803 research outputs found
Bernt Ture von zur Mühlen, Gustav Freytag. Biographie. Wallstein, Göttingen 2016. 272 S., € 24,90. Hans-Werner Hahn / Dirk Oschmann (Hgg.), Gustav Freytag (1816–1895). Literat – Publizist – Historiker. (Veröffentlichungen der Historischen Kommission für Thüringen, Kleine Reihe 48) Böhlau, Köln u. a. 2016. 295 S., € 42,–.
No full text
Die metrische Gestalt. Mit Überlegungen zur Sinnfälligkeit des Viertakters
No full textThe article discusses some possibilities for drawing on hypotheses of a gestalt-theoretical psychology of perception for metrical analysis in literary studies. The analysis of metrical language is first described using Max Wertheimer's term »Realteilung« (real division), in which hypothetical units (feet, bars/measures, lines) are reconstructed without definite knowledge as to whether they were parts of the whole in the first place. The laws of perception in gestalt theory are suggested as a psychological heuristic to facilitate ›real divisions‹ in cases of competing options. Building upon already existing applications of gestalt theory on questions of metrics (Reuven Tsur and the linguistic optimality theory, among others), the article discusses some problems that stem from analyzing quasi-visual structure principles.The first problem is posed by the commonly assumed equivalence of two- and three-syllable feet (or one- and two-syllable upbeats), which in many cases renders an analysis by ›metrical feet‹ implausible. The gestalt principle of simplicity (as a meta-principle for sub-principles such as similarity, symmetry, etc.), which leads to the division of a text into possibly equal metrical feet, appears unsatisfactory in this light. The alternative suggested here is based on the premise that during sub-vocalization (i. e. the internal reading-out-loud of a text) the reader of verses tries to create approximately equal measurements of time (bars) rather than trying to visualize a structure of metrical feet. Thus, a principle of analysis that draws on measuring time and stress is regarded as primary in terms of perception psychology. The principle of metrical feet is not entirely abandoned by this, but will remain relevant in many cases, especially in historical intentional analyses (i. e. asking for the structure intended by the poet). The principle of time measurement and stress, however, is understood to require fewer presuppositions and can in some cases prevail over the reader's perception despite the poet's intention.A second problem arises when texts are anachronistically re-analyzed in terms of feet and bars when they were originally following syllabic measurements. Therefore, a new gestalt principle is suggested: the concept of ›graspable size‹ (»fassliche Größe«) can explain why smaller units (e. g. metrical feet) are apparently preferred to larger ones (e. g. lines). This principle can be deduced from the cerebral processing of acoustic stimuli in the human brain.Thirdly, the article discusses whether it is really the similarity of sub-units that creates simplicity or optimality, or whether there are certain progression patterns that provide for simplicity or optimality. The tetrameter serves as an example which is most often regarded as a binary (and therefore especially simple) metrical pattern. It is argued that instead of assuming a binary structure with two similar halves (AA), a complementary structure XB should be assumed that consists of openings and closings of verses. This assumption is supported by the fact that variation more often occurs in verse openings than in verse closings, and that typical closing figures (»Klauseln«) can often be found.In this article, such closing figures are understood to be signals for gestalt closure (which serve a time-bound auditive perception better than a merely synchronically graspable sequence of similarly structured elements), for which an explanation is attempted that uses the idea of ›conceptual metaphors‹ by Lakoff and Johnson. In this light, the adonic verse at the end of a hexemater, paused lifts and parasitic feet appear to be metaphorical (body mimetical) figures of deceleration. Hypercatalectic verse endings, long lines at the end of a stanza, and other forms appear as metaphorical figures for weighing down or pedestal formation. Other signals for gestalt closure are pauses, which according to the gestalt principle of proximity divide elements that do not belong together while connecting elements that do, and the principle of variation in penultimate position as described by Tsur.The last part of this article refers again to these closing figures in order to examine the usefulness of the principles suggested for text analysis. The poem Sachliche Romanze by Erich Kästner serves as an example. This poem is structured in demotic tetrameter, that has been identified as an especially optimal (as they follow the criteria of time-measuring stress pattern, graspable size and gestalt closure through closing figures), if not potentially universal metrical pattern. At the same time, the poem uses this simple structure in a sophisticated manner, which creates a special effect through a few deviations in the final stanza. This particular effect, as the analysis attempts to show, is achieved through a complex interplay of gestalt closure and delay of closure, which could not be reconstructed without referring to the principles of perception established in this article
Kontext ›Gesellschaft‹. Literarische Kommunikation – Semantik – Strukturgeschichte
No full textAbstractThis article is concerned with the question of what we mean by contextualizing a literary text in terms of social history. What are we setting a text in relation to if we assign ›society as a context‹ to it? And what is the nature of this relation? An attempt is made to answer the first question by defining society as communication. The article teases out the forms of communication that can be understood as a ›text‹ and those that can be understood as a social ›context‹. The second question picks up what is known as the Vermittlungsproblem (correlation problem) – that is, the problem, for which a solution is not believed to have been found, of how to theoretically model the relationship between text and context. In the final part of the article, this problem is steered toward a conceptual solution by distinguishing between different kinds of context (communication setting, the problem at stake, cultural knowledge, communication situation).The article begins with a brief historical outline of the field, which takes us back to the origins of the concept of »social history« in the history of scholarship. The characteristic innovation of the sozialgeschichtliche Literaturwissenschaft (sociohistorical literary studies) advocated in the 1970s and 1980s is identified as its attempt to arrive, drawing on contemporary models of structural sociology, at a more complex social theory than had been used by the earlier sociology of literature shaped by Marxism and ideological criticism. This led to two problems that were still to be satisfactorily solved in the 1980s. First, it seemed as though the sociological models could be used to describe only ›literature as social system‹, but not ›literature as symbolic system‹, because the sociological concept of action was unable to capture the special features of literary activity. Second, the starting point for theoretically conceptualizing the relation between literary ›text‹ and social ›context‹ was the special historical case of an autonomous system of art in a society where it was functionally distinct, which meant that the scope of the sociohistorical paradigm was confined to literature from the modern period.Both these problems, the present article suggests, can be solved by applying the model of sociocultural evolution that was developed above all by Niklas Luhmann and following it through to its logical conclusion. The first stage in showing this more clearly is to provide a vertical outline of literary communication, in other words to ask how, out of the totality of social communication events, particular communications can be identified as potentially relevant for the interests of research in literary studies. In a first step, a special type of communication distinct from normal communication is identified. It is marked by a characteristic embedded communication structure which we can describe as objectification or metalinguistic referentialization. An embedded structure of this kind is present if a given communication (e. g. »once upon a time a horse …«) is metalinguistically referred to by other communications (e. g. »tell me the story about the horse«).The basic concept of literature defined in this way is very wide-ranging and does not consider any criteria of the ›literary‹ in the sense of a certain quality of the text; instead, it is based solely on the criterion of ›textuality‹ (as a result of communicative objectification). Any further restriction ›above‹ this basic concept can be carried out only in a historically empirical manner, that is, by analysing the objectified communications themselves and the adjoining communications that are centred around them. That is the second step in narrowing things down. On the basis of the elements that recur in such communication settings, it is possible to identify structures of expectation that have become stably established in communication and together form a particular (e. g. ›literary‹) semantics. By »semantics«, Luhmann, following Reinhart Koselleck, understands a cultural repository of rules for processing meaning. Talking in rhymes, or cultural concepts such as ›novel‹, ›fictionality‹, ›author‹, are examples of such rules for processing meaning in the literary domain. They are, that is, part of various historically specific literary »semantics« or »symbolic systems« of the literary. Such structures have been stably established to a high degree in literary ›genres‹, which have already been described by Wilhelm Voßkamp as »socio-literary institutions« along these very lines.In a third step, the degree to which such developments in literary semantics are separated from other semantics that structure social communication is considered. The article argues against the assumption that there is a system of high literature that has been established as distinct since the transitional time between the early modern and modern periods, and puts forward instead a bottom-up model of literary microsystems, each of which may become stably established, that do not necessarily form part of an overarching social system of ›literature‹ but can enter into historically variable combinations with other communication contexts. As can be seen from the longevity of the old concept of literature in the sense of the totality of learned tradition (historia litteraria), large fields of literary communication in the mid-nineteenth century, for example, are closely intertwined with other social discourses of knowledge in what has, in the sense of this broad concept of literature, been described by Peter Uwe Hohendahl as a literarische Öffentlichkeit (literary public sphere). Whether a particular area of literary communication under consideration can be treated as a communication system that operates as a closed system, can in turn be determined only by analysing its historical and empirical processes of communication. Of crucial importance is the fact that the communication settings involved form such a high level of recursiveness and self-referentiality that they develop an understanding of themselves as distinct from their surroundings. Historically variable processes of system formation of this kind are part of structural change in society as a whole, and a more detailed analysis of such processes of change in the domain of the literary in relation to the rest of social communication could, in the long term, lead to more appropriate periodizations of literary history.After this outline of literary communication, we return to the problem of contextualization in literary studies. If literary communication is, as described, understood as dynamic subfields of social communication, four different concepts of context can be distinguished:›Context‹, in a basic sense, means the place of literary communication in general social communication, that is, other communication events that are close to it in time.›Context‹, in the sense of a literary studies that seeks to explain, often means the historical problem at stake, the solution to which is treated as the function of a particular structure of literary communication.In addition, other (non-literary) semantics (cultural knowledge) of the time are often referred to as ›contexts‹.›(Real) historical context‹, often used synonymously with ›social context‹, encompasses not only the social but also the non-social – that is, for example, physical, biological, or psychological – surroundings of literary communication, and is terminologically accounted for here using the linguistic concept of the communication situation.With the help of this differentiation, the particular kind of contextualization that sociohistorical literary studies aims to provide can be described as follows: sociohistorical literary studies examines the embedding of ›textual‹ acts of communication in larger communication settings that are connected with them in the manner of adjoining communications (context1). It does so in order, first, to determine more precisely the nature of such communication settings (structures, level of stability, self-description) and, second, to identify, through the functional analysis of the semantics they use, relevant problems at stake (context2) and cross-discourse referential structures (context3). The focus in the process lies on socially conditioned problems at stake (economics, politics, culture); non-social aspects of the literary communication situation, which are, moreover, present in context4, lie outside the sociological descriptive remit of this form of literary studies
Versanalyse
No full textÜber die Kapitel "Grundlagen", "Metrum vs. Rhythmus", "Rhythmus in Spannung zum metrischen Schema", "Rhythmus als eigener Gestalteindruck", "Intentionale vs. systematische Metrikanalyse", "Das Problem (ein Beispiel)", "Sprachenspezifische Prosodien und "natürliche Versifikation", "Der trochäisch-daktylische Grundrhythmus des Neuhochdeutschen" und "Semantik der metrischen Form" gibt Katja Mellmann einen einführenden Überblick zur Versanalyse
Ein Pilotprojekt
No full textDie wachsende Anzahl an Retrodigitalisaten historischer Literatur- und Kulturzeitschriften stellt eine wichtige Quelle für literaturgeschichtliche Rezeptionsforschung dar. Der folgende Aufsatz berichtet von unserem Versuch, an Hand eines Probekorpus Instrumente für die Sentimentanalyse literaturkritischen Schrifttums des späten 19. Jahrhunderts zu entwickeln. Dies umfasst unter anderem eine Domänenanpassung des Sentimentwort-Lexikons, Überlegungen zur Analyseeinheit, zur Berechnung des Sentiment-Werts, zur Eignung weiterer Features für eine automatische Klassifikation und zum Umgang mit Problemen der Textsorte Rezension
- …
