So far, the question regarding literature’s autonomy has predominantly been discussed from a poetological and historical perspective, with legal manifestations and possibilities of aesthetic autonomy usually being neglected by literary theory. However, in no other area than in (German) jurisprudence it becomes more evident that the concept of an autonomous literary practice, or more precisely the attempt to guarantee it legally, is highly challenging and therefore comes with restrictions. On the one hand, literary practice is legally regarded as a free and autonomous social subsystem. On the other hand, it can easily lead to violations of fundamental rights, meaning that the freedom of art cannot be considered unrestricted and autonomous on a closer look. In the following, the legal challenges of guaranteeing an unregulated literary practice will be discussed based on two fundamental legal rights, namely the freedom of art and copyright laws. The discussion proves to be significant for literary studies as well, as the legal tensions that are connected to the concept of literary autonomy have an influence on the practice of literature and thus also affect its theoretical reflection in literary studies and criticism. Because autonomy can mean several things, it is necessary to define the term ›autonomy‹ as used in this article first. After clarifying the concept of autonomy for the literary context, the focus lies on the legal discourse: The legal regulations in Germany regarding freedom of art and copyrights are first presented individually. Following this, the respective difficulties in guaranteeing the aforementioned legal rights are explained. A closer look will reveal that collisions are unavoidable, and that freedom of art and copyright laws sometimes even happen to be mutually exclusive. The challenges of literature’s autonomy in legal terms becomes particularly apparent by presenting the following two potential conflicts: The first conflict concerns collisions between freedom of art and a legal right of constitutionally similarly high rank, such as personal rights. The second potential conflict demonstrates why the freedom of art can hardly ever be reconciled with copyright provisions. The first case illustrates that the freedom of literary practice sometimes collides with other legal interests and can therefore be restricted, while the second one proves that a self-contradiction within the legal system exists when it comes to the notion of unrestricted autonomy. The first conflict is discussed by revisiting the decision of the German Federal Constitutional Court regarding Maxim Biller’s novel Esra in 2007. The decision, albeit highly controversial, helps to understand why legal barriers are sometimes imposed on works of literature. Additionally, the Esra case shows the legal difficulties of enforcing a ban on novels without fundamentally calling into question the freedom of art. This is also demonstrated by the votes of the dissenting
{"title":"Die Literaturautonomie im deutschen Rechtssystem. Grenzen, Widersprüche und literaturtheoretische Potenziale","authors":"Nursan Celik","doi":"10.1515/jlt-2024-2001","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/jlt-2024-2001","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 So far, the question regarding literature’s autonomy has predominantly been discussed from a poetological and historical perspective, with legal manifestations and possibilities of aesthetic autonomy usually being neglected by literary theory. However, in no other area than in (German) jurisprudence it becomes more evident that the concept of an autonomous literary practice, or more precisely the attempt to guarantee it legally, is highly challenging and therefore comes with restrictions. On the one hand, literary practice is legally regarded as a free and autonomous social subsystem. On the other hand, it can easily lead to violations of fundamental rights, meaning that the freedom of art cannot be considered unrestricted and autonomous on a closer look.\u0000 In the following, the legal challenges of guaranteeing an unregulated literary practice will be discussed based on two fundamental legal rights, namely the freedom of art and copyright laws. The discussion proves to be significant for literary studies as well, as the legal tensions that are connected to the concept of literary autonomy have an influence on the practice of literature and thus also affect its theoretical reflection in literary studies and criticism. Because autonomy can mean several things, it is necessary to define the term ›autonomy‹ as used in this article first. After clarifying the concept of autonomy for the literary context, the focus lies on the legal discourse: The legal regulations in Germany regarding freedom of art and copyrights are first presented individually. Following this, the respective difficulties in guaranteeing the aforementioned legal rights are explained. A closer look will reveal that collisions are unavoidable, and that freedom of art and copyright laws sometimes even happen to be mutually exclusive. The challenges of literature’s autonomy in legal terms becomes particularly apparent by presenting the following two potential conflicts: The first conflict concerns collisions between freedom of art and a legal right of constitutionally similarly high rank, such as personal rights. The second potential conflict demonstrates why the freedom of art can hardly ever be reconciled with copyright provisions. The first case illustrates that the freedom of literary practice sometimes collides with other legal interests and can therefore be restricted, while the second one proves that a self-contradiction within the legal system exists when it comes to the notion of unrestricted autonomy.\u0000 The first conflict is discussed by revisiting the decision of the German Federal Constitutional Court regarding Maxim Biller’s novel Esra in 2007. The decision, albeit highly controversial, helps to understand why legal barriers are sometimes imposed on works of literature. Additionally, the Esra case shows the legal difficulties of enforcing a ban on novels without fundamentally calling into question the freedom of art. This is also demonstrated by the votes of the dissenting ","PeriodicalId":42872,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Literary Theory","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2024-03-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140251797","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}
Literary texts deal with ethically highly relevant topics such as violence, the climate crisis or animal welfare, they deal with historical and political events and discuss developments in medicine, etc. If one follows the current social debate about autonomy, which is being conducted particularly in the art discourse, then such texts would be considered post-autonomous insofar as they supposedly overcome the historical principle of aesthetic autonomy and link their autonomy directly to the aesthetic treatment of social issues. But where is the line between social responsibility and aesthetic autonomy? In the following, instead of autonomy and post-autonomy as binarism, an attempt is made to start from perspective structures in literary texts that make the relative degree of autonomy determinable by describing them as aesthetic and/or ethical. With recourse to the classical concept of autonomy (Moritz, Schiller) and Kant’s deontological ethics, autonomy is developed as a relative category and transferred into a concept of perspectival autonomy. In the 18th century, aesthetic autonomy, also insofar as it is based on sensualist premises and thus places emphasis on sensory perception, cannot be separated from the constitution of the human being as an individual. If equal weight is given to the aesthetic and the ethical side when analyzing literary texts, perspective structures can be observed in literary texts that are to be made fruitful in the following as perspectives of autonomy for the discourse on the limits and possibilities of literature. The focus here is neither on the relationship between content (socially heteronomous) on the one hand and (aesthetically autonomous) form on the other, nor on the levels of production, object and reception, but rather on a conceptualization of autonomy from the end of the 18th century to the current debates on the (post-)autonomy of art between ethics and aesthetics. If an ethical perspective of aesthetic autonomy is sought, this does not call into question the fact that, firstly, literature is always connected to the ›world‹ and, secondly, this connection is also possible without concrete content specifications, because, thirdly, literature has a ›poetic function‹ (Jakobson) to which moral or political intentions are subordinate. However, since external and self-references, i. e. text-external influences and text-internal poetics, cannot always be easily and clearly distinguished and distilled in isolation from each other in a text, a scaling approach is proposed here in relation to the autonomy postulate in order to locate texts between autonomy and heteronomy. The analysis of gradations, degrees or weightings of autonomy replaces their close connection to aesthetics in favor of an ethical and/or aesthetic perspective of a literary text. This is intended to counter both a narrow understanding of aesthetic autonomy (which is neither consistent with the meaning of the word autonomy as self-legislation
{"title":"Ästhetische Autonomie zwischen Ethik und Ästhetik","authors":"Mandy Dröscher-Teille","doi":"10.1515/jlt-2024-2004","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/jlt-2024-2004","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 Literary texts deal with ethically highly relevant topics such as violence, the climate crisis or animal welfare, they deal with historical and political events and discuss developments in medicine, etc. If one follows the current social debate about autonomy, which is being conducted particularly in the art discourse, then such texts would be considered post-autonomous insofar as they supposedly overcome the historical principle of aesthetic autonomy and link their autonomy directly to the aesthetic treatment of social issues. But where is the line between social responsibility and aesthetic autonomy?\u0000 In the following, instead of autonomy and post-autonomy as binarism, an attempt is made to start from perspective structures in literary texts that make the relative degree of autonomy determinable by describing them as aesthetic and/or ethical. With recourse to the classical concept of autonomy (Moritz, Schiller) and Kant’s deontological ethics, autonomy is developed as a relative category and transferred into a concept of perspectival autonomy. In the 18th century, aesthetic autonomy, also insofar as it is based on sensualist premises and thus places emphasis on sensory perception, cannot be separated from the constitution of the human being as an individual. If equal weight is given to the aesthetic and the ethical side when analyzing literary texts, perspective structures can be observed in literary texts that are to be made fruitful in the following as perspectives of autonomy for the discourse on the limits and possibilities of literature. The focus here is neither on the relationship between content (socially heteronomous) on the one hand and (aesthetically autonomous) form on the other, nor on the levels of production, object and reception, but rather on a conceptualization of autonomy from the end of the 18th century to the current debates on the (post-)autonomy of art between ethics and aesthetics.\u0000 If an ethical perspective of aesthetic autonomy is sought, this does not call into question the fact that, firstly, literature is always connected to the ›world‹ and, secondly, this connection is also possible without concrete content specifications, because, thirdly, literature has a ›poetic function‹ (Jakobson) to which moral or political intentions are subordinate. However, since external and self-references, i. e. text-external influences and text-internal poetics, cannot always be easily and clearly distinguished and distilled in isolation from each other in a text, a scaling approach is proposed here in relation to the autonomy postulate in order to locate texts between autonomy and heteronomy. The analysis of gradations, degrees or weightings of autonomy replaces their close connection to aesthetics in favor of an ethical and/or aesthetic perspective of a literary text.\u0000 This is intended to counter both a narrow understanding of aesthetic autonomy (which is neither consistent with the meaning of the word autonomy as self-legislation ","PeriodicalId":42872,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Literary Theory","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2024-03-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140253383","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}
The article responds to the postulate repeatedly articulated in recent years that the basic assumptions of autonomy aesthetics should be replaced with a »heteronomy aesthetics of modernity« (Marcus Hahn), which is supposedly more adequate to the conditions and practices of the latter and which is also sociologically or anthropologically founded. First, we present the central theories, hypotheses and reference texts (Annette Werberger, Fredric Jameson and especially Bruno Latour) claimed by the proponents of this endeavour (Hahn, Irene Albers and Frederic Ponten), which themselves do not engage in a deeper examination of the aesthetics of autonomy. Then, we contrast these theories with two established approaches to the critical sociologisation of aesthetic autonomy (Peter Bürger and Pierre Bourdieu). The analytical comparison of Bürger’s and Bourdieu’s theoretical designs reveals, on the one hand, significant differences and, on the other hand, reflects the fact that the German criticism of Bourdieu (Hans-Edwin Friedrich, Karlheinz Stierle, Gerhard Plumpe/Nils Werber), which is often based on systems theory, wrongly associates his theory with that of Bürger. Since the differences between Bürger and Bourdieu are reflected in their respective readings of Immanuel Kant, we will reconstruct the latter’s concept of ›disinterested pleasure‹. Bourdieu’s objectifying and relational reception of Kant is different from Bürger’s, which is more concerned with an ideology-critical unmasking and depotentiation. The resulting consideration of the discursive and social conditions of possibility for aesthetic autonomy not only reveals the reductionist understanding by Hahn et al. but also the fact that Bourdieu’s theoretical design already provides a much more differentiated set of analytical tools for the »consistently historically proceeding, unadjusted history of entanglement, function and practice« (Albers/Hahn/Ponten 2022, 13) of literature and aesthetics demanded by Albers, Hahn and Ponten as a »methodological redeployment«. From the perspective of field theory, the patterning of Friedrich Schiller’s theory of ›aesthetic education‹ demonstrates the generalizing fallacy that has already undermined older schools of ideology criticism (Hocks/Schmidt, Janz), to which Albers, Hahn and Ponten now nonetheless explicitly and affirmatively refer: On the one hand, they ignore the analytical differentiation between the object level and the meta-level, i. e. between the self-statements of the actors as ›stakes‹ (by which Bourdieu understands literary works that, according to him, are positional statements) and the scientific objectification of these statements. On the other hand, they ignore the related distinction between positionings on a symbolic and positions on a social level, i. e. in the present context between the assertion of autonomy and the corresponding social position, in short: between what authors say and what they ›are‹ or do. According to Bourdieu, su
{"title":"Die Autonomie der Literatur auf dem Prüfstand. Bourdieus feldtheoretischer Ansatz als Alternative zu soziologistischen Kurzschlüssen","authors":"N. Wolf, Lydia Rammerstorfer","doi":"10.1515/jlt-2024-2003","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/jlt-2024-2003","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 The article responds to the postulate repeatedly articulated in recent years that the basic assumptions of autonomy aesthetics should be replaced with a »heteronomy aesthetics of modernity« (Marcus Hahn), which is supposedly more adequate to the conditions and practices of the latter and which is also sociologically or anthropologically founded. First, we present the central theories, hypotheses and reference texts (Annette Werberger, Fredric Jameson and especially Bruno Latour) claimed by the proponents of this endeavour (Hahn, Irene Albers and Frederic Ponten), which themselves do not engage in a deeper examination of the aesthetics of autonomy. Then, we contrast these theories with two established approaches to the critical sociologisation of aesthetic autonomy (Peter Bürger and Pierre Bourdieu). The analytical comparison of Bürger’s and Bourdieu’s theoretical designs reveals, on the one hand, significant differences and, on the other hand, reflects the fact that the German criticism of Bourdieu (Hans-Edwin Friedrich, Karlheinz Stierle, Gerhard Plumpe/Nils Werber), which is often based on systems theory, wrongly associates his theory with that of Bürger. Since the differences between Bürger and Bourdieu are reflected in their respective readings of Immanuel Kant, we will reconstruct the latter’s concept of ›disinterested pleasure‹. Bourdieu’s objectifying and relational reception of Kant is different from Bürger’s, which is more concerned with an ideology-critical unmasking and depotentiation. The resulting consideration of the discursive and social conditions of possibility for aesthetic autonomy not only reveals the reductionist understanding by Hahn et al. but also the fact that Bourdieu’s theoretical design already provides a much more differentiated set of analytical tools for the »consistently historically proceeding, unadjusted history of entanglement, function and practice« (Albers/Hahn/Ponten 2022, 13) of literature and aesthetics demanded by Albers, Hahn and Ponten as a »methodological redeployment«. From the perspective of field theory, the patterning of Friedrich Schiller’s theory of ›aesthetic education‹ demonstrates the generalizing fallacy that has already undermined older schools of ideology criticism (Hocks/Schmidt, Janz), to which Albers, Hahn and Ponten now nonetheless explicitly and affirmatively refer: On the one hand, they ignore the analytical differentiation between the object level and the meta-level, i. e. between the self-statements of the actors as ›stakes‹ (by which Bourdieu understands literary works that, according to him, are positional statements) and the scientific objectification of these statements. On the other hand, they ignore the related distinction between positionings on a symbolic and positions on a social level, i. e. in the present context between the assertion of autonomy and the corresponding social position, in short: between what authors say and what they ›are‹ or do. According to Bourdieu, su","PeriodicalId":42872,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Literary Theory","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2024-03-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140251283","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}
Lukas Kosch, Annika Schwabe, H. Boomgaarden, Günther Stocker
While the act of listening to narratives has deep historical roots, it has gained renewed prominence in the contemporary literary landscape through the rise of audiobooks. Despite their resurgence, research on literary audiobooks, particularly within the realm of literary studies, remains notably limited. The audiobook has struggled to gain acceptance among the humanities as a legitimate aesthetic form, which can be attributed to the fact that it is often compared to the printed book as the leading medium for experiencing literature. By transforming a written text through the performativity of the voice into a spoken, analog, or digitally recorded, repeatable audio text, it becomes a completely different object of research that must be analyzed with different premises and approaches than the underlying written literary work. Nevertheless, literary analysis has predominantly focused on the visual and cognitive aspects of reading, thereby overlooking the auditory dimension. Especially in literary theory, there is a lack of both differentiated, proven descriptive criteria that take into account the specific auditory signification processes, including all the relevant paralinguistic features, and a theoretical foundation. This article aims to address this gap by developing a comprehensive framework for investigating the auditory reception of literature that seeks to elucidate the transition from reading to listening and its profound implications for the literary experience. By delving into the intricacies of auditory reception, literary theory can gain deeper insight into the cognitive and emotional facets of literary experiences, contributing to a more comprehensive understanding of how individuals engage with literary works. Reviewing the still fragmented and nascent state of audiobook research, which barely focuses on the aspect of reception, the proposed framework explores five key dimensions: text, medium, listeners, situations and practices, and the resulting effects of auditory engagement with literature. Through a meticulous examination of these multifaceted factors, this article endeavors to provide a holistic understanding of the auditory reception of literary texts. Moreover, this avenue of research underscores the dynamic nature of literature, providing a richer perspective on the interplay between text, medium, recipients, situational context, and practices, thereby enriching the tapestry of literary theory. For example, a reexamination and customization of narratological categories is crucial, particularly concerning the incorporation of the physical voice, which is now actually present and independent of Genette’s category ›voice‹. Similarly, the transition into the auditory medium necessitates a reevaluation of situational context and its associated practices. This reassessment is driven by the temporal co-occurrence of cognitive processes and physical activities, facilitated by the liberation of hands and eyes from their prior en
{"title":"Experiencing Literary Audiobooks: A Framework for Theoretical and Empirical Investigations of the Auditory Reception of Literature","authors":"Lukas Kosch, Annika Schwabe, H. Boomgaarden, Günther Stocker","doi":"10.1515/jlt-2024-2005","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/jlt-2024-2005","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 While the act of listening to narratives has deep historical roots, it has gained renewed prominence in the contemporary literary landscape through the rise of audiobooks. Despite their resurgence, research on literary audiobooks, particularly within the realm of literary studies, remains notably limited. The audiobook has struggled to gain acceptance among the humanities as a legitimate aesthetic form, which can be attributed to the fact that it is often compared to the printed book as the leading medium for experiencing literature. By transforming a written text through the performativity of the voice into a spoken, analog, or digitally recorded, repeatable audio text, it becomes a completely different object of research that must be analyzed with different premises and approaches than the underlying written literary work. Nevertheless, literary analysis has predominantly focused on the visual and cognitive aspects of reading, thereby overlooking the auditory dimension.\u0000 Especially in literary theory, there is a lack of both differentiated, proven descriptive criteria that take into account the specific auditory signification processes, including all the relevant paralinguistic features, and a theoretical foundation. This article aims to address this gap by developing a comprehensive framework for investigating the auditory reception of literature that seeks to elucidate the transition from reading to listening and its profound implications for the literary experience. By delving into the intricacies of auditory reception, literary theory can gain deeper insight into the cognitive and emotional facets of literary experiences, contributing to a more comprehensive understanding of how individuals engage with literary works. Reviewing the still fragmented and nascent state of audiobook research, which barely focuses on the aspect of reception, the proposed framework explores five key dimensions: text, medium, listeners, situations and practices, and the resulting effects of auditory engagement with literature.\u0000 Through a meticulous examination of these multifaceted factors, this article endeavors to provide a holistic understanding of the auditory reception of literary texts. Moreover, this avenue of research underscores the dynamic nature of literature, providing a richer perspective on the interplay between text, medium, recipients, situational context, and practices, thereby enriching the tapestry of literary theory. For example, a reexamination and customization of narratological categories is crucial, particularly concerning the incorporation of the physical voice, which is now actually present and independent of Genette’s category ›voice‹. Similarly, the transition into the auditory medium necessitates a reevaluation of situational context and its associated practices. This reassessment is driven by the temporal co-occurrence of cognitive processes and physical activities, facilitated by the liberation of hands and eyes from their prior en","PeriodicalId":42872,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Literary Theory","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2024-03-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140251562","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}
The present article discusses, in a first step, ground-breaking recent publications on the lyric subject, and dedicates itself, in a second step, to a new concept of lyric persona, which is devised to overcome the constrictions of the categories of subject and subjectivity and to open access of theory to all kinds and eras of lyric poetry from the Old English Seafarer to modern concrete poetry. The first book to be reviewed is Autor und Subjekt im Gedicht. Positionen, Perspektiven und Praktiken heute (2021), a collection of essays which pursues an argumentatively stimulating dialogical strategy. The articles begin with Wolf Schmid’s twenty theses on the abstract author, an appropriation of the narratological »implicit« author to the theory of lyric poetry. This statement is followed by a number of articles which alternatingly argue in favour of and against the concept of the abstract author. Peter Hühn, for instance, believes the term to be analytically especially fruitful, while Ralph Müller speaks of it as a »narratological spectre«. It is significant that, using Schmid’s term, Rainer Grübel analyzes a number of intriguing modern Russian poems, which he calls hybrid, since he identifies transitions from poetic to quasi reality-related passages and diagnoses concomitant stylistic changes in the texts. The international perspective is then widened by a comprehensive investigation of Russian, German and English terminological traditions. Marion Rutz demonstrates that handbooks and textbooks are by far not compatible. Among other terms she deals with the controversial German term »das lyrische Ich« (the lyric I). An investigation of the use of this term is then afforded by Hermann Korte’s examination of the poetry and poetics of Gottfried Benn, Thomas Kling and Durs Grünbein. Subsequently, a group of articles deals with the fate of the subject in recent and current German poetry. Analyzing poems by Sabine Scho, Anne Cotton and Thomas Kling, Friederike Reents verifies, instead of »subject fatigue«, new possibilities of the subject. Analogous insights are gained by Mirjam Springer in her investigation of the lyric portrait and in a politically tempered article by Peter Geist, which discovers examples of varying degrees of imaginative self-construction going together with increasing author-relatedness. The volume concludes with a large-scale philosophically oriented article by Henrieke Stahl which constructs the model of a polymorphous subject based on Heinrich Barth’s existential variant of transcendental philosophy. The second publication to be discussed is Varja Balžalorsky Antić’s monograph The Lyric Subject. A Reconceptualization (2022), which, though treating roughly the same subject as Autor und Subjekt, is oriented a totally different way. Like the one year previously published work, Antić proceeds from the awareness that the numerous new developments of poetry call for a reconceptualization of the genre and especially of the concept of the
{"title":"Autor und Subjekt im lyrischen Gedicht: Rezension und Neukonzeption einer Theorie der lyrischen Persona","authors":"Wolfgang G. Müller","doi":"10.1515/jlt-2024-2002","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/jlt-2024-2002","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 The present article discusses, in a first step, ground-breaking recent publications on the lyric subject, and dedicates itself, in a second step, to a new concept of lyric persona, which is devised to overcome the constrictions of the categories of subject and subjectivity and to open access of theory to all kinds and eras of lyric poetry from the Old English Seafarer to modern concrete poetry. The first book to be reviewed is Autor und Subjekt im Gedicht. Positionen, Perspektiven und Praktiken heute (2021), a collection of essays which pursues an argumentatively stimulating dialogical strategy. The articles begin with Wolf Schmid’s twenty theses on the abstract author, an appropriation of the narratological »implicit« author to the theory of lyric poetry. This statement is followed by a number of articles which alternatingly argue in favour of and against the concept of the abstract author. Peter Hühn, for instance, believes the term to be analytically especially fruitful, while Ralph Müller speaks of it as a »narratological spectre«. It is significant that, using Schmid’s term, Rainer Grübel analyzes a number of intriguing modern Russian poems, which he calls hybrid, since he identifies transitions from poetic to quasi reality-related passages and diagnoses concomitant stylistic changes in the texts. The international perspective is then widened by a comprehensive investigation of Russian, German and English terminological traditions. Marion Rutz demonstrates that handbooks and textbooks are by far not compatible. Among other terms she deals with the controversial German term »das lyrische Ich« (the lyric I). An investigation of the use of this term is then afforded by Hermann Korte’s examination of the poetry and poetics of Gottfried Benn, Thomas Kling and Durs Grünbein. Subsequently, a group of articles deals with the fate of the subject in recent and current German poetry. Analyzing poems by Sabine Scho, Anne Cotton and Thomas Kling, Friederike Reents verifies, instead of »subject fatigue«, new possibilities of the subject. Analogous insights are gained by Mirjam Springer in her investigation of the lyric portrait and in a politically tempered article by Peter Geist, which discovers examples of varying degrees of imaginative self-construction going together with increasing author-relatedness. The volume concludes with a large-scale philosophically oriented article by Henrieke Stahl which constructs the model of a polymorphous subject based on Heinrich Barth’s existential variant of transcendental philosophy.\u0000 The second publication to be discussed is Varja Balžalorsky Antić’s monograph The Lyric Subject. A Reconceptualization (2022), which, though treating roughly the same subject as Autor und Subjekt, is oriented a totally different way. Like the one year previously published work, Antić proceeds from the awareness that the numerous new developments of poetry call for a reconceptualization of the genre and especially of the concept of the","PeriodicalId":42872,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Literary Theory","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2024-03-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140251748","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}
Abstract The essay proposes to think of the creative subject as an actor in a network, that is, following Bruno Latour, as a »moving target of a vast array of entities swarming toward it« (Latour 2005, 46). It explores what it means to bring a network analysis to lectures on poetics by employing both a structuralist visualization informed by a computational method and a sociological method according to Latour’s Actor-Network-Theory (ANT). ANT is used to make traceable what with Hugh Kenner is called »elsewhere communities« consisting of spirits and minds along with objects and spaces. This serves to defend a method of criticism that is not oriented towards unearthing deep textual meanings, but which foregrounds the arts’ relatability and potential for provoking association and attachments. Network analysis in the arts and humanities, so goes the argument, has the potential to be much more than a formalist description of connections made. It offers means for detecting the implicit and explicit presences of a variety of different actors in or relating to works of art and challenges us to move beyond established analytical categories such as intertextuality and intermediality by opening the inquiry to a wider diversity of actors and to redefine our understanding of creativity. The article focuses on networks that emerge in lectures in which renowned artists from around the world share with general audiences their views on work processes, motivations to create, and artistic self-understandings. These are known as Poetikvorlesungen in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland, but do not have a distinct label outside of the German-speaking literary scene. The article departs from the observation that making connections and forming artistic associations are key components of these lectures as this feature can be found frequently. It first outlines genre characteristics of lectures on the arts with particular focus on networks that such lectures participate in. Emblematic examples are the Frankfurt Lectures on Poetics by the German novelist Daniel Kehlmann (given in 2014) and the Tanner Lectures by the Canadian writer and critic Hugh Kenner (given in 1999). Kehlmann depicts his artistic influences, sources of inspiration, and references to existing contexts by pretending to summon spirits, a rhetorical gesture akin to a necromancy. Kenner calls networks that evolve from making such connections »elsewhere communities«. The essay explores what a network-oriented analysis of this genre could look like by turning to the Norton Lectures by the German filmmaker Wim Wenders (given in 2018). These serve to test two different analytical approaches. The article relies both on network visualization and on tracing of networks according to Actor-Network-Theory (ANT). The article thus offers both a graphic representation of references from Wenders’ lectures and a textual tracing of associations according to the methodology outlined by Latour. An important finding is that net
{"title":"Network Analysis in Literature and the Arts: Rethinking Agency and Creativity","authors":"Gundela Hachmann","doi":"10.1515/jlt-2023-2010","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/jlt-2023-2010","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract The essay proposes to think of the creative subject as an actor in a network, that is, following Bruno Latour, as a »moving target of a vast array of entities swarming toward it« (Latour 2005, 46). It explores what it means to bring a network analysis to lectures on poetics by employing both a structuralist visualization informed by a computational method and a sociological method according to Latour’s Actor-Network-Theory (ANT). ANT is used to make traceable what with Hugh Kenner is called »elsewhere communities« consisting of spirits and minds along with objects and spaces. This serves to defend a method of criticism that is not oriented towards unearthing deep textual meanings, but which foregrounds the arts’ relatability and potential for provoking association and attachments. Network analysis in the arts and humanities, so goes the argument, has the potential to be much more than a formalist description of connections made. It offers means for detecting the implicit and explicit presences of a variety of different actors in or relating to works of art and challenges us to move beyond established analytical categories such as intertextuality and intermediality by opening the inquiry to a wider diversity of actors and to redefine our understanding of creativity. The article focuses on networks that emerge in lectures in which renowned artists from around the world share with general audiences their views on work processes, motivations to create, and artistic self-understandings. These are known as Poetikvorlesungen in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland, but do not have a distinct label outside of the German-speaking literary scene. The article departs from the observation that making connections and forming artistic associations are key components of these lectures as this feature can be found frequently. It first outlines genre characteristics of lectures on the arts with particular focus on networks that such lectures participate in. Emblematic examples are the Frankfurt Lectures on Poetics by the German novelist Daniel Kehlmann (given in 2014) and the Tanner Lectures by the Canadian writer and critic Hugh Kenner (given in 1999). Kehlmann depicts his artistic influences, sources of inspiration, and references to existing contexts by pretending to summon spirits, a rhetorical gesture akin to a necromancy. Kenner calls networks that evolve from making such connections »elsewhere communities«. The essay explores what a network-oriented analysis of this genre could look like by turning to the Norton Lectures by the German filmmaker Wim Wenders (given in 2018). These serve to test two different analytical approaches. The article relies both on network visualization and on tracing of networks according to Actor-Network-Theory (ANT). The article thus offers both a graphic representation of references from Wenders’ lectures and a textual tracing of associations according to the methodology outlined by Latour. An important finding is that net","PeriodicalId":42872,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Literary Theory","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2023-08-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49634102","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}
Abstract In my contribution, I argue that a fruitful integration of computational network analytic methods into literary studies depends on how the ›interaction‹ of two characters in an abstract character network is formalized. I support this hypothesis by using the examples of co-presence, co-reference, and knowledge networks, which I analyze in Heinrich Kleist’s tragedy Die Familie Schroffenstein (1803). I assume that the co-presence of characters can provide the basis for more specific formalizations of interaction. But due to its basal specification of interaction, co-presence networks can only be integrated into rather limited questions of literary studies. I illustrate this circumstance by examining Franco Moretti’s approach in his essay Network Theory, Plot Analysis (2011): How does he connect his network analyses to concepts of literary studies? How does he reflect his methods? Which observational stance does he adopt? How appropriate is his approach to the object of study? And how does he tie his results back to literary theory? Moretti’s explorations show that his network analyses seem to be incompatible with established conceptions of characters – at least partially. Therefore, he demands a new conceptualization of dramatic characters in literary studies. To me, however, it seems to be more productive to put into perspective or enhance – under the auspices of network analysis – existing quantitative aspects of established character presentation (configuration, constellation). I therefore propose two additional formalizations of character interaction to create dramatic networks: co-references and knowledge transfers. Regular co-presence networks, which have widely been tested and discussed among (computational) literary scholars, will serve as a ground of comparison. I illustrate the merits and limitations of co-presence networks on both a single text analysis of Die Familie Schroffenstein and a larger corpus analysis of 587 German-language plays. Cursorily, I present the operationalization of co-references and knowledge transfers. The linguistic concept of co-reference means that two or more linguistic expressions refer to the same entities. A knowledge transfer, in my understanding, is a transmission of new information from at least one literary character to at least one other character. Manual annotations of co-reference chains and knowledge transfers serve as basis for the subsequent network creation. I compare these different manifestations of character interaction in terms of the resulting network visualizations as well as of various mathematical network metrics. The goal is to elicit how useful these two criteria are regarding drama analysis, e. g., the analysis of character properties, and to what extent they can complement, differentiate, or even replace the established co-presence networks. Co-presence, co-reference and knowledge networks reveal different aspects of the characters under consideration, picture different dramati
在我的贡献中，我认为将计算网络分析方法有效地整合到文学研究中取决于如何形式化抽象角色网络中两个角色的“相互作用”。我在海因里希·克莱斯特(Heinrich Kleist)的悲剧《施洛芬斯坦家族》(Die Familie Schroffenstein, 1803)中分析了共同存在、共同参考和知识网络的例子，以此来支持这一假设。我认为角色的共存可以为更具体的互动形式提供基础。但由于其基本的交互规范，共现网络只能整合到相当有限的文学研究问题中。我通过研究佛朗哥·莫雷蒂在他的文章《网络理论，情节分析》(2011)中的方法来说明这种情况:他如何将他的网络分析与文学研究的概念联系起来?他是如何反映他的方法的?他采取了哪种观察立场?他的方法对研究对象是否合适?他是如何将他的研究结果与文学理论联系起来的?莫雷蒂的探索表明，他的网络分析似乎与既定的人物概念不相容——至少部分不相容。因此，他要求在文学研究中重新定义戏剧人物。然而，对我来说，在网络分析的支持下，对已建立的角色表现(配置、星座)的现有定量方面进行透视或增强似乎更有成效。因此，我提出了另外两种角色互动的形式化方法来创造戏剧性的网络:共同引用和知识转移。在(计算)文学学者中广泛测试和讨论的常规共存在网络将作为比较的基础。我在《施洛芬施泰因家族》的单一文本分析和587部德语戏剧的更大语料库分析上说明了共现网络的优点和局限性。粗略地说，我提出了共同参考和知识转移的操作化。共同指称的语言学概念是指两个或两个以上的语言表达指向相同的实体。在我看来，知识转移是将新信息从至少一个文学角色传递给至少另一个角色。人工标注共参考链和知识转移是后续网络创建的基础。我比较了这些角色互动的不同表现形式，根据结果的网络可视化以及各种数学网络指标。我们的目标是引出这两个标准对于戏剧分析有多有用。，对角色属性的分析，以及它们在多大程度上可以补充、区分甚至取代已建立的共同存在网络。共临网络、共指网络和知识网络揭示了人物的不同方面，描绘了不同的戏剧结构，并将不同的人物群体置于网络的中心。因此，这三种抽象的文本表征似乎是相辅相成的。在我的文章中，我表明，应该在(至少)两个层面上讨论各种标准在多大程度上可以融入文学研究的研究问题。首先，有必要问一下，一个特定的标准对自己的研究有多有趣、有多相关、有多翔实，以及它是否与文学研究的术语有关。其次，重要的是要考虑手动注释各自标准的精确度，以及随后自动注释它们的可靠性。
{"title":"Kopräsenz-, Koreferenz- und Wissens-Netzwerke. Kantenkriterien in dramatischen Figurennetzwerken am Beispiel von Kleists Die Familie Schroffenstein (1803)","authors":"Benjamin Krautter","doi":"10.1515/jlt-2023-2012","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/jlt-2023-2012","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract In my contribution, I argue that a fruitful integration of computational network analytic methods into literary studies depends on how the ›interaction‹ of two characters in an abstract character network is formalized. I support this hypothesis by using the examples of co-presence, co-reference, and knowledge networks, which I analyze in Heinrich Kleist’s tragedy Die Familie Schroffenstein (1803). I assume that the co-presence of characters can provide the basis for more specific formalizations of interaction. But due to its basal specification of interaction, co-presence networks can only be integrated into rather limited questions of literary studies. I illustrate this circumstance by examining Franco Moretti’s approach in his essay Network Theory, Plot Analysis (2011): How does he connect his network analyses to concepts of literary studies? How does he reflect his methods? Which observational stance does he adopt? How appropriate is his approach to the object of study? And how does he tie his results back to literary theory? Moretti’s explorations show that his network analyses seem to be incompatible with established conceptions of characters – at least partially. Therefore, he demands a new conceptualization of dramatic characters in literary studies. To me, however, it seems to be more productive to put into perspective or enhance – under the auspices of network analysis – existing quantitative aspects of established character presentation (configuration, constellation). I therefore propose two additional formalizations of character interaction to create dramatic networks: co-references and knowledge transfers. Regular co-presence networks, which have widely been tested and discussed among (computational) literary scholars, will serve as a ground of comparison. I illustrate the merits and limitations of co-presence networks on both a single text analysis of Die Familie Schroffenstein and a larger corpus analysis of 587 German-language plays. Cursorily, I present the operationalization of co-references and knowledge transfers. The linguistic concept of co-reference means that two or more linguistic expressions refer to the same entities. A knowledge transfer, in my understanding, is a transmission of new information from at least one literary character to at least one other character. Manual annotations of co-reference chains and knowledge transfers serve as basis for the subsequent network creation. I compare these different manifestations of character interaction in terms of the resulting network visualizations as well as of various mathematical network metrics. The goal is to elicit how useful these two criteria are regarding drama analysis, e. g., the analysis of character properties, and to what extent they can complement, differentiate, or even replace the established co-presence networks. Co-presence, co-reference and knowledge networks reveal different aspects of the characters under consideration, picture different dramati","PeriodicalId":42872,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Literary Theory","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2023-08-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46123023","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}
Abstract If, as George E.P. Box puts it, »all models are wrong, but some are useful« (Box in Ahnert et al. 2020, 79), what then, would be the merit and concrete gains of such an ambivalent model in the field of literature? This article stems from a hunch: that the use of the network metaphor to describe children’s literature (in the broad sense as referring to any cultural product developed for children) is not insignificant. Starting from that postulate, the goal of this article is to look beyond the metaphor and explore how the rhizomatic network could serve as a concrete model, supplementing the current toolbox used to study children’s literature. Indeed, many characteristics of the rhizomatic network – namely its unlimited, simplified, non-hierarchical, random-access, and visual nature – lend themselves to a broader and more inclusive conceptualization of children’s literature. Translator study scholar Rebecca Walkowitz makes a strong case for this approach, stating that »[i]n the future, we will need to read comparatively, by which I mean reading across editions and formats and also recognizing that any one edition and format contributes to the work rather than exhausts it« (Walkowitz 2015, unpag.). Concretely, I argue for the use of the rhizomatic network as a visual model of multimodal children’s literature at three levels: 1) a given storyworld as a network of interconnected versions; 2) the context of any given version of the storyworld as a network; and 3) the text (or multimodal ensemble) of any given version of the storyworld as a network of meaning-making resources (modes). I illustrate the network model at these three levels through two case studies: We’re Going on a Bear Hunt (Rosen/Oxenbury 1989) and the Gruffalo (Donaldson/Scheffler 1999). In Cathlena Martin’s words, children’s texts »refuse« to stay confined (Martin 2009, 87), whether it be to one medium, or to one language. As a result, any storyworld of children’s literature can be conceptualized as a network of interconnected works, each of which expands it in a different direction depending on its features. This approach thus emphasizes the multidirectionality of influences between works and the »new set of relations« whereby »something unique is produced« (Cartmell/Whelehan 2010, 22). These new sets of relations involve not only the features of the work, but also its context, which can too be contextualized as a network of interconnected agents and organizations involved in the production and reception of the work. At the level of the multimodal ensemble, the model aims to map out the combinations of modes within any product of children’s literature. Since multimodality is inherently hierarchical, as it consists of modal categories, modes, and sub-modes, I propose a hybrid model (after Ban-Yam 2002) that combines the tree (hierarchy) structure and the rhizome structure (lateral connections). While it is important to keep in mind that the audience experiences meaning as a wh
摘要如果正如George E.P.Box所说，“所有的模型都是错误的，但有些是有用的”（Box in Ahnert et al.2020，79），那么，这种矛盾的模型在文学领域的优点和具体收获是什么？这篇文章源于一种预感：使用网络隐喻来描述儿童文学（广义上指为儿童开发的任何文化产品）并非微不足道。从这一假设出发，本文的目标是超越隐喻，探索根茎网络如何作为一个具体的模型，补充当前用于研究儿童文学的工具箱。事实上，根茎网络的许多特征——即其无限性、简化性、非层次性、随机性和视觉性——有助于对儿童文学进行更广泛、更包容的概念化。翻译家研究学者Rebecca Walkowitz为这种方法提供了有力的论据，她表示“在未来，我们将需要进行比较阅读，我的意思是跨版本和格式阅读，并认识到任何一个版本和格式都有助于工作，而不是耗尽它”（Walkowitz 2015，unpog.），我主张在三个层面上使用根茎网络作为多模式儿童文学的视觉模型：1）给定的故事世界是一个相互关联的版本网络；2） 作为网络的故事世界的任何给定版本的上下文；以及3）作为意义制造资源（模式）网络的故事世界的任何给定版本的文本（或多模式集合）。我通过两个案例研究说明了这三个层面上的网络模型：我们正在进行猎熊（Rosen/Oxenbury 1989）和Gruffalo（Donaldson/Scheffler 1999）。用Cathlena Martin的话来说，儿童文本“拒绝”被限制（Martin 2009，87），无论是一种媒介，还是一种语言。因此，任何儿童文学的故事世界都可以被概念化为一个相互关联的作品网络，每个作品都根据其特点向不同的方向扩展。因此，这种方法强调了作品与“新的关系”之间的影响的多向性，“新的一套关系”产生了“独特的东西”（Cartmell/Whelehan，2010，22）。这些新的关系不仅涉及作品的特征，还涉及作品的背景，也可以将其视为参与作品制作和接收的相互关联的代理人和组织的网络。在多模式集成的层面上，该模型旨在绘制出儿童文学任何产品中的模式组合。由于多模态本质上是层次性的，因为它由模态类别、模态和子模态组成，我提出了一个混合模型（Ban Yam 2002之后），该模型结合了树（层次）结构和根茎结构（横向连接）。尽管重要的是要记住，观众体验到的意义是一个整体，是模式和子模式的协同作用（Sipe 2012），但将这种协同作用分解为其组成部分是一种有用的方式，可以更好地理解儿童文学是如何产生意义的，以及意义是如何通过媒介和/或语言转换重塑的。虽然根茎模型无疑有很多好处，但它也有局限性。首先，根茎的具体表现本质上带有定位偏差，这源于研究人员的背景和关注点。此外，这些视觉效果往往以文本为中心。尽管将信息呈现为网络增加了视觉维度，但在可能的情况下，节点（文本）的内容可以用图像或声音代替，以强调网络表示的多模式和中间维度。然而，使用文本仍然是创建适合学术文章空间和格式的网络表示的最简单、最快、最有效的方法。另一个限制是，可以说，网络并不能帮助消除围绕儿童文学产品所经历的实际转变本质的理论模糊性。 翻译、转导、本地化、改编、戏仿、删节、重写、转写）。我没有提出另一组术语，而是在“互文对话”（Stam 2000）的更广泛背景下，将版本网络置于语境中，并使用克劳斯·坎德尔的翻译类型学（坎德尔用来涵盖改编）来关注版本之间的变化，而不是它们是什么。类型学根据两个参数对翻译进行分类：模式和文化。为此，我建议增加第三个维度，即媒介，以说明新产品的特定可供性及其对多模式集合的影响。这种类型，加上更广泛的生产和接收背景，揭示了新产品的特殊性以及与其他产品的关系。
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Abstract In the present essay, I argue that lyric ecopoetry is particularly suited to alter our worldview in favor of a more ecologically-aware stance. In itself this position has been announced by numerous ecocritics, with some doubts as to its adequacy expressed by Timothy Clark in his Ecocriticism on the Edge. Partly in response to his critique, it is here argued that poems do offer a viable way of altering human modes of thinking not by what or how they evoke but by the way in which they register in the reader’s consciousness. To this effect, I depart from the theories of the lyric advanced in the last two decades by the likes of Jonathan Culler, Derek Attridge and the poet Don Patterson, all of whom argue that lyric poetry differs from any other form of linguistic expression in being itself the event it evokes rather than a representation of an event. This is because by dint of being performed by readers, lyric poems compel one to embrace the voices that comprise them as one’s own, as a result helping one interiorize an experience of ultimate otherness. It is this modus of poetry’s existence that makes it a particularly apt literary form for impelling one to appreciate the complexity of and one’s imbrication in the networks of planetary ecosystems. In this way, as I claim further on, poetry may be conceived of as a vehicle for instilling a form of thinking that Bruno Latour has recently theorized as Terrestrial. For him, the Terrestrial is characterized by what he calls the system of engendering, a way of dwelling in the interrelated systems of the Earth that is reciprocally beneficial for human and non-humans. After an overview of Latour’s idea, which is put forward as a potential political platform, and its relation to the extant theories of environmental humanities that emphasize poetry’s role in conjuring the awareness of the intricacy of natural processes, I suggest that lyric poetry offers not only a means of linguistic expression of the interdependence of all elements in any given ecosystem but also constitutes a language capable of swaying human modes of thinking in favor of the Terrestrial.
{"title":"Voicing the Terrestrial: Theory of the Lyric and the Pressures of the Anthropocene","authors":"Wit Píetrzak","doi":"10.1515/jlt-2023-2013","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/jlt-2023-2013","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract In the present essay, I argue that lyric ecopoetry is particularly suited to alter our worldview in favor of a more ecologically-aware stance. In itself this position has been announced by numerous ecocritics, with some doubts as to its adequacy expressed by Timothy Clark in his Ecocriticism on the Edge. Partly in response to his critique, it is here argued that poems do offer a viable way of altering human modes of thinking not by what or how they evoke but by the way in which they register in the reader’s consciousness. To this effect, I depart from the theories of the lyric advanced in the last two decades by the likes of Jonathan Culler, Derek Attridge and the poet Don Patterson, all of whom argue that lyric poetry differs from any other form of linguistic expression in being itself the event it evokes rather than a representation of an event. This is because by dint of being performed by readers, lyric poems compel one to embrace the voices that comprise them as one’s own, as a result helping one interiorize an experience of ultimate otherness. It is this modus of poetry’s existence that makes it a particularly apt literary form for impelling one to appreciate the complexity of and one’s imbrication in the networks of planetary ecosystems. In this way, as I claim further on, poetry may be conceived of as a vehicle for instilling a form of thinking that Bruno Latour has recently theorized as Terrestrial. For him, the Terrestrial is characterized by what he calls the system of engendering, a way of dwelling in the interrelated systems of the Earth that is reciprocally beneficial for human and non-humans. After an overview of Latour’s idea, which is put forward as a potential political platform, and its relation to the extant theories of environmental humanities that emphasize poetry’s role in conjuring the awareness of the intricacy of natural processes, I suggest that lyric poetry offers not only a means of linguistic expression of the interdependence of all elements in any given ecosystem but also constitutes a language capable of swaying human modes of thinking in favor of the Terrestrial.","PeriodicalId":42872,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Literary Theory","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2023-08-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47035714","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}
Pub Date : 2023-08-14DOI: 10.1515/jlt-2023-frontmatter2
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