Journal of Literary Theory (JLT)

Werner, Christiana

Fiktion und Emotion. Eine Rezension von Adrian Wettsteins "Fiktive Geschichten – Echte Emotionen" [Adrian Wettstein, Fiktive Geschichten – Echte Emotionen, 2015]

Schneider, Jost

Methoden, Institutionen, Schulen und Personen in geistes- und kulturwissenschaftlichen Theorien des 20. Jahrhunderts [Marina Grishakova/Silvi Salupere (Hg.), Theoretical Schools and Circles in the Twentieth-Century Humanities, 2015]

Rockenberger, Annika

 1 
Annika Rockenberger 
Editing a Discourse, Not a Text: Meta-Methodological Remarks 
on an Editorial Endeavour 
(Abstract) 
 Full-length article in: JLT 10/2 (2016), 366–382. 
Whereas in literary studies poststructuralist theory (e. g. deconstruction, discourse analysis, 
broad concepts of intertextuality, ›Death of the Author‹-claims and several versions of anti-
intentionalism) has had – and still has – a massive impact on practices of interpretation, until 
now there has been very little reception of according ideas in the domain of scholarly editing. 
Here, emphatic criticism regarding the ›author-centricity‹ of textual scholarship rather 
employed concepts like ›textual dynamics‹ or ›textual fluidity‹, as well as a positivist focus on 
the ›materiality‹ of singular documents. 
However, within my contribution I will outline an entirely different approach by asking the 
question: If we actually decided to give up on author-centricity in scholarly editing and radically 
rejected authors’ intentions as well as authors’ single or collected works as objects of textual 
scholarship, could the yet unrealized project of ›editing a discourse‹ or ›discourse edition‹ work 
as a complement, an extension, or a replacement of traditional editions? 
To make this clear: So far there is no such thing as a discourse edition, so I cannot give a 
description of something already in existence. Actually, I don’t want to make a case for dis-
course editions either, that is, my contribution will not contain any programmatic or normative 
claims and I will not suggest a concrete editorial concept. Instead, I will explore what questions 
and problems someone would be confronted with when seriously conceptualizing and/or reali-
zing such a project. So, generally my presentation takes the shape of a heuristic (partly critical) 
thought experiment: the answer to a what-if-question. 
One of the underlying ideas of this article is to confront contemporary edition philology (textual 
scholarship) – which is oriented towards categories like author, work, or text – with a ›foil‹ for 
contrast specifically invented for the purpose to show quite plainly that those leading categories 
scholarly editorial work is based on are anything but self-evident and without any alternatives 
but in the end rather contingent (namely upon pragmatic considerations regarding research in-
terests and overall aims of textual scholarship). Radically different modes of editing are imagi-
nable and an editorial practice that is interested in asking different questions and pursuing 
different objectives would undoubtedly look very unlike what is the common practice and rati-
onale of contemporary scholarly editing. 
I designed a meta-philological thought experiment to exemplify exactly this and I will thereby 
reveal a discipline-specific methodological ›blindness‹, irritate seemingly unproblematic habi-
tual ways of thinking and thus uncover a deficit of reasoning and self-reflection in the field. 
Basically, I will clarify some implicit (categorial and methodological) presuppositions of 
scholarly editing and thereby uncover some aspects of the (invisible) normative framework 
underlying editorial practices. 
 2 
Firstly, I will clarify what entities could be meant by the term ›discourse‹ – focussing especially 
on French poststructuralism (namely Michel Foucault) – in order to establish the very object of 
a discourse edition. 
Secondly, I will ask why – for what reasons and purposes – one should engage in such an enter-
prise at all: Why should one favour it over conventional editions? Would discourse editions be 
complementary to or an extension of alternative editorial options, or would they be their re-
placement? 
When I will have shown that a discourse edition can actually be justified as a reasonable edito-
rial project, I will move on to the question of how such an edition might look like. Hence, I will 
distinguish three versions of how to conceptualize a discourse edition – a weak, a strong, and a 
radical version – each of which can be conceived as a complement, an extension, or a replace-
ment of traditional editions: The weak version still focuses on author’s single or collected works 
but also tries to reconstruct them as ›hubs‹ within historical discourse networks, e. g. by adding 
extensive commentaries, contexts and source material. The strong version comes closest to 
Foucault’s programmatic ideas but also faces difficult questions, such as whether texts, parts of 
texts or statements are to be considered as the elementary units of a discourse edition, how 
exactly the quantity of editorially recorded objects is to be limited, and how different discourses 
are to be differentiated. The radical version – which turns out to be a prescriptive theoretical 
fiction – gives up not only on categories like ›author‹, ›work‹, etc. but also dispenses with pretty 
much any other concept of order exceeding ›free-floating‹ single statements, anonymous, and 
decontextualized. 
Finally, I will briefly consider the question of how to practically realize the strong version of a 
discourse edition. 
 
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 5 
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2017-01-07 
JLTonline ISSN 1862-8990 
Copyright © by the author. All rights reserved. 
This work may be copied for non-profit educational use if proper credit is given to the author 
and JLTonline. 
For other permission, please contact JLTonline. 
How to cite this item: 
Abstract of: Annika Rockenberger, Editing a Discourse, Not a Text: Meta-Methodological Remarks on an 
Editorial Endeavour. 
In: JLTonline (07.01.2017)  
Persistent Identifier: urn:nbn:de:0222-003434 
Link: http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:0222-003434    


English

Editing a Discourse, Not a Text: Meta-Methodological Remarks on an Editorial Endeavour [Abstract]

Müller-Wood, Anja

Cognitive Literary Studies: On Persistent Problems and Plausible Solutions [Abstract]

Lamping, Dieter

 1 
Dieter Lamping 
Some Prospects for the Theory of Lyric Poetry 
(Abstract) 
• Full-length article in: JLT 11/1 (2017), 83–88. 
Taking the definition of lyric poem as ›Einzelrede in Versen‹ for its basis, this article pursues 
two objectives: firstly, to advocate the concept of lyric poetry as an intertextual system of 
relationships against the background of world literature (a concept that can also constitute the 
theoretical foundation for the universal history of lyric poetry) and, secondly, to encourage a 
profound discussion with philosophy to locate lyric poetry within the ›life of the mind‹ as well 
as to grasp it in theoretical terms 
References 
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by Mary McCarthy, transl. by Hermann Vetter, München 82015. 
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geschichtliches Studium [1905], Darmstadt 1970. 
Burdorf, Dieter, Einführung in die Gedichtanalyse [1995], Stuttgart 32015. 
Detering, Heinrich, Rhetorik und Semantik lyrischer Formen, in: Dieter Lamping (ed.), 
Handbuch Lyrik. Theorie – Geschichte – Analyse [2011], Stuttgart 22016, 73–84. 
Jackson, Virginia/Yopie Prins (eds.), The Lyric Theory Reader. A Critical Anthology, Baltimore 
2014. 
Lamping, Dieter, Das lyrische Gedicht. Definitionen zu Theorie und Geschichte der Gattung 
[1989], Göttingen 32000. 
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Zymner, Rüdiger, Lyrik. Umriss und Begriff, Paderborn 2009. 
  
 
 2 
2017-03-16 
JLTonline ISSN 1862-8990 
Copyright © by the author. All rights reserved. 
This work may be copied for non-profit educational use if proper credit is given to the author 
and JLTonline. 
For other permission, please contact JLTonline. 
How to cite this item: 
Abstract of: Dieter Lamping,. Some Prospects for the Theory of Lyric Poetry. 
In: JLTonline (16.03.2017)   
Persistent Identifier: urn:nbn:de:0222-003528 
Link: http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:0222-003528 


German

Some Prospects for the Theory of Lyric Poetry [Abstract]

Ilmonen, Kaisa

Beyond the Postcolonial, but Why Exactly? Ten Steps towards a New Enthusiasm for Postcolonial Studies [Abstract]

Iversen, Stefan

Telling Deceiving Selves, Bending Fictional Facts [Zuzana Fonioková, Kazuo Ishiguro and Max Frisch, 2015]

Kater, Thomas; Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster

Keine Wiederkehr des Dagewesenen. Zu Gegenwart und Potential des literarischen Werkbegriffs [Wiederkehr des Werks? Symposium zur Gegenwart des literarischen Werkbegriffs. Schloss Herrenhausen, Hannover, 21.-23. Oktober 2015.]

Pieper, Vincenz; Universität Würzburg

Metaphysikverdacht: Christian Bennes Theorie der literarischen Handschrift [Christian Benne, Die Erfindung des Manuskripts. Zur Theorie und Geschichte literarischer Gegenständlichkeit,  2015.]

Petraschka, Thomas; Universität Würzburg

Der Schluss auf die beste Erklärung im Kontext der Literaturinterpretation

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