Showing papers in "Neohelicon in 2002"

Canon Formation Revisited: Canon and Cultural Production

Abstract: In this paper I propose to discuss what I view as a major aspect in the conception of the role of the canon in regulating culture, namely, the question of how it is related to current cultural production and consumption. I then propose to discuss some aspects of the process of canon formation. The scope of problematization prevailing in the Anglo-American debate about the canon seems to be too predictable and limited as a conceptual framework for a serious historical research (rather than “critique”) into processes of canon formation. Revolving around the question of cultural values, this discourse fails to exceed the limits of the same reductive, normative conception of “high” culture (in the sense of the body of select artifacts), which it basically aspires to challenge. Its commitment to a progressive ideological agenda notwithstanding, this discourse helps reinforcing - rather than revolutionizing - the power of the canon. In the final analysis, this discourse fails to deal with the canon as a general mechanism, indispensable for the organization and evolution of societies. Regarding the first issue, two problems will be discussed, as follows: (1) The question of transitoriness: the fascination with relativism and contingencies of values leads to viewing the canon as entirely negotiable and versatile, far more than it is so in reality. This view underestimates the specific weight of established canons as accumulative, widely shared and persistent cultural reservoirs, which endure the vicissitude of dominant tastes promoted by different groups in different times. As such, the status of the canon is almost irreversibly secured. The formation of the canon is hence a long-term process occurring in addition to the short-term process of shifting trends and legging behind it. (2) The question of generativeness: the nexus usually taken for granted between the valorization of artifacts and their recycling in the cultural market is misleading. Canonicity is independent of whether or not the items serve as generative models for current cultural production. Often, the sanctification of items through canonization rituals suspends the availability of these items as active models for interfering with the actual cultural market. Consequently, the canon operates as a stabilizing mechanism (a cultural “sock-absorber”) in the ongoing cultural battlefield, and may equally invoked, as a source of legitimation, by all of the participating rival groups. Regarding the second issue, it is argued that while all cultural practices have “canonical rules”(in the sense of accepted standards), not all have canons in the full sense of a tangible pantheon. The making of such a pantheon depends on the existence of an autonomous field with authorized consecrating agencies. Therefore, in cases of canon formation in (as yet) “canonless” fields, the canonisers need to be able to act as compatible agents in other, highly canonized fields, so as to borrow models from these field, in order to confer canonicity on the cultural production in their own fields. In all canonizing processes, the canonisers" strategies oscillate between the tendency to consolidate existing canonized repertoire and that of prefiguring a new one and present it as canonical from the outset. Usually, however, the prefiguration of new canonized repertoire comes only late in the process of canon formation, after a prolonged phase of conformity with the existing canon.

Globalization and Culture: the Chinese Cultural and Intellectual Strategy

Abstract: The essay first traces the origin of globalization before offering some positive and practical strategy toward its challenge. To the author, globalization in culture is stubbornly resisted by the other strong force: localization and various types of ethnicism or nationalism. In the face of the current strong impact of economic globalization, consumer culture has become one of the hot topics confronting scholars of both literary and cultural studies. Through some analyses of various phenomena in contemporary Chinese culture, the author tries to offer some practical strategy: China does not prevent economic globalization from coming into the country, for it might well help stimulate the rapid development of Chinese economy; but culturally, it does try to prevent its culture from being “globalized” or “homogenized”. Actually the globalization in culture does not merely lie in the “homogenization” of culture but also in the “pluralization” of different cultures and literatures as well. Globalization has also influenced the establishment of China"s national and cultural identity. Although cultural globalization might easily blur the cultural identity of an individual national culture, it could also bring about something positive. It has actually brought people of the Third World with both positive and negative effects: If we face the challenge in a critical way and make full use of the opportunity to develop our national culture in a broad international context, we will most probably highlight the Chinese national and cultural identity and make the essence of Chinese culture and literature known to the world. In doing literary and cultural studies, we should take neither the attitude of the (imperialist) global nor the (nationalistic) local. A sort of “glocal” transcendental attitude might well prevent literary and cultural studies from falling in another crisis.

Literature as Goods, Literature as Tools

Abstract: Literature, like any other social activity capable of generating perpetuated products, has likewise functioned along the ages on two different levels. On the one level, it managed to generate and provide possible models for consensual explanations of the world as well as for actual behavior. On the other, it managed to establish itself as a possible asset in an international stock exchange of symbolic capitals. Writing an adequate history of literature, it is suggested in this paper, should better take into account these two levels, as well as the correlations between them. With a better understanding of these correlations, the history of literature can be better understood as an often major factor in the social organization of life. This can help, on a more general level, to integrate the study of literature into a wider framework, by underlining the most distinctive and manifest function of literature in the creation and maintenance of society by means of its culture.

In Search of the Noble Savage: Some Romantic Cases

Abstract: The idea of the noble savage is as early as Oroonoko; or, The Royal Slave (1688), a novel by Aphra Behn, or Friday, the cannibal in Robinson Crusoe(1719).In Chateaubriand's major novels with New World settings it mirrors European yearning for naivete and purity. In Cooper's Leatherstocking Tales both the “white savage” Natty Bumppo and his friend, the Indian chief, Chingachgook are destined to be outmoded by historical forces. An early novel, Typee: A Peep at Polyneasian Life during a Four Months' Residence in a Valley of the Marquesas, by Herman Melville discloses that the Typee way of life is not very conducive to upholding the European myth of the noble savage. Robert Louis Stevenson's relative success in falling into the embrace of the South Seas when he settled in Samoa is contrasted with Paul Gauguin's contradictory search for Rousseauesque refuge in a primitive culture and his yearning for recognition as an artist by European contemporaries. The idea of the noble savage has been a productive misprision or cultural lie in many respects but today its lingering cliche supports a superannuated hord of lesser Gauguins.

Zrinyi, Zriny, Zrinski

Abstract: Opera tends to be an international art The national operas that emerged towards the middle of the nineteenth century represent a deviation, because they made use of librettos in the vernacular and often employed elements of a native musical tradition More often than not, they thematized events from the national past in order to strengthen the nation's sense of identity I argue that national operas ought to be seen as an important element of the national awakening that took place in Europe, especially in its Eastern and Southern parts, and relate its textual, musical, and institutional dimensions to the linguistic and literary awakenings Yet, paradoxically, national awakenings and national operas often relied on foreign ideas and artistic currents Ivan Zajc's Croatian national opera, Nikola Subi h Zrinski (1876), for instance, is based on Theodor Korner's anti-Napoleonic German play Zriny (1812), which, in turn, was inspired by Friedrich Schlegel's Vienna lectures on literary history and Hungarian historical materials By means of this case study I show that, contrary to their explicit ideology, national awakenings and national operas seized whatever came their way, often reductively adopting hybrid or foreign materials for national purposes

Origins and Evolution of Comparative Literature and Its Interdisciplinary Studies

Abstract: The paper presents theses for discussion locating some common cultural denominators in view of the interest of the general practitioner of the discipline. Today, American scholars carve out from texts special angles pointing not inwards but outwards, toward other, prevalently non-aesthetic disciplines (political, ethnic, racial, gender-and-sex related, etc.) to illustrate their broadly 'cultural' commitments. Comparing integral literary works from different cultures, the crux of comparative literature, has become a rarity. Context is not brought in to elucidate the total import of the text, but, inversely, text is used to elucidate context, confirm theory, deductive rather than inductive. There has been a major shift from the vertical literary-cultural to the horizontal literary-non literary. In the United States the literary core of comparative literature has become secondary if not dropped altogether. On the pro side, truly interdisciplinary studies, especially in historiography, philosophy, anthropology, the hard sciences and technology, along with the consanguine inter-arts constellation, have enriched comparative literature scholarship. On the con side, the inter-disciplinary drive, with its pitfalls of amateurism, has pushed back the inter-national/inter-linguistic core of comparative literature which demands a slow-to-acquire, reasonably comprehensive knowledge of language, literature, and history of at least one non-English culture. Most interdisciplinary studies currently carried on in the United States are distressingly monolingual and monocultural. Of the two principal aims of interdisciplinary scholarship envisaged 40–50 years ago, the affinity-and-interaction-oriented goal of interdisciplinary studies in comparative literature has proved, if anything, too successful, but the co-equal goal of refining and redefining distinctions has been submerged in the tide of culture theory and criticism.

Bus Stop. Signal Driver - The Dramaturgy of Waiting: Gao Xingjian, Patrick White and Samuel Beckett

Abstract: Samuel Beckett"s Waiting for Godot is one of the truly great plays of the 20th century. While the enigmatic figure of Godot has attracted the bulk of critical interest, less has been said about the act of waiting which is also at the centre of Gao Xingjian"s Chezhan (The Bus Stop) and Patrick White"s Signal Driver. This paper examines the dramaturgy of waiting in the three plays and identifies similarities and differences in dramatic technique, thematic concern and theatrical representation.

Das Netz des ausgebreiteten taktes

Abstract: Attila Jozsefs Lyrik erfuhr im Zuge der erstaunlich schnellen Kanonisierung eine recht zwiespaltige Rezeption: Wahrend eine betrachtliche Anzahl seiner Werke bereits seit Jahrzehnten zu den relevantesten der ungarischen Moderne gehort, blieb in der referentiell-anthropologisierenden Lesart dieser Rezeption gerade diejenige poetologische Leistung seiner Texte ausgeblendet, die die ganze spatmoderne Lyrik am tiefsten beeinflust hat. So eigenartig es auch scheinen mag: Unser Wissen uber die Poetik des am starksten kanonisierten Klassikers der ungarischen Moderne ist, was die diskursiven Moglichkeiten der zeitgenossischen Literaturwissenschaft angeht, ebenso fraglich, wie das uber den sprachlichen Hintergrund seiner textgenerierenden Prinzipien oder uber die rhetorischen Pramissen seiner Bildgestaltung. Wenn aber das Rollenparadigma in [Ich bin ein Dichter] unvereinbar ist mit dem in Ars poetica, wenn das Menschenbild von Thomas Mann zum Grus dem in Besinnung diametral entgegensteht, wenn die Sprachauffassung in Am Rand der Stadt die in Kunstler und sein Kreis ausschliest, dann unterstutzt diese Erfahrung sehr nachdrucklich die Beobachtung von Istvan Vas, das von den Illusionen des geordneten Wissens her gesehen Attila Jozsef vermutlich “der am meisten misverstandene ungarische Dichter des zwanzigsten Jahrhunderts war”. Im Beitrag wird der Versuch unternommen, die wichtigsten rhetorischen Verfahren und tropologischen Techniken einer Lyrik zu erschliesen, die die darauffolgende dichtungsgeschichtliche Periode am starksten pragte, wobei das Augenmerk gelegentlich auf bislang weniger beachtete Texte von A. Jozsef gerichtet wird, die – langerfristig gesehen – sogar die metaphysischen Zwange der bedeutungszentrierten Kanonbildung schlechthin revidieren konnen.

Fortschritt und Verbrechen im Roman des 19. Jahrhunderts

Abstract: Dans l"etude suivante deux romans du XIXe siecle juges importants et typiques par leurs sujets comme par leurs formes sont decrits dans l"intention de presenter leur richesse comme celle de leur reception dans le contexte du siecle en indiquant que les idees restent actuelles qu"ils discutent. La distance historique peut faire mieux comprendre les contextes et les problemes. L"intention est de demontrer cela en demontrant que la poesie a ses propres qualites en se servant de motifs et d"images dans son domaine en face d"un monde de concepts et d"idees philosophiques, sociologiques, psychologiques et historiques qui se qualifie comme different du monde poetique etant plus definitif et donc en meme temps plus etroit. Le cosmos polyvalent des belles-lettres doit trouver une presentation dans un style epique et associatif comme il a ete prefere dans le roman moderne. Ici, les deux romanciers sont vus dans une perspective historique et supra-nationale dans le contexte d"une histoire de la pensee europeenne (-americaine) dans laquelle une sorte de revolution ideologique au milieu du XIXe siecle a ete constatee. Celle-ci change le paradigme du « naturel » rousseauiste - fondement mental du romantisme - contre celui d"« objectivite des verites sociales » - qui cree le realisme bourgeois. Les auteurs creent leurs romans et les solutions des problemes du temps quant a la forme dans le cadre de la poesie mais ils se placent aussi dans le cadre de la pensee de leurs epoques respectives. Ce qui peut arriver par des actions criminelles qui sont leurs sujets, cela est decrit dans des contes individualises mais egalement partant des idees de l"epoque et du contexte general de la civilisation. Dans celui-ci le crime sera puni, l"assassinat impardonnable, la revolte violente et brutale nefaste pour le bonheur du revolte quoique les perspectives et les reponses qu"elles suggerent soient differentes et pluralistes chez les deux auteurs. Le progres comme une grande perspective de tout le siecle restera important dans les deux romans qui montrent une difference marquee entre le profit que la societe peut tirer des criminels penitents et leurs succes et bonheur individuels devenus impossibles. Balzac et Fontane se presentent grands dans leurs romans poetiques et substantiels, mais trop peu goþtes et certainement souvent sous-estimes jusqu"ici. Leurs œuvres discutent les problemes comme ils voient les gens de leurs epoques dans la pluralite qui convient au roman, mais il ne ferment pas les yeux devant les problemes qui sont ceux du mal, du crime et, on peut le dire, du terrorisme - quoique toute description et enumeration ne puisse rendre les contenus complexes des deux romans comme œuvres d"art dont l"etude essaiera pourtant de donner ses resultats a sa fin.

Representations of the child in modern irish drama

Abstract: The present paper surveys representations of the child-subject in modern Irish drama from the 1890s to the 1980s, examining their links with the process of decolonization through revealing some of the social and psychological effects of colonialism and its aftermath. In the early 19th century the newly constructed roles of the child became entrenched in the ideology of colonial imperialism. During the Irish Literary Revival, the drama as a key literary genre provided a decidedly anti-imperial response to and counteracting of the colonial stereotypes which described the Irish as feminine, child-like and uncivilized, by redirecting the force of these categories. In several plays of the period the character still growing tends to be implicated in the project of highlighting the difference between the paralytic world of the moment and the potential for change, and is shown as capable of envisaging and anticipating transformation. After the 1920s, in post-independence and post-colonial times the dramatized child-subject becomes related to the sense of frustration and impasse generated by the persistence of the old narratives, troping the experience of communal and individual crisis, loss, the difficulty or even impossibility to change certain patterns, prejudices and attitudes. It is only in the late 1980s that this trend seems to change, and the child in drama evokes the transcendence of past traumas, looking back to the Irish theatre of the early 1900s. The conclusion of the paper points to the recent emerging of yet another group of contemporary Irish plays with teenagers as protagonists, which junior characters, along with their counterparts in world-drama, perform a new aspect of the cultural and anthropological self-definition of the postmodern individual.

Von Ethnopsychologie zu Ethnoimagologie

Abstract: Ausgehend von einer Verwandtschaft, die zwischen der Vergleichenden Literaturwissenschaft und der ehemaligen sogenannten Volkerpsychologie bestanden hat, wird daran erinnert, dass im Rahmen der europaischen Komparatistik eine als “Imagologie” bezeichnete Subdisziplin entwickelt wurde, die nicht nur eine logische Konsequenz jeglicher vergleichendliteraturwissenschaftlicher Forschung war, sondern die – indem sie gewisse Fragestellungen der “Volkerpsychologie” von einer anderen Warte aus aufs neue aufgriff – zu einer Wissenschaft von Europas “nationaler” Vielfalt werden konnte, die sich angesichts eines Zusammenwachsens der “Volker” als aussergewohnlich aktuell erwies. Durch die Entwicklung sowohl der Literaturvergleichung als auch der Erforschung der grenzuberschreitenden Literatur- und Geistesbeziehungen kam es innerhalb einer kritisch-rationalistisch ausgerichtetenen Komparatistik zu einer radikalen Absage an alle Versuche, den “Nationen”, “Volkern” usw. eigene determinierte und determinierende “Nationalcharaktere” zuzuschreiben; und die der “volkerpsychologischen” Verirrung bezichtigte Komparatistik brachte auf diese Weise sogar einen deutlichen Gegenpol zu jeder Art von “Volkerpsychologie” hervor, durch den das Denken in nationalen Kategorien uberhaupt relativiert wurde. In einer Zeit der allgemeinen Agonie des Konzepts einer neben den Einzelphilologien akademisch selbstandigen Vergleichenden Literaturwissenschaft erweist sich die komparatistische Imagologie als Verwirklichung der philosophisch-anthropologischen Dimension einer ursprunglich vielversprechenden literaturwissenschaftlichen Disziplin.

Zwischen uns sei Wahrheit

Abstract: Goethes Iphigenie, nach ihres Dichters eigenen Worten eine ,,tragedie en cinq actes, tout a fait selon les regles', ist um eine klassische Intrige zentriert, die den Geschwistern Orest und Iphigenie die Flucht aus der Gewalt des Taurerkonigs Thoas und den vermeintlich vom Delphischen Orakel geforderten Raub des Kultbildes der Diana ermoglichen soll. Aber zuletzt deckt Iphigenie das Komplott selbst auf und rettet gerade dadurch sich und die Ihren; nicht die Zwange der Handlungsfuhrung, sondern die Dispositionen der Protagonistin bestimmen den Ausgang des Dramas. Ein solcher Bedeutungsverlust der Stuckintrige ware kaum denkbar ohne die von den englischen Shakespeare-Apologeten des 18. Jahrhunderts lancierte Kritik an der Aristotelischen Doktrin vom Primat der Handlung, die im Umkreis des Strasburger Goethe, namentlich in Jakob Michael Reinhold Lenzens Anmerkungen ubers Theater, ihren Hohepunkt erreicht. Der Weimarer Goethe findet die Legitimation fur seine Normabweichung in einer analogen Aufhebung der tragenden Trughandlung am Ende des Sophokleischen Philoktet, der ihm wohl schon in seiner Strasburger Zeit von Herder nahegebracht worden war. Moglicherweise stost er dabei auf ein authentisches Anliegen des ,,grosen Meisters seiner fruhen Jahre', den nur zu erahnenden Wunsch, der kunstlichen Mechanik der Euripideischen Intrigenstucke eine (beinahe) letzte Tragodie entgegenzusetzen, in der die edle Natur des jugendlichen Helden uber den ihm angesonnenen Betrug triumphiert.

Reden, reden, reden. Zur Gesprächskultur bei Boccaccio, Goethe und Diderot

Abstract: Das Erzahlung Erzahlung meint und nicht Nach-Erzahlung, last sich bereits am “Decamerone” des Boccaccio ablesen – dem fruhesten Fall von Erzahlung, in dem Erzahlung sich selbst reflektiert. Goethe greift in den “Unterhaltungen deutscher Ausgewanderten” Boccaccios Modell der Rahmenerzahlung wieder auf und versucht erneut, zwischen Erzahlung und Nicht-Erzahlung, die doch auch wieder erzahlt wird, eine asthetische Distanz zu legen – eine Distanz, die Kunst von verschmahter Realitat abtrennt. Das Modell der Rahmenerzahlung wird freilich schon vor Goethe durch Diderots “Jacques le fataliste” zerstort. Die asthetische Distanz wird eingezogen, und Stucke von Realitat vermengen sich dergestalt mit Stucken von Erzahlung, das beide nicht mehr voneinander zu trennen sind. Schillers Versuch, aus Teilen von Diderots Erzahlbruchstucken ein neues Erzahlkontinuum (Geschichte der Madame de La Pommeraye) zu fingieren, mutet eigenartig verspatet an.

Interkultureller Vergleich und Moderner Roman

Abstract: The article analyzes a special mode of a comparative activity, namely the “intercultural” comparison as a phenomenon of modernism and post-modernism. Faced with the pressure put upon them by the continuing process of globalization and world-wide streams of migration, new literary developments are surfacing, as well as new methodological (comparatist) approaches like the research of cultural transfer or intercultural discourse analysis. Since culture is no longer perceived as a self-contained entity, but as an open intercultural process (Homi K. Bhabha), it brings forth culturally “hybrid” works of literature. Such a literature is determined and lent special dynamics by a dialectical dichotomy (or even a paradox) of adaptation (globalization, universalism) and resistance (local difference). The latter can be exemplarily demonstrated by the interrelation between western and eastern culture. This interrelation is founded upon a long tradition, for example with respect to Goethe and Hafiz, although it is being perpetuated in new and critical ways by authors like Rushdie and Djebar. This article also sets out to illustrate that on the one hand the post-modern hybridization of literature corresponds to a new, post-colonial reality (which is not conceptualized in a eurocentrist way), while, on the other hand, it must be classified as an artifact and a conscious construction. Most paradoxically, the novels under scrutiny use the very aesthetic procedures that we find in the European (Manierist) tradition.

Walter Pater as Mythmaker

Abstract: After a brief review of Pater"s interest in classical mythology, the essay discusses the applications that he made of myth in order to highlight Victorian social anxieties. In this context, special attention is given to his treatment of the Dionysian-Apollonian antithesis. With a view to demonstrating that Pater had a genuine capacity for creating myths which reflect the consciousness of his own time, the second half of the essay concentrates on his discussion, in Hegelian terms, of Leonardo"s Mona Lisa. This is followed by an examination of the impact that the Mona Lisa passage made on the work of such outstanding representatives of English Modernism as Henry James, James Joyce and W. B. Yeats.

15 Zukunftsentwürfe der Geisteswissenschaften am Beginn des 21. Jahrhunderts

Abstract: At the beginning of the 21 th century, in no other part of the system of science there are so many debates about the future as in the Humanities. This article presents the 15 most important positions of the current debate in Central Europe. Knowing them means to be able to understand the complexity of the current discussion about this particular field of scientific activity as well as taking part in changing it. Die Geisteswissenschaften sind jene Disziplinen im System der Wissenschaft, deren Zukunft heute am kontroversesten diskutiert wird. Was Geisteswissenschaften sind, welche Aufgaben ihnen zukommen, und wo in der Zukunft ihrer Bedeutung liegen wird: dazu gibt es gegenwartig gerade angesichts der gesamteuropaischen Krisensituation dieser Wissenschaften ganz unterschiedliche Ideen und Entwurfe. Die 15 derzeit im mitteleuropaischen Raum meistdiskutierten Ideen und Entwurfe stelle ich im folgenden vor. Sie, ihre Implikationen und Folgen sind fur all diejenigen Studierenden und Lehrenden wichtig, die die Perspektiven ihrer Wissenschaftsgruppe mitgestalten und sich selbst und anderen Auskunft uber deren kunftigen Sinn geben wollen.

Le palimpseste et le roman africain: le cas des romans Xala de Sembène Ousmane et La grève des bàttu d"Aminata Sow Fall

Abstract: Les romans Xala de Sembene Ousmane et La greve des Battu d"Aminata Sow Fall mettent en scene quelques uns des personnages les plus memorables de l"Afrique postcoloniale en proie a des crises individuelles mais dont l"impact se fait sentir partout dans la communaute. A la difference des etudes deja faites sur ces romans qui se concentrent sur leur thematique, dans cet essai, je propose d"examiner le processus de creation litteraire qui unit les deux romans dans un jeu intertextuel. Les relations palimpsestiques entre ces deux romans mettent en valeur la dimension esthetique, souvent mise a l"ecart, de la litterature africaine.

How can there be paradigms

Abstract: The study undertakes to explain the kuhnian notion of paradigm, in order to work out the methodological frame of re-construction of the theory of literature. It introduces the notion of legitimising community, which, according to the study"s claims, plays a determining role in assigning a theory the status of paradigm. It differentiates the notions of strong and weak paradigm, and supports the former because it considers that the "sociological turn" of the theory of science can only occur by asserting the strong notion of paradigm. Using this theoretical frame, the study seeks an answer to the question whether Siegfried J. Schmidt"s 1983 introduction of the empirical science of literature as a new paradigm was legitimate or not.

On the Comparative Study of the Region's Literatures

Abstract: The Author is sceptical about the feasibility of region's comparative literature for three reasons: 1. The impossibility of defining the region (Central or Eastern Europe); 2. The lack of literary community of (any) region; 3. The lack of experts.