Journal of Literary Theory (JLT)

Brinkmann, Lena Marie

Kraaz, Eva Tanita

Seebeck, Roman A.

Die Ferne nähern: Franco Morettis Entwurf einer transatlantischen Literaturgeschichte [Franco Moretti, Ein fernes Land, 2020]

Gittel, Benjamin

Editorial: Towards a History of the Modern Practice of Fiction

Konrad, Eva-Maria

1 
 
Eva-Maria Konrad 
On the History of the Practice of Fictionality – and the Recurring 
Problems in its Investigation 
(Abstract) 
• Full-length article in: JLT 14/2 (2020), 173–193. 
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 
2 
 
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 
 
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2021-07-02 
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: Eva-Maria Konrad, On the History of the Practice of Fictionality – and the Recurring Problems in its 
Investigation. 
In: JLTonline (02.07.2021)  
Persistent Identifier: urn:nbn:de:0222-004529 
Link: http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:0222-004529 
 


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

Descher, Stefan

 1 
Stefan Descher 
Satirical Novels of the Late Enlightenment and the Practice of 
Fiction. A Methodological Proposal for Investigations Into the 
History of Fiction 
(Abstract) 
• Full-length article in: JLT 14/2 (2021), 147–172. 
The paper examines German satirical novels of the late Enlightenment period, published 
roughly between 1760 and 1790, under the following question: Is there any evidence that the 
historical practice of fiction (concerning this time and these texts) deviates from the modern 
practice of fiction as described by institutional accounts of fictionality? First, it is explained 
what, in this essay, is meant by the ›modern practice of fiction‹. Four ›core rules‹ are identified 
that, according to institutional accounts of fictionality, characterize the practice of reading 
works of fiction. These core rules are: You should not conclude that what is expressed by 
fictional utterances is actually true! You should not conclude that the author believes that what 
is expressed by his fictional utterances is actually true! You should imagine what is expressed 
by fictional utterances (make-believe, pretence)! You should (or at least can) make your 
imaginations the object of higher-level attitudes (for example you can evaluate, emotionally 
respond to, interpret them etc.)! Then, using the example of German satirical novels of the late 
Enlightenment, seven features of fictional texts are discussed that may provide clues about the 
historical practice of fiction and that could give an indication of whether the core rules actually 
do apply. These features are: assurances of truthfulness by the author or fictional 
authors/editors; direct thematization of the fictional/factual-text-distinction; fictional reading 
scenarios; comments by fictional narrators and/or characters on the practice of reading; 
statements of the actual author in the fictional text; ›that cannot be true‹-passages (intentional 
mistakes, anachronisms, various ways of breaking the reader’s expectations, etc.); various kinds 
of reference to the actual world (for example satirical allusions to actual persons or states of 
affairs). It will be argued that, for the corpus of texts under consideration, there is no convincing 
evidence that the historical practices of reading works of fiction deviates in any significant way 
from the core rules of the modern practice of fiction. However, the main aim of this paper is 
not to provide an exhaustive historical case study. First, the investigation is limited to the 
exemplary discussion of some (although significant) texts and text passages, so the results can 
only be considered preliminary. Second, while the satirical novel of the late Enlightenment 
indeed is a particularly interesting and revealing genre for the study of the historical practice of 
fiction (arguments are given in section 3), the main purpose of this essay is to make a 
methodological proposal. A general procedure is provided for finding out whether the historical 
practice of fiction differs from our modern practice – a procedure that can be applied to texts 
of other times and genres as well. 
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2021-07-02 
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: Stefan Descher, Satirical Novels of the Late Enlightenment and the Practice of Fiction. A 
Methodological Proposal for Investigations Into the History of Fiction. 
In: JLTonline (02.07.2021)  
Persistent Identifier: urn:nbn:de:0222-004492 
Link: http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:0222-004492 


Satirical Novels of the Late Enlightenment and the Practice of Fiction. A Methodological Proposal for Investigations Into the History of Fiction

Groeben, Norbert

1 
 
Norbert Groeben 
Biographische Real-Fiktion als Paradigma narrativer Erklärung 
(Abstract) 
• Full-length article in: JLT 14/2 (2020), 287–310. 
The two categories of »fiction« and »non-fiction« are most often conceived of – and treated as 
– disjointed and separate, not only in common sense but also in literary studies. This does not 
adequately reflect, however, the developmental trajectory of the non-fiction genre over the 
course of the twentieth century. After all, the popularization of expert knowledge has 
increasingly been effected with the help of narrative strategies which raise one crucial question: 
Just how much fiction can the factual nature – the dependence on facts – of non-fiction tolerate? 
However, as the more precise definition of the pertinent term, »fiction«, indicates, a distinction 
must be made between »fictionality«, on the one hand, and »fictivity«, on the other. 
»Fictionality«, that is to say, refers to narrative strategiesanalogous tothose of fiction, but 
which relate to historical facts. »Fictivity«, by contrast, refers to the representation of fictitious 
content. More precisely, then, the question is this: Just what degree of fictivity can the factuality 
of non-fiction writing tolerate? Since this question cannot be answered constructively from a 
quantitative but only from a qualitative point of view, we are faced with the ultimately crucial 
question: Just what kind of fictivity can the factuality of non-fiction tolerate? 
In trying to answer that question, it seems advisable to start from the structure of deductive-
nomological explanation, in which a given phenomenon – the explanandum – is explained by 
deducing its description from regularities plus the antecedent conditions contained in them (the 
explanans). In the case of historical explanation, in particular, historical facts most often form 
the explanandum, while the antecedent conditions of the potentially explanatory regularity (i. e., 
of the explanans) are not historically documented. Even more specifically, the genre of 
biography presents a paradigmatic case of such historical explanations falling within the 
purview of literary studies as well. Not uncommonly, attempts to arrive at a coherent, 
psychologically convincing biographical portrayal are met with the problem that historically 
documented life events can be explained – as to their genesis or »coming about« – only by 
reference to ultimately fictitious – or, to take up the distinction introduced above, to ultimately 
fictive – assumptions regarding antecedent conditions. Literary biography may, therefore, be 
said to realize the desired combination of fictivity and factuality in the best possible way: 
namely, as fictivity in the service of factuality. 
To find a paradigmatic example of such a combination, one need look no further than the 
biography of the German chemist Clara Immerwahr, wife of the professor of chemistry, 
Dr. Fritz Haber, who during the First World War was in charge of German efforts to develop 
and deploy chemical combat agents such as poison gases. Clara Immerwahr demonstrably saw 
her husband’s work as a perversion of science but was completely isolated and powerless in her 
protest against it. Her suicide after the German gas attacks at Ypres in April and May 1915 may 
therefore be understood as a final and ultimate protest (attempt). There is no clear evidence for 
this, however, since Immerwahr’s farewell letters no longer exist. Accordingly, the path leading 
towards her decision to end her life has to be reconstructed using fictive assumptions (about 
decisive life events). This implies the following, central hypothesis: »Once a person breaks 
away from a religiously motivated rejection of suicide as an inadmissible interference in God’s 
plan, that person will, in a situation of hopeless, existential, despair, commit suicide.« In the 
2 
 
example of a literary biography presented here, Immerwahr’s reaction to the papal encyclical 
of 1910 is posited as a fictive antecedent condition, for which no historical record exists. In 
particular, this involves the question whether Immerwahr was prompted by that experience to 
establish, in her own mind, the precedence of a scientific-humanistic ethos over any kind of 
religious ideology. That she did come to rank a scientist’s morality of a shared humanity more 
highly than religious dogma – particularly where self-determination over one’s own life (and 
the end of one’s own life) was concerned –, is, however, a highly probable developmental 
condition of her life story, considering its actual culmination in a highly demonstrative suicide. 
On the basis of this exemplary piece of biographical writing, the connection of fictivity and 
factuality may be considered in terms of its fundamental structures, and may be revealed as 
really a case of fictivity in the service of factuality. In fact, we are looking at an explanation of 
the »how it was possible that« type, in which the explanandum is a confirmed (historical) fact, 
while the antecedent condition of the explanatory regularity can only be postulated as a 
psychologically plausible, hermeneutically intelligible life event. It is this combination of 
factual effects (hence explained) and fictive conditions (thus explaining), or, otherwise put, of 
historical factuality and (psychologically) probable fictivity, which is meant to be captured by 
the term »real fiction«. 
Biography as a genre is particularly suitable for the elaboration of this concept of »real fiction«, 
because it has been seen as »fundamentally caught between facts and fiction« – between 
factuality and fictivity – for quite some time now. To justify the introduction of a new genre, 
however, the level of detail chosen must be such that it, on the one hand, allows us to apprehend 
the differences, in terms of literary theory, between this new model and other, established 
models of factuality, while at the same time giving a nuanced, structured account – one that 
meets the requirements of the philosophy of science– of how precisely fictivity might be said 
to be »in the service of factuality«. With regard to genre concepts already established in literary 
theory, one will have to consider the historical novel and the writing of the New Objectivity 
movement as well as documentary literature. In the case of the historical novel, writers’ 
»fictivity leeway« is much greater, since there is no requirement for a strict coherence with 
concrete factual explananda. As an antithesis to this, consider the writing of the New 
Objectivists, which is characterised by a predominance of factuality which is accompanied by 
a wholesale – if overgeneralised – rejection of aesthetic concerns and the demand for an 
unreserved critique of society and ideology. This same anti-ideological impulse also 
characterises documentary literature, in which the preferred narrative strategies are even fewer 
(being restricted to the modes of reportage, montage, etc.). The genre of »real fiction«, by 
contrast, is much more open and flexible, both in terms of (theoretical) content and narrative 
strategies. In return, however, it places significantly higher demands on the structural relation 
between fiction and factuality, insofar as an explanation of relevant historical facts has to be 
given. Thus, the concept of »real fiction« is characterised by a combination of openness 
(regarding its possible topics and content) with a formally concise explanatory structure. This 
is how »real fiction« particularizes the fictive in the service of the factual. 
In the end, »real fiction« can be explicated as a form of narrative explanation in the sense 
proposed by Danto. It is concerned with the historical explanation of developments – and in the 
case of biography, more specifically, with the explanatory reconstruction of a life story in 
ontogenetic terms. Thus, the reconstruction of fictive life events in the form of a narrative does 
indeed provide a causal explanation, but it does so employing narrative strategies. This permits 
an epistemological differentiation between »real fiction« and both explanatory narration and 
thought experiments, at the same time effecting a marked pragmatization (through recourse to 
the criterion of relevance) and a heightened flexibility of narrative strategies available. If one 
3 
 
conceives of the combination of fictivity and narration as the source of literariness, we are 
ultimately confronted with a synthesis of (literary) art and science, of scientificity and 
literariness. Being, in the memorable phrase of Wilhelm Dilthey, a wissenschaftliches 
Kunstwerk (i. e., a »scientific« or »scholarly work of art«), »real fiction« is both: literature 
striving for the highest standards of scholarship – and scholarship given a literary form. 
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5 
 
2021-07-02 
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How to cite this item: 
Abstract of: Eva-Maria Konrad, On the History of the Practice of Fictionality – and the Recurring Problems in its 
Investigation. 
In: JLTonline (02.07.2021)  
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Biographische Real-Fiktion als Paradigma narrativer Erklärung

Nienhaus, Sarah A.

Richter, Max

Approaching the ›prize of prizes‹: Literature in the Nobel Era [Literature in the Nobel Era: Comparative, Theoretical, and Archival Approaches to the Nobel Prize in Literature. German Literature Archive, DLA Marbach, 25.–27.08.2021]

Werle, Dirk

Korn, Uwe Maximilian

1 
 
Dirk Werle und Uwe Maximilian Korn 
Telling the Truth: Fictionality and Epic in Seventeenth-Century 
German Literature 
(Abstract) 
• Full-length article in: JLT 14/2 (2020), 241–259. 
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. 
2 
 
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. 
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2021-07-02 
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: Dirk Werle und Uwe Maximilian Korn, Telling the Truth: Fictionality and Epic in Seventeenth-
Century German Literature. 
In: JLTonline (02.07.2021)  
Persistent Identifier: urn:nbn:de:0222-004540 
Link: http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:0222-004540 
 
 


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

Zipfel, Frank

The Pleasures of Imagination. Aspects of Fictionality in the Poetics of the Age of Enlightenment and in Present-Day Theories of Fiction

Dziudzia, Corinna

Historisierung des Diskurses und Potenzierung ästhetischer Erfahrungen in der Literatur der (Post-)Moderne

Nantke, Julia

Einführung sui generis: Ins Gespräch kommen mit den digitalen Geisteswissenschaften an der Universität Stuttgart [Peggy Bockwinkel, Beatrice Nickel, Gabriel Viehhauser (Hg.), Digital Humanities, 2018]

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