the controversial relationship between literature and literary studies by using the example of the term ›migration literature‹. It demonstrates in the first part that ›migration literature‹ as a term in literary studies does not expose explications of rational reconstructions of a conceptual content in Harald Fricke’s and Klaus Weimar’s understanding. In its history (Adelson 1991; 2004), ›migration literature‹ goes back to a chain of different terms and definitions as Gastarbeiter- or Ausländerliteratur and reflects strategies of homogenization and exclusion. From the 1980s forward, those terms produce in cultural contexts a semantic field that propagates culture based on a definition of ex negativo (Tafazoli 2019). The first part of my paper describes an outline of influences of homogenization and reductionism on the discourses of migration in literary studies and explains in the second part an asymmetrical relationship between motive on the one hand and terminology on the other. The term ›migration literature‹ seems to dominate this relationship by determination of a source of ›accepted truths‹ related to the life and background – specifically to the place of birth and the origin – of the author (Bay 2017). By prioritization of criteria beyond narrative reality, literary studies led in the 1980s and 1990s discourses on migration on the sidelines of canon of German speaking literature (Weigel 1991; Wilpert 2001). With regard to terminological determination in order to produce interpretative sovereignty (Foucault 1994), my paper exemplifies in the second part that the term ›migration literature‹ collects selected and limited fields of social, historical and political knowledge in perspective adjustment and in order to classify literature beyond aesthetic criteria. By this means, inductive standards (Müller 2010a; 2010b) classify the literary object ›migration‹ ontologically and regardless of factuality of the author’s life on the one hand and fictionality of narrative text on the other. The ontological classification has been used, for example, in contexts that replace the figure of stranger (Fremder) by the figure of migrant and determines the latter as figuration of external space of culture. The replacement suggests a perspective rigidity in the cultural production of knowledge that flows into a terminological classification and claims with the term ›migration literature‹ sovereignty over culture. From this point of view, the author and his work should be located in the external space of canonized literature. The second part of my paper comes to the conclusion that the term ›migration literature‹ has been developed in politicized frames of external-textual ›accepted truths‹ and bases its stability on cultural essentialism and exclusion regardless of heterogenetic appearance (Bhatti 2015). With regard to theories of »literature on the move« (Ette 2001), my paper understands that migration has always formed a considerable part of literary production. Therefore, migration could be understood as a literary motive. This meaning would undermine an ontological understanding of culture. Narrative texts develop poetics of migration and create by figurations of migration a poly-perspectivity in which migration advances to a polysemantic motive. My paper discusses these thoughts in the context of cultural memory in the third part and understands varied and multifaceted constructions of cultural memory on all sides of cultural borders. This part confronts the asymmetrical relationship between motive and terminology with discussions on migration as narrative of cultural memory that belongs to cultural majority and minority equally, at the same time and in the same space. Based on this understanding, my paper argues that migration as a motive construct shapes and leads discourses of culture under the conditions of global re-formation. The shift of the perspective from conceptual classification to close-readings of literary constructions should lead us to considerations about the openness of the narrative in distinction to terminological unity and should also initiate a paradigm shift in locating migration in discourses of literary studies. The theoretical considerations will be exemplified in the fourth section by Mohammad Hossein Allafis Frankfurter Trilogie that is a collection of the novels Die Nächte am Main (1998), Die letzte Nacht mit Gabriela (2000) and Gabriela findet einen Stapel Papier (2012). The fourth part of my paper examines in Frankfurter Trilogie a reading that integrates migration as a motive into the discourse of cultural memory of global challenges. Using the example of the Trilogie, this part of my paper demonstrates that discussions on migration in the context of cultural memory could initiate a shift in the perspective of reception from conceptual homogenization to narrative openness. The shift of perspective shows that literature translates the questions of community into the aesthetic perception of the form of culture and civilization in which the community actually articulates and appears itself and shows also that reading of migration as a statement about one nation has lost its explanatory power. The last part of my paper resumes my thoughts and takes position in the current fields of research in literary studies.

Theorie und Methode der Gattungsgeschichtsschreibung. Mediävistische Perspektiven

The present article proposes a methodology for writing genre history that does not proceed from »always already« existing generic norms, but rather describes the processes through which genres and their conventions emerge in the first place. Scholars in the field have long been calling for a mediation between (systematic) genre theory and the (historical) exploration of genres – i. e., generic historiography (see Lamping 2007; Neumann/Nünning 2007). So far, however, the solutions proposed have been classificatory in nature, and have mainly been concerned with taking into account the historical diversity of genres more fully than had previously been done (Hempfer 1973; Fricke 1981). The theoretical and methodological questions raised by genre historiography regarding the emergence and transformation of genres, by contrast, have hardly ever been the focus of sustained enquiry, despite the fact that a historically adequate approach to the history of genres – meaning an approach not based on classificatory models – remains a desideratum to this day. Most contributions to the historiography of genre thus far make use of prototype theory or draw on scholarship analyzing schemata and patterns in order to identify genre norms in their historical setting and describe the correspondences with (and/or deviations from) those norms which may be observed in a given text. Yet the methodological problem here is that, ordinarily, prototype-theoretical and schema-oriented approaches raise systematic rather than historical claims. Thus, a »prototype« is understood to be an abstract, ideal model which might never have been realized historically but is still considered the most »typical« exemplar of a given genre whose individual, concrete manifestations may be described as placed along a scale of relative similarity with that exemplar (Tophinke 1997). By adopting such a perspective, the texts belonging to a certain genre may be categorized without having to draw »hard« (i. e., feature-based) boundaries. However, comparing a single text with an ideal model affords hardly any surplus value regarding the question of the origin and change of genres. Being an ideal model, after all, the prototype is constructed a posteriori, on the basis of all available texts assigned to a given genre; it has never served as an actual point of reference for the production or reception of individual texts in their historical context. A similar methodological difficulty arises with a view to scholarship on schemata and patterns, in that these are usually abstracted from all texts belonging to a given genre (like prototypes) or else are fashioned on the model of supposed »masterpieces«, which all but invalidates their explanatory power in a historical context (Schulz 2012). For the historiography of genres, however, one question of particular interest is a question treated only marginally in scholarship on prototypes and schemata. This is the question of how precisely literary speech acts (Warning 1996) – i. e., certain types of literary representation or the treatment of certain kinds of content – are conventionalized and are thus gradually turned into instances of expectable patterns: patterns to be expected, that is, both on the side of production and of reception. Some scholars answer this question by reference to »normative« works which, they claim, serve as »signposts« for the subsequent production and reception of texts (Voßkamp 1977; Gymnich 2010a). The problem with this position, however, is that it assigns to individual texts an unconditional authority, even though the binding conventionality and literary prestige of any given text only emerges over the course of literary or generic history (Strohschneider 1991). One defining purpose of genre historiography is to describe precisely those processes through which certain literary forms and topics become conventional in the first place – to the extent that any attempt, on the part of scholars, to identify supposedly »pioneering« or »authoritative« works is in stark contradiction to an historical approach to genres. At the same time, research on the history of genres simply cannot start from stable norms or ideal models, which is why it is precisely the constant changes to be observed in the conventional validity of literary speech acts that should be exposed and emphasized. In fact, the notion of »convention« is crucial to the approach proposed in this article, since conventions – different in this respect from norms or rules – do not arise as the result of (allegedly) authoritative postulates but rather establish themselves, over time, through communal agreement (Weninger 1994). The formation of conventions may be traced by analyzing intertextual references to literary speech acts: if a given text refers to a certain type of literary representation – either in order to reproduce it faithfully or to present alternatives to it –, this reference is selected from a wide array of options for referencing, and is thus recognized as being »worthy of reference«. Constant reference to the same (or similar) literary speech acts then leads to the emergence of a corresponding convention, whose validity, however, is itself subject to change: If intertextual relations change in such a way that the type of literary speech act previously conventionalized is no longer chosen for reference – and is disregarded, in fact, in favour of alternative topics or modes of representation –, this will result in an observable change in conventionality. After all, whatever is considered conventional is determined by intertextual processes of consensus-building, and is thus in a permanent state of renegotiation. The concrete methodological approach of the present article starts, therefore, from an analysis of intertextual references, insofar as the processes of conventionalization relevant to the historiography of genres can be traced by examining references between individual texts. If one focuses on the question of how genres – and the conventions governing them – arise, the notion of »single-text reference« is preferable to that of »systemic reference«. After all, »systemic reference« denotes the reference of a given text to an established system and thus already presupposes a genre and its systemic norms – elements not available at the outset of a genre’s history. Rather, any truly historical historiography of genres must strive to demonstrate how a set of literary speech acts gradually (by way of intertextual single-text references) forms a system whose conventions may later be referenced. The formation processes of individual genres may therefore be reconstructed by examining the intertextual single-text references that contribute to the conventionalization of literary speech acts and ultimately form a system in contrast to other literary forms of representation. The present article thus focuses on the Gewordensein – the quality of having become or fundamental »madeness« – of genres as subject to constant historical change. At the same time, it proposes a method for adequately tracing genre emergence and change through the analysis of intertextual references and dynamic processes of conventionalization.

Einführung und Modifikation von Genrebegriffen als Wertungsstrategien im literarischen Feld

In the first part of the paper, the interconnection of evaluation and classification in the literary field is discussed. Genre constitutes one of the central notions in Pierre Bourdieu’s sociology of literature. Werner Michler’s suggestion to regard genres not as theoretical models or collections of features, but as classifications by agents of the literary field, is expanded by the aspect of genre evaluation. Both processes of classification and evaluation seem intertwined and could be understood as evaluation strategies by agents and communities of the literary field. Introduction of new genre terms and their modification are popular strategies of revaluation of genres, works, authors, and audiences. In the paper, four groups of agents of the generic process identified by Michler (producers, distributors, non-professional recipients, and professional agencies of evaluation) are analysed in view of their power of revaluation. Furthermore, they are placed in the contemporary German literary field on the basis of Heribert Tommek’s model and depicted as hypothetical members of evaluative genre communities. These communities consist of agents and groups (e. g. fandoms) that defend and support genres, seeing in them a stake in the game which is the illusio, the faith in the principles of the field. In the second part, agents, communities, and their evaluative strategies are presented. First of all, it is the reception mechanisms which decide on the attribution of values to genres and affect the production of literature. Therefore, the authors write their texts with regard to conventional classifications and take part as well, more or less directly, in the processes of revaluation of genres they want to be associated with. The avant-garde is either interested in original genre terms or it avoids any ascriptions whatsoever. In comparison, the mainstream and the subfield of mass production concentrate on medially attractive or conventional and recognizable terms. Authors which have accumulated large symbolic capital can also revaluate genres with their prestige. The potential of terms and evaluations is also reflected in the structure of the field as seen by distributors of literature. Paratexts, advertisements, blurbs, and brands change according to their place on the aesthetic or economic pole of the field. This way, audiences that can choose genres, values and evaluations on the basis of the existing classifications are created and influenced. Even if their symbolic power is small, they manage to formulate evaluative classifications, first of all in the flexible area (forums, blogs) close to the professional agencies of evaluation. Genres are re- and devaluated also in the literary studies and by the critics. Here, the conscious usage of genre terms characterizes the profession. Literary critics and reviewers often choose new, original terms in order to prove their professional abilities of classification. In the structure of the field, between the avant-garde and the subfield of mass production, struggles for symbolic capital and the right to establish new classifications and evaluations take place. In these struggles, there are various agents of the generic process with their specific strategies involved. Many of them can be grasped as members of more or less stable evaluative communities. In the third part, the mainly theoretical explanations are complemented by two case studies of a weak (the so-called Aussteigerroman) and a strong (dystopian science fiction) revaluation of the genre in the last decades. Behind the career of the Aussteigerroman (novel about an outsider) there is of course the outsider-trend returning regularly since the 60’s, however, no strong evaluative communities in the form of institutions, media, or genre-oriented critics. In comparison, the career and popularity of dystopian fiction in all its variety and terminological modifications of the recent years cannot be reduced to external factors (like fear of the uncertain future, terrorism or pandemics), but it should be primarily explained in view of the influence exerted by agents and communities revaluating the genre. Both careers are cursorily depicted at the end of the paper.

Zur Operationalisierung literaturwissenschaftlicher Begriffe in der algorithmischen Textanalyse. Eine Annäherung über Norbert Altenhofers hermeneutische Modellinterpretation von Kleists Das Erdbeben in Chili

The present article discusses and reflects on possible ways of operationalizing the terminology of traditional literary studies for use in computational literary studies. By »operationalization«, we mean the development of a method for tracing a (theoretical) term back to text-surface phenomena; this is done explicitly and in a rule-based manner, involving a series of substeps. This procedure is presented in detail using as a concrete example Norbert Altenhofer’s »model interpretation« (Modellinterpretation) of Heinrich von Kleist’s The Earthquake in Chile. In the process, we develop a multi-stage operation – reflected upon throughout in terms of its epistemological implications – that is based on a rational-hermeneutic reconstruction of Altenhofer’s interpretation, which focuses on »mysteriousness« (Rätselhaftigkeit), a concept from everyday language. As we go on to demonstrate, when trying to operationalize this term, one encounters numerous difficulties, which is owing to the fact that Altenhofer’s use of it is underspecified in a number of ways. Thus, for instance, and contrary to Altenhofer’s suggestion, Kleist’s sentences containing »relativizing or perspectivizing phrases such as ›it seemed‹ or ›it was as if‹« (Altenhofer 2007, 45) do by no means, when analyzed linguistically, suggest a questioning or challenge of the events narrated, since the unreal quality of those German sentences only relates to the comparison in the subordinate clause, not to the respective main clause. Another indicator central to Altenhofer’s ascription of »mysteriousness« is his concept of a »complete facticity« (lückenlose Faktizität) which »does not seem to leave anything ›open‹« (Altenhofer 2007, 45). Again, the precise designation of what exactly qualifies facticity as »complete« is left open, since Kleist’s novella does indeed select for portrayal certain phenomena and actions within the narrated world (and not others). The degree of factuality in Kleist’s text may be higher than it is in other texts, but it is by no means »complete«. In the context of Altenhofer’s interpretation, »complete facticity« may be taken to mean a narrative mode in which terrible events are reported using conspicuously sober and at times drastic language. Following the critical reconstruction of Altenhofer’s use of terminology, the central terms and their relationship to one another are first explicated (in natural language), which already necessitates intensive conceptual work. We do so implementing a hierarchical understanding of the terms discussed: the definition of one term uses other terms which also need to be defined and operationalized. In accordance with the requirements of computational text analysis, this hierarchy of terms should end in »directly measurable« terms – i. e., in terms that can be clearly identified on the surface of the text. This, however, leads to the question of whether (and, if so, on the basis of which theoretical assumptions) the terminology of literary studies may be traced back in this way to text-surface phenomena. Following the pragmatic as well as the theoretical discussion of this complex of questions, we indicate ways by which such definitions may be converted into manual or automatic recognition. In the case of manual recognition, the paradigm of annotation – as established and methodologically reflected in (computational) linguistics – will be useful, and a well-controlled annotation process will help to further clarify the terms in question. The primary goal, however, is to establish a recognition rule by which individuals may intersubjectively and reliably identify instances of the term in question in a given text. While it is true that in applying this method to literary studies, new challenges arise – such as the question of the validity and reliability of the annotations –, these challenges are at present being researched intensively in the field of computational literary studies, which has resulted in a large and growing body of research to draw on. In terms of computer-aided recognition, we examine, by way of example, two distinct approaches: 1) The kind of operationalization which is guided by precedent definitions and annotation rules benefits from the fact that each of its steps is transparent, may be validated and interpreted, and that existing tools from computational linguistics can be integrated into the process. In the scenario used here, these would be tools for recognizing and assigning character speech, for the resolution of coreference and the assessment of events; all of these, in turn, may be based on either machine learning, prescribed rules or dictionaries. 2) In recent years, so-called end-to-end systems have become popular which, with the help of neural networks, »infer« target terms directly from a numerical representation of the data. These systems achieve superior results in many areas. However, their lack of transparency also raises new questions, especially with regard to the interpretation of results. Finally, we discuss options for quality assurance and draw a first conclusion. Since numerous decisions have to be made in the course of operationalization, and these, in practice, are often pragmatically justified, the question quickly arises as to how »good« a given operationalization actually is. And since the tools borrowed from computational linguistics (especially the so-called inter-annotator agreement) can only partially be transferred to computational literary studies and, moreover, objective standards for the quality of a given implementation will be difficult to find, it ultimately falls to the community of researchers and scholars to decide, based on their research standards, which operationalizations they accept. At the same time, operationalization is the central link between the computer sciences and literary studies, as well as being a necessary component for a large part of the research done in computational literary studies. The advantage of a conscious, deliberate and reflective operationalization practice lies not only in the fact that it can be used to achieve reliable quantitative results (or that a certain lack of reliability at least is a known factor); it also lies in its facilitation of interdisciplinary cooperation: in the course of operationalization, concrete sets of data are discussed, as are the methods for analysing them, which taken together minimizes the risk of misunderstandings, »false friends« and of an unproductive exchange more generally.

From Keyness to Distinctiveness – Triangulation and Evaluation in Computational Literary Studies

There is a set of statistical measures developed mostly in corpus and computational linguistics and information retrieval, known as keyness measures, which are generally expected to detect textual features that account for differences between two texts or groups of texts. These measures are based on the frequency, distribution, or dispersion of words (or other features). Searching for relevant differences or similarities between two text groups is also an activity that is characteristic of traditional literary studies, whenever two authors, two periods in the work of one author, two historical periods or two literary genres are to be compared. Therefore, applying quantitative procedures in order to search for differences seems to be promising in the field of computational literary studies as it allows to analyze large corpora and to base historical hypotheses on differences between authors, genres and periods on larger empirical evidence. However, applying quantitative procedures in order to answer questions relevant to literary studies in many cases raises methodological problems, which have been discussed on a more general level in the context of integrating or triangulating quantitative and qualitative methods in mixed methods research of the social sciences. This paper aims to solve these methodological issues concretely for the concept of distinctiveness and thus to lay the methodological foundation permitting to operationalize quantitative procedures in order to use them not only as rough exploratory tools, but in a hermeneutically meaningful way for research in literary studies. Based on a structural definition of potential candidate measures for analyzing distinctiveness in the first section, we offer a systematic description of the issue of integrating quantitative procedures into a hermeneutically meaningful understanding of distinctiveness by distinguishing its epistemological from the methodological perspective. The second section develops a systematic strategy to solve the methodological side of this issue based on a critical reconstruction of the widespread non-integrative strategy in research on keyness measures that can be traced back to Rudolf Carnap’s model of explication. We demonstrate that it is, in the first instance, mandatory to gain a comprehensive qualitative understanding of the actual task. We show that Carnap’s model of explication suffers from a shortcoming that consists in ignoring the need for a systematic comparison of what he calls the explicatum and the explicandum. Only if there is a method of systematic comparison, the next task, namely that of evaluation can be addressed, which verifies whether the output of a quantitative procedure corresponds to the qualitative expectation that must be clarified in advance. We claim that evaluation is necessary for integrating quantitative procedures to a qualitative understanding of distinctiveness. Our reconstruction shows that both steps are usually skipped in empirical research on keyness measures that are the most important point of reference for the development of a measure of distinctiveness. Evaluation, which in turn requires thorough explication and conceptual clarification, needs to be employed to verify this relation. In the third section we offer a qualitative clarification of the concept of distinctiveness by spanning a three-dimensional conceptual space. This flexible framework takes into account that there is no single and proper concept of distinctiveness but rather a field of possible meanings depending on research interest, theoretical framework, and access to the perceptibility or salience of textual features. Therefore, we shall, instead of stipulating any narrow and strict definition, take into account that each of these aspects – interest, theoretical framework, and access to perceptibility – represents one dimension of the heuristic space of possible uses of the concept of distinctiveness. The fourth section discusses two possible strategies of operationalization and evaluation that we consider to be complementary to the previously provided clarification, and that complete the task of establishing a candidate measure successfully as a measure of distinctiveness in a qualitatively ambitious sense. We demonstrate that two different general strategies are worth considering, depending on the respective notion of distinctiveness and the interest as elaborated in the third section. If the interest is merely taxonomic, classification tasks based on multi-class supervised machine learning are sufficient. If the interest is aesthetic, more complex and intricate evaluation strategies are required, which have to rely on a thorough conceptual clarification of the concept of distinctiveness, in particular on the idea of salience or perceptibility. The challenge here is to correlate perceivable complex features of texts such as plot, theme (aboutness), style, form, or roles and constellation of fictional characters with the unperceived frequency and distribution of word features that are calculated by candidate measures of distinctiveness. Existing research did not clarify, so far, how to correlate such complex features with individual word features. The paper concludes with a general reflection on the possibility of mixed methods research for computational literary studies in terms of explanatory power and exploratory use. As our strategy of combining explication and evaluation shows, integration should be understood as a strategy of combining two different perspectives on the object area: in our evaluation scenarios, that of empirical reader response and that of a specific quantitative procedure. This does not imply that measures of distinctiveness, which proved to reach explanatory power in one qualitative aspect, should be supposed to be successful in all fields of research. As long as evaluation is omitted, candidate measures of distinctiveness lack explanatory power and are limited to exploratory use. In contrast with a skepticism that has sometimes been expressed from literary scholars with regard to the relevance of computational literary studies on proper issues of the humanities, we believe that integrating computational methods into hermeneutic literary studies can be achieved in a way that reaches higher explanatory power than the usual exploratory use of keyness measures, but it can only be achieved individually for concrete tasks and not once and for all based on a general theoretical demonstration.

Telling the Truth: Fictionality and Epic in Seventeenth-Century German Literature

Research on the history of fiction of the early modern period has up to now taken primarily the novel into consideration and paralleled the rise of the novel as the leading genre of narrative literature with the development of the modern consciousness of fictionality. In the present essay, we argue that contemporary reflections on fictionality in epic poetry, specifically, the carmen heroicum, must be taken into account to better understand the history of fiction from the seventeenth century onwards. The carmen heroicum, in the seventeenth century, is the leading narrative genre of contemporary poetics and as such often commented on in contexts involving questions of fictionality and the relationship between literature and truth, both in poetic treatises and in the poems themselves. To reconstruct a historical understanding of fictionality, the genre of the epic poem must therefore be taken into account.The carmen heroicum was the central narrative genre in antiquity, in the sixteenth century in Italy and France, and still in the seventeenth century in Germany and England. Martin Opitz, in his ground-breaking poetic treatise, the Buch von der Deutschen Poeterey (1624), counts the carmen heroicum among the most important poetic genres; but for poetry written in German, he cites just one example of the genre, a text he wrote himself. The genre of the novel is not mentioned at all among the poetic genres in Opitz’ treatise. Many other German poetic treatises of the seventeenth century mention the importance of the carmen heroicum, but they, too, provide only few examples of the genre, even though there were many Latin and German-language epic poems in the long seventeenth century. For Opitz, a carmen heroicum has to be distinguished from a work of history insofar as its author is allowed to add fictional embellishments to the ›true core‹ of the poem. Nevertheless, the epic poet is, according to Opitz, still bound to the truthfulness of his narrative.Shortly before the publication of Opitz’ book, Diederich von dem Werder translated Torquato Tasso’s epic poem Gerusalemme liberata (1580); his translation uses alexandrine verse, which had recently become widely successful in Germany, especially for epic poems. Von dem Werder exactly reproduces Tasso’s rhyming scheme and stanza form. He also supplies the text with several peritexts. In a preface, he assures the reader that, despite the description of unusual martial events and supernatural beings, his text can be considered poetry. In a historiographical introduction, he then describes the course of the First Crusade; however, he does not elaborate about the plot of the verse epic. In a preceding epyllion – also written in alexandrine verse – von dem Werder then poetically demonstrates how the poetry of a Christian poet differs from ancient models. All these efforts can be seen as parts of the attempt to legitimate the translation of fictional narrative in German poetry and poetics. Opitz and von dem Werder independently describe problems of contemporary literature in the 1620s using the example of the carmen heroicum. Both authors translate novels into German, too; but there are no poetological considerations in the prefaces of the novels that can be compared to those in the carmina heroica.Poetics following the model established by Opitz develop genre systems in which the carmen heroicum is given an important place, too; for example, in Balthasar Kindermann’s Der Deutsche Poet (1664), Sigmund von Birken’s Teutsche Rede- bind- und Dicht-Kunst (1679), and Daniel Georg Morhof’s Unterricht von der Teutschen Sprache und Poesie (1682). Of particular interest for the history of fictionality is Albrecht Christian Rotth’s Vollständige Deutsche Poesie (1688). When elaborating on the carmen heroicum, Rotth gives the word ›fiction‹ a positive terminological value and he treats questions of fictionality extensively. Rotth combines two contradictory statements, namely that a carmen heroicum is a poem and therefore invented and that a carmen heroicum contains important truths and is therefore true. He further develops the idea of the ›truthful core‹ around which poetic inventions are laid. With an extended exegesis of Homer’s Odyssey, he then illustrates what it means precisely to separate the ›core‹ and the poetic embellishments in a poem. All these efforts can be seen as parts of the attempt to legitimize a poem that tells the truth in a fictional mode.The paper argues that a history of fictionality must be a history that carefully reconstructs the various and specifically changing constellations of problems concerning how the phenomenon of fictionality may be interpreted in certain historical contexts. Relevant problems to which reflections on fictionality in seventeenth-century poetics of the epic poem and in paratexts to epic poems react are, on the one hand, the question of how the genre traditionally occupying the highest rank in genre taxonomy, the epic, can be adequately transformed in the German language, and, on the other hand, the question of how a poetic text can contain truths even if it is invented.

On the History of the Practice of Fictionality – and the Recurring Problems in its Investigation

In recent decades, research into the history of fictionality has seen a significant upturn in interest. One promising theoretical foundation for such investigations appears to be the approach commonly known as the »institutional theory of fictionality«. This is based on the premise that fictionality is a rule-based practice determined by conventions which are variable (both synchronically and diachronically), conventions to which authors and readers alike feel committed. The main advantage of this particular theory of fictionality, as far as an analytical approach to the history of fictionality is concerned, is the following: The institutional theory of fictionality is suitable for taking into adequate account the historical variability of terms, concepts and practices by providing a theoretical framework that may be filled with a wide variety of different (kinds of) content. In this way, one may sidestep the danger of examining the history of fictionality in an anachronistic manner, imposing on past times and practices the expectations of a modern perspective.Still, committing to an institutional theory of fictionality avoids only some of the problems all research on the history of fictionality faces. The aim of this article, therefore, is to point out those difficulties which cannot be avoided in such investigations even in the arguably best theoretical conditions of an institutional account of fictionality. To this end, instead of providing an overview of previous research or addressing specific methodological, conceptual or logical problems related, the present essay focuses on recurring and widespread difficulties inherent in both the object of investigation and the various methods of investigating it.The essay is divided into three sections. In the first, a number of problems are addressed that exist regardless of the specific method of investigation chosen. Most epistemological problems result from the fact that written documents must be consulted to make inferences regarding the conventions and practices of the past. In this context, it is not only the sparse tradition that becomes an issue (especially for more remote historical periods) but also the fact that no analysis of written materials can provide direct insight into past practices. Since any social practice, moreover, is in itself a highly complex matter that can hardly be broken down and understood in all of its many aspects – even from an interdisciplinary perspective, which anyway implies its own difficulties such as a frequent lack of uniform terms, et cetera –, such research will only be able, as a matter of principle, to approach past practices more or less closely.Following these general reflections, the article critically examines the two most prominent methods used by those investigating the history of fictionality as an »institution«. These are the analysis of literary texts, on the one hand, and that of poetological texts, on the other. When trying to draw conclusions from literary texts about past practices of fictionality, the focus of much recent research has been on the search for »signposts of fictionality«. The problem with this method is not only that such studies are often at risk of presupposing a positive test result – after all, signposts of fictionality only make sense if a practice of fictionality has already been established – but also that signposts of fictionality are historically variable. For this reason, one cannot simply postulate the validity of present-day signposts of fictionality for historical texts, and conversely, one must also reckon with the fact that other, corresponding signals unknown to us will remain beyond our knowledge. In addition, there is also the more general question of just how different two different practices may reasonably be said to be in order for them to come under the common rubric of a shared »practice of fictionality«.One advantage the analysis of poetological texts appears to have over conclusions drawn from literary texts is that insofar as poetological texts are already meta-textual in nature – as they are texts about literature –, the aforementioned »detour« via an analysis of signposts of fictionality is no longer required. Even such studies, however, are faced with several problems: To begin with, poetological texts are predominantly conceived of as instances of programmatic – and thus as normative, not descriptive – writing. It therefore immediately suggests itself that they should articulate practices desired or demanded rather than depict existing usage. Secondly, poetological texts are written artefacts that, for a very long time, were circulating within a predominantly oral culture. It is therefore arguable whether and to what extent that predominantly oral practice is reflected in poetological texts. Thirdly, poetological texts do not discuss the concept of »fictionality« but, first and foremost, that of »poetry«. The fact that a strongly evaluative component – namely, debates over the value of poetry – is often at the centre of such texts allows the conclusion that what is being negotiated there, rather than an earlier notion of »fictionality«, is an equivalent of the modern concept of literature. By contrast, it seems indisputable that various ways of differentiating between types of texts were, in fact, developed from the earliest times. Fourthly, and considering the fact that in those contexts, debates mainly revolved around such categories as the »truth« and »probability« of a given story or the »inventedness« (i. e., the fictitiousness) of its contents, the question arises, once again, whether these are indeed practices of fictionality we are looking at. This article makes a case for delineating historical terms and practices as accurately and in as much detail as possible, rather than presenting them rashly and reductively, perhaps, as early forms of the institution of fictionality

Fictionality and Pleasure. Traces of a Practice of Fictionality in Medieval German Short Verse Narratives?

Despite an intense debate over the past decades the question of whether the concept of fictionality can be regarded as universal or whether it needs to be historicised is still unresolved. The same question applies to the practice (or practices?) of fictionality, which come into focus once an institutional theory of fictionality is applied. In addition to the problem that literary practices can only be reconstructed incompletely for past epochs, it is methodically difficult to determine which practices should be identified, given that the practice of fictionality might have changed over time. One possible solution is to search for historical literary practices displaying similarities to what is regarded as the contemporary practice of fictionality. This article adduces a subtype of medieval German short verse narratives (Mären) as a test case for the scope of this approach and arrives at a twofold result:The controlled anachronism implicit in the approach makes it possible to show that literary practices sketched in some Mären display parallels to the contemporary practice of fictionality (in the sense that the truth value of single predications becomes indifferent). This result contributes to our understanding of the history of the practice of fictionality, while placing the parallels in their historical contexts demonstrates that the category of ›fictionality‹ cannot capture the essence of the literary practices relevant to Mären.This approach has the advantage of making it possible to describe in a phenomenon-orientated way literary practices only potentially linked to a practice of fictionality before narrowing down the view to pre-defined features of a practice of fictionality. For the textual examples analysed it can thus be shown that the emotional effect of literature, especially the potential to arouse pleasure, is a feature regarded as decisive for the reception of a literary text. This observation opens up further links to research on the fictionality of post-medieval texts, especially the ›paradox of fiction‹.The argument builds on the assumption that we can speak of a practice of fictionality if the truth value of the sentences of a text becomes indifferent for its production and reception. Although this is a definition with universal scope, it is timebound in so far as it highlights that truth concepts depend on a propositional level of a text, while for a medieval audience the ›true meaning‹ of a text would probably have been more important. In the article this problem is illustrated by the genre of exemplary narratives. Of these the subtype of Mären is singled out in order to study literary practices. This selection is also motivated by the fact that in medieval studies Mären have received less attention in debates on fictionality than e. g. Arthurian romances or chronicles.The textual analysis focuses on prologues and other self-reflexive passages from selected late medieval Mären, where literary practices are being alluded to in an explicit way. Notwithstanding that these passages do not allow the reconstruction of actual practices, they convey an impression of what was regarded as plausible practices. Truth claims or references to sources in the selected Mären confirm that the expectation of truthfulness (whether on the literal or a deeper level) was a kind of default mode for the production and reception of narratives. However, various strategies to undermine this default mode can be observed: in some cases the truth claims are ironically questioned within the texts themselves, in other cases the aesthetic quality and/or the emotional effect of the narratives is foregrounded so that the question of authenticity becomes irrelevant. This strategy suggests a mode of reception that parallels the contemporary practice of fiction as outlined above.Since the capacity of the Mären to arouse pleasure is highlighted in the sources, the pre-modern debate of delectatio and utilitas is established here as the historical context for the self-reflexive passages of the analysed Mären. These categories were discussed in the medieval period in relation to the aspect of ›truthfulness‹, at least in normative theological discourse, and can thus be linked to questions of fictionality. This makes it possible to define a place for a practice of fictionality within a medieval Christian framework, the possibility of which had been doubted in research on medieval concepts of fictionality.On a systematic level, the foregrounding of the emotional effects of literature in some Mären opens up the opportunity to draw parallels to institutional theories of fictionality stressing the need of imaginative engagement with the text on the part of the recipient. The examples suggest that questions such as the ›paradox of fiction‹ should receive attention within a diachronic framework, too, in order to obtain a fuller picture of the history of the practice of fiction.