in what direction is literary theory evolving?

7/30/2019 In What Direction Is Literary Theory Evolving?

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The Journal of Literary Theory(JLT) Vol 1, No 1 (2007):

Ed. by Jannidis, Fotis / Lauer, Gerhard / Winko, SimoneIssue: New Developments in Literary Theory and Related Disciplines.

Section: In What Direction is Literary Theory Evolving?

This first issue of theJournal of Literary Theoryis being published at a time when the position of literarytheory is not an enviable one. Since the early 1990s, the humanities have seen the rise of the belief that theoryis useless, if not to say damaging, when it comes to dealing with literature. It is high time, we read, for a fresh

awareness of the literal dimension, [1] a turn away from theory and a return to practice. The significance thathas come to be attached to the idea of the end or even death of literary theory is demonstrated by the manyintense after theory and post-theory discussions involving well-known thinkers that have been particularlyprominent in the humanities in the English-speaking world in recent years. [2]

Against this background, the editors of JLT decided to undertake a modest survey of views on the future ofliterary theory. We presented scholars working on literature, philosophy, psychology, cultural studies, andmedia studies with two questions:

In what direction is literary theory evolving?Where do you think the most important questions for literary theory lie?

The responses we have received to these questions are printed in this issue and in those to come.

JLT, February 2007

Anmerkungen

[1] See Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht, Die neue Wrtlichkeit: Leise verabschiedet sich die ehrgeizige Literaturtheorie,Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung(February 16th, 2005), Geisteswissenschaften, 3. [zurck]

[2] See most recently the winter 2004 issue ofCritical Inquiry, in which Homi Bhabha, Wayne C. Booth, Stanley Fish, J.Hillis Miller, Fredric Jameson, and others set out their views on the future of theory after its end. [zurck]

Home>Vol 1, No 1 (2007)>February 2007

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Harald Fricke

(1) The mannerism Im doing theory, popular especially in fashionable circles of American and globalized

post-structuralism, has little to do with scientifically sound literary theory: the latter assumes a commitment toclarifying basic terms, employing logically coherent argumentation, and critically testing any hypothetically

formulated generalizations.(2) There can be no turning back for literary theory from the achievement of analytic philosophy and itslinguistic turn, the effect of which those seeking to construct theories on the basis of rational argument engagein critical analysis of the language they use.

(3) There have been several attempts to create arule-based modelof literature (with terms such as thegrammar of poetry, the sign system of literature, poetic conventions, and poetic competence). Various

such efforts have been dominant at one time or another; they have also been optimistically put forward in thecontext of linguistic poetics with an analytic/critical orientation, semiotics, and literary theory aligned withstructuralism or systems theory. All such efforts, however, have failed. And they are condemned to lastingfailure for compelling reasons: Any literary rule can always be individually lifted and is to this extent merely a

quasi-normwith text-internal status or limited scope in the context of literary history.

(4) Only with adeviation-based modelof poetics is it possible to generalize successfully about literature as anart form. In such a model, literary texts, text events, and textual strategies are described as violationsofotherwise binding rules of language, communication, semiotics, linguistic structure, and systems of social action(as cases ofexallaxai,priem ostranenijaas alienation, desautomatization, actualisae, foregrounding,cart/Abweichungas functional deviation). Central importance then lies with the resultant poetic blanks(Freges Leerstellen), points of indeterminacy (Ingardens Unbestimmtheitsstellen), or openness (Ecos Opera

aperta), and their fundamental appellative function (Bhler) orAppellstruktur(Iser) with respect to thecreative reader participating individually in the making of the work.

(5) It will certainly be possible to say this in an infinite variety of different and perhaps better ways in future.

But as far as the heart of the matter is concerned, we will not be able to do substantively better than the twocentral tenets of an aesthetics of deviation and its rational reconstraction in stages (see Fricke 1981, 2000):

Literature is functional deviation from linguistic norms.

Art is freedom from the law of time.

(6) So, we should not expect literary theory to yield anything fundamentally new in its own field: we willcontinue paraphrasing Aristotles basic insights. I can see only one possibility for moving beyond what has longsince been known: interdisciplinary engagement with the advancement of knowledge in other disciplines, atpresent above all a new field that has emerged only recently and consists of the philosophy of mind,psychological cognitivism, the affective sciences, cognitive linguistics, and neurological brain research a

cognitive turnto follow the linguistic one.

(7) If I were a young scholar starting my career now, I would probably embrace this transdisciplinary field andset myself the aim of developing literary theory into acognitive poetics.

Harald FrickeDepartment fr GermanistikUniversitt Freiburg/SchweizTranslated by Alastair Matthews.
mailto:[email protected]:[email protected]


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Harald Fricke, Norm und Abweichung. Eine Philosophie der Literatur, Mnchen 1981.

, Gesetz und Freiheit. Eine Philosophie der Kunst, Mnchen 2000.

Home>Vol 1, No 1 (2007)>Fricke

In: JLT 1/1 (2007), 192-193.2009-03-20JLTonline ISSN 1862-8990http://www.jltonline.de/index.php/articles/article/view/56/242

Jrg Schnert

It may sound surprising, but I believe the central problem in discussions aboutLiteraturtheorielies in the lackof a standard understanding of the terms semantic scope. The problem can be alleviated somewhat byadopting as in the title of this journal the internationally accepted term literary theory (also the usualtranslation of German Literaturtheorie): the meaning is then that of theory concerned with literature theorywith literature as its object domain, and, in addition, theory for the scholarly study of literature (note that

methodology suggests itself as a possible alternative when the term is understood in this latter sense). [1]There is no doubt that a particular scholarly understanding of the object literature and of specific text-contextrelations can have implications for the development or selection of a scholarly method. But there are plenty ofexamples to show that scholars of literature who share a single definition of literature can differ with respect to

the practical methods they use.

So as to bring the above-mentioned problem closer to a solution, Iwill now consider how the term theory hasbeen used in scholarly engagement with literature in the past fifty years, and list the possible meanings thisreveals the list, of course, makes no claim to completeness.

(1) In the 1960s, theory was, in arather vaguely stated understanding, linked to an academic habitus of literaryscholars who, as their discipline was taken in the direction of a science, pressed for it to be given a theoreticalfoundation (see further points 2 and 3 below) and carried outtheoretical work. This was often criticized withthe comment that people who dont know anything about literature (the interpretation of literature and the

writing of literary history) busy themselves with theory instead. Despite such criticism, the expansion of theGerman university system between 1965 and 1975 created an environment in which contributions to theory

provided a way of rapidly gaining scholarly standing (and in some cases jobs as well).

(2a) Theory means, before anything else, theory of the object of the study of literature for example, issuesrelating to the definition of literary texts (in the strict sense): what is literature/literariness?, what are the

constituent factors that determine the fictional worlds of literary texts? (issues of space, time, character, story,mediating entities, and so on); genre theory should also be considered here, bringing this area of theory intothe scope of poetics and the aesthetics of literary texts (neither being understood in a normative sense) aswell. [2]
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(2b) Theory can be a theoretical foundation for the activities of literary scholars such as the production ofeditions, commentaries, interpretations, literary histories, and literary criticism (literary evaluation) and acontinual revision of key concepts in the study of literature.

(2c) Theory can be understood as methodology and the discussion of methods.

(3a) Theory can be reflection on the disciplinary status and development of a field of study (as a context inwhich to consider that subjects history), including trans- and interdisciplinary issues.

(3b) Theory can be reflection on the relationship between scholarship and its environment (for example,

reflection on the contribution of scholarship to society and on the socially determined expectations placed onscholarship).

I expect thatJLTwill be particularly concerned with the questions I have outlined under (2) above, as well asbeing open to work on point (3). I also expect that an editorial to the first issue ofJLTwill provide answers tothe questions raised here.

Jrg SchnertInstitut fr Germanistik IIUniversitt HamburgTranslated by Alastair Matthews.

Terry Eagleton, Literary Theory: An Introduction, Oxford 1983.

Ansgar Nnning (ed.), Metzler Lexikon Literatur- und Kulturtheorie, Stuttgart/Weimar 1998.

Jrg Schnert, Normative Vorgaben als Theorie der Lyrik? Vorschlge zu einer texttheoretischen Revision,in: Gustav Frank/Wolfgang Lukas (eds.), NormGrenzeAbweichung: Kultursemiotische Studien zuLiteratur, Medien und Wirtschaft, Passau 2004, 303318.

[1] See Eagleton 1983; the introduction presents both the theory of the object domain and details of variousmethods. Ansgar Nnning, editor of the Metzler Lexikon Literatur- und Kulturtheorie(Nnning 1998),assumes thatLiteraturtheoriehas an even wider range of responsibilities (see ibid., vvi). [zurck]

[2] See in this respect Schnert 2004. [zurck]

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In: JLT 1/1 (2007), 194-195.http://www.jltonline.de/index.php/articles/article/view/57/119
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Uri Margolin

More than a quarter century ago, I had the audacity to publish a long article (Margolin 1979) in which Idiscussed the nature of literary theories and their relation to theories in other disciplines in the humanities.The kind invitation of the editors ofJLTaffords me a golden opportunity to revisit these perennial crucial

questions. Now while my 1979 essay appeared in the very last issue ofPTL, the present one appears in the firstissue of a new journal, which, I trust, has many years of fruitful intellectual activity ahead of it.

The Editors twin questions to the participants concern the perspectives and challenging problems of literarytheory (LT). I would like to reformulate them as what can and should LT do? Now in English usage LTmeans three interrelated things: a particular LT, the totality of LTs available, and the activity of theorizing ortheory construction. I will focus my remarks on the activity of theorizing, since its capabilities and limitationsdetermine the nature of the resultant theories. But what is a LT? A minimum definition would probably looksomething like the following: A LT is a theory (1) intended to account for one or more aspects of the literarysystem either as semiotic system or as social action one (2) as this system is demarcated in current pre-

theoretical cultural awareness (in other words, (3) it is a theory with initial and intended domains of applicationcovering at least part of the literary system), and usually, but not always, (4) formulated within the disciplinaryconfines of literary studies. All literary theories contain a factual component since they seek to account foractual (and sometimes also possible) space-time anchored phenomena: objects (texts and text elements), eventsand processes (literary change), and, of course, activities of literary production and reception. But how do weassess what such a theory can and cannot do? A sensible way would be to scrutinize actual LTs against a rosterof components, tasks and roles theoretical endeavours in any field are ideally supposed to fulfill according tophilosophy of science. The image of scientific theorising I will be relying upon is the synthetic one presented inMario Bunges comprehensive treatise (Bunge 1998). I will treat this image as an ideal type or regulative idea in

the Kantian sense and check how far (existing) LTs, especially text oriented ones, (can) go in matching it, theresults being treated as value neutral.

One overriding goal which most LTs seek to achieve is to define a series of regularities or generalities,determinate features or patterns with respect to a certain range of phenomena in the literary domain, frommetrical forms to the social constraints on literary production. Some theorists go further and look for literaryinvariants or universals as regards text types, basic plot structures (Frye, Shklovski), the structure of verse(Jakobsons law of equivalence), underlying emotions (Hogan), or the laws governing the relations between two

literary systems (Even-Zohar). The generality requirement is in fact the yardstick that tells apart poetics(theoretical, descriptive, diachronic) from textual interpretation. The quest for regularities has rationalityas itsboundary condition. Informally, rationality in theorizing can be characterized as a set of requirements forexplicit formulation of both problems and the solutions offered, intersubjectivity, that is, proceeding in a waywhich can be both learned and taught (lern- und lehrbar), respect for the rules of logic, consistency, and, in

our context, formulating claims which can be tested notionally or empirically (Hauptmeier/Schmidt 1985, 13and 118).

As far as content is concerned, LTs, like all other theories, containphilosophical presuppositionsof somekind; background theoriesthey take as valid knowledge to be drawn upon;goals, including the kind ofknowledge they want to attain; methodological norms, i. e. rules concerning the procedures to be employed tothis end (e.g. top down or bottom up), and the way claims should be formulated (e. g. formalized or not).While none of these components may be explicitly stated by a given theory, its logical reconstruction will revealtheir existence and nature.


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The building blocks of theorizing proper begin with a set ofconcepts, expressed in atheoretical vocabulary,whose elements, in the case of LTs, being either deliberately coined terms (e. g. free indirect discourse), orones consisting of an explication and sharpening of pre-theoretical terms (e. g. plot). This vocabulary isemployed in order to designate the objects and features a theory is concerned with. The terms occurring in agiven theoretical project are of course interrelated, to form a coherent network that provides the prism ormanner of seeing (Sehweise) to be employed in theorizing the targeted range of phenomena. An extensivetheoretical vocabulary is in fact the basis for developing a systematic description of phenomena in terms ofdeterminate features and their combinations, and for developing a set of distinctions and categories for anyliterary aspect. This has been recognized by poeticians from Aristotle to Genette. Classifications, taxonomiesand typologies in their turn are the first step in mustering the plurality of data and subsuming them under asmall number of headings or common denominators referring to entities, properties or relations. Thecategories themselves may be defined in terms of binaries, gradients or prototypes, and their whole systemgraphically represented as continua, matrices, trees, box diagrams or circles (e.g. Stanzels typology of narrativesituations).

Another component widespread in literary theorizing consists ofmodels, that is, simplified schematicrepresentations of selected aspects of complex real objects and the interrelations of these aspects. Such models(model objects or theoretical referents) are formulated in terms of the theoretical vocabulary employed by thescholar and provide a basic way of seeing the object and thinking about it. We thus have the semiotic model of

the literary work as a complex sign (Barthes, Corti), Ingardens model of it as a stratified system, andTynjanovs model of the verse text as a dynamic system of systems. In narratology, the text is often modeled as

consisting of several stacks or embedded circuits of communication, as a dual narration-narrated system and soon. Much of what is termed literary theory is in fact the formulation of concepts, identification of recurrentfeatures, and the setting up of typologies and models, all of which deal with existential and compositional issues(see Soerensen 1987, chapter 5). These operations do not provide, however, any claims which can besupported or rejected but rather directions what and how to observe in texts, and they are accepted ifprofessionals feel they serve as illuminating cognitive instruments, if they help us subsume, unify and integratenumerous textual features.

Categories and model objects are the first part of any theoretical project, but are not yet theories sensu strictu,

since theories are basically sets of claims serving as answers to questions about model objects, or solutions toproblems concerning them. So questionsneed to be formulated to guide theory construction. Questionsconsist of logical operators such as what, which, how many, how, why and what for, and of substantive referentsand predicates specified by a theoretical vocabulary. LTs abound in questions such as what are the relations

between the different levels of the literary text, which can be further specified into many sub-problems such assound-sense relations, syntax and metre and so on. A different kind of question would be what are the majorways of representing consciousness in narrative, and do they form a system and/or a clear historical sequence.

Problems tend to cluster into sets or problem systems, partially ordered by the relation of logical priority. Suchproblem systems define what a theory is about and what its goals are in terms of knowledge production. Onceagain, while not all literary theories formulate their questions explicitly and systematically, they are all guided bythe desire to answer specific questions.

Questions require answers, and these are provided by sets of claims/hypotheses about the model object infocus. As already indicated, a theory is minimally a set of interconnected generalized claims about a certaindomain of phenomena, formulated in a specific theoretical vocabulary, such that some of the claims and theconcepts they employ are more basic than others, forming the theory core. Theories are meant to first describeand then explain, and when possible predict, regularities in a domain. LTs, especially in descriptive poetics,synchronic or diachronic, provide a large number of sets of interconnected descriptive or observationalgeneralisations of different coverage or scope, scope being defined as range X accuracy (Bunge 1989, vol. 1,575). Such theories are usually referred to as mid-range theories, located between high level abstract ones (e. g.,about the general mechanisms of literary change) and individual data (McHale 1994). Midrange theories deal


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with the occurrence and correlations (co-occurrence, co-variation, succession) of textual elements or patterns(e. g., genres), looking of course for regularities in any of them. They typically answer questions of the what

and whichvariety. Ideally one would want to formulate empirical generalizations of the widest possible scope,hence indifferent to time and place. But very few such universal claims exist in literary studies. Mid-rangetheories have non-universal domains and are typically constructed around various paradigm or standard casesthat serve as prototypes. Literary studies and many other disciplines, including most of biology for example,consist primarily of this kind of theories. The rapid change and inner complexity and diversity of literaryphenomena go a long way towards explaining this situation. Although most descriptive generalizations inliterary studies are qualitative, quite a few admit of quantification, hence of operations such as counting,comparing, assigning numerical values to a variable, calculating probabilities and frequencies (statistics) andplotting the results on graphs. This is true in metrics and stylistics, but also where the historical distribution ofgenre patterns for example is concerned.

But how does one check the validity of any purely qualitative descriptive generalization in a LT? Suppose oneproposes a systematic typology of kinds of focalization. Can such a typology be corroborated or refuted, and, ifso, how? Since such claims do not form part of a formal system, a deductive decision procedure or proof is notavailable. On the other hand, such claims are not open to experimental testing based on drawing predictionsfrom them and then observing how they turn out in actuality. What is more, we have not agreed uponstandards for deciding whether or not an individual utterance is an instance of a particular kind of focalization.

In the absence of both deduction and experimentation we must look at these claims as not strictly true or falsebut rather as useful, illuminating and insightful or not, plausible, supported by good reasons, possessingwarranted assertibility or not, all such decisions being based on a dialogue within a scholarly communitygoverned by some consensual rules of informal argumentation, and of course by rationality. And the same goesfor citing instances that are claimed not to be subsumable under a proposed generalization, i.e.,counterexamples. Who and how decides that X cannot be fitted under a given pattern? This decision too canresult only from a dialogue inside a scholarly community, and not by the discovery of a logical inconsistency orof experimental results that run counter to a prediction based on a generalization.

And how about the explanationof such occurrence or correlation? In most disciplines, sets of descriptivegeneralizations are considered low level theories, to be grounded in higher level, deeper or more basic, hence

more powerful, ones, containing more basic entities. The theoretical inventory of any discipline thus forms ahierarchy of deeper and shallower theories, reflected in LT in the relation between theoretical and descriptivepoetics. (For a detailed systematics of this sort see Ingarden 1976.) Ideally, the higher level theories provide thenomological basis (general laws) from which lower level regularities can be inferred. Such inference is oftenconsidered to be an explanation of the observed regularities, in the sense of an answer to the why question.

Another kind of explanation is of the how kind, providing an underlying mechanism, that is, as set of entities

and activities and their modus operandi such that these operations realize or give rise to the descriptiveregularities in question. Does literary theorizing possess explanations of either kind? And does it possess otherpatterns of explanation such as the means-end or teleological one? There is clearly an abundance ofbasictheoriesin literary studies, such as those about the nature of literature. But most of them in their turn dependheavily on theories in other disciplines formulated for the treatment of wider or more basic domains (see

section 2 below). Basic literary theories vary greatly in terms of their degree of formalization, conceptualclarity and observational operationalisibility. Mid-range theories cannot consequently be derived from the basicones, since most of these basic theories provide only a Sehweise which suggests aspects to be stressed, kinds

of questions to be asked and types of descriptive generalizations to be looked for. They provide grounding,overarching principles and conceptual foundations for mid range theories, but not laws from which the moresuperficial or specific theories can be derived. The degree of vertical integration of literary theorising is hencequite low. Such basic theories also have very low empirical content, straddling the border between theoriesresponsible for actual facts and objects in space and time and purely conceptual analysis, as in the philosophyof art.


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There are, nevertheless, some procedures in literary studies which could be considered similar to the whyexplanations in other fields. One example of derivation of descriptive regularities from higher level principles isprovided by the structuralist procedure of constructing an exhaustive calculus of possibilities for, say, metricalforms or tense aspect and modality. Here,

instead of supplying an empirically obtained list of categories, [one] establishes the most general logicallypossible pattern thereof. The [scholar], in approaching the design of some range of phenomena, must singleout the simplest [most basic] items underlying these phenomena and then, by combining them in all

possible ways, construct the most general universal pattern for the totality of observable data. Such acalculus further guides the scholar in search of new, not yet identified, categories which it predicts, (Melcuk1985, 181f.; for an example concerning narrative time and modality see Margolin 1999)

The question why the descriptive system includes this particular set of possibilities and no other(s) can then beanswered (explained) by the features and combinatorial possibilities of the underlying elementary units.Another kind of claim that provides a partial explanation of phenomena, short of a universal cause and effectone, is a claim regarding dependency between variables, pointing out the free and the dependent ones. Thus,the division of a verse text into lines is deemed to have a crucial effect on the resultant semantic structure ofthis text, and the choice of kind of narrator is decisive for the kind of valid information one can possess aboutthe story world. The underlying high level generalization is obviously that forms of expression determine (or atleast have a decisive influence on) forms of content, but no specific forms can be derived from it.

Text grammars and story grammars(trees, rewrite rules, derivations, transformations), where the final surfaceproduct or individual text emerges through a sequence of well defined operations, are more like generativegrammatical or semantic rule systems, in that they provide production mechanisms, answering the how

question. AI computer programmesfor story generation (Ryan, Meister) are meant to describe how exactly agiven simple story sequence or story schema comes into existence from a set of basic semantic elements andpatterns plus specified moves or an algorithm. Such programmes can also generate new, hitherto non-existentstories.

Yet in either case the value of the grammar or programme, especially when new stories are generated, isdetermined not by a storys formal well-formedness but by its acceptability to members of a cultural group, just

like sentences produced by any TG. Furthermore, even if a given pre-existing actual story or story schema issuccessfully generated by a particular algorithm, we may still ask why does such a schema exist and why is itwidespread or not, culture bound or not, time bound or not. And to answer this kind of why question we

must go beyond semiotic objects to human agency, thus to questions of cognitive, cultural and possibly socialregularities and mechanisms, and to construct multi level theories involving elements of at least two differentkinds, such as textual and cognitive. Cognitive narratology and stylistics are engaged precisely in this kind ofproject, but it is still early days. Similarly, in the study of literary change (diachrony) one can describeregularities in the sequence of stages involved in the fate of any literary convention: from innovation torepetitiousness, from periphery or marginality to center or dominance and back again, from sub-literature tocanonization or vice versa etc. But to explain why change occurs at a given point, direction and intensity oneneeds a deeper level of theorization, such as diminishment of effectiveness of devices as they become familiar

(psychology of perception), changing cognitive needs and values of a group (social psychology), and socialdesire for innovation as means of distinguishing oneself (sociology). (On these explanations see Fokkema/Ibsch2000, 8385.)

Functional explanations of the means-end or teleological (in order to) variety abound in LTs, from classicalrhetoric to Russian Formalism, and correlate textual elements, devices, procedures and structures to particulareffects, be they semantic, affective or aesthetic. The choice and deployment of textual elements is thusmotivated by their ability to create certain effects on the recipient (Verfremdung, surprise, suspense, freshnessof sensation etc). This mode of explanation makes perfect sense since works of literature are messages(Kommunikate) directed to someone and meant, like all communicative acts, to modify the receivers


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cognitive, emotive or normative set (Einstellung) in some particular way(s). But two fundamental difficulties

remain: as Meir Sternberg has convincingly shown, the device-effect relation is many to many and contextdependent, so universal claims are impossible. One can at most claim that under certain conditions a givendevice D tends to be correlated with effect E. Secondly, who decides what is the effect of a given artistic deviceto begin with? Members of a homogeneous professional community sharing the same implicit assumptionsmay claim that device D necessarily creates effect E on the reader. But by the reader they actually meanthemselves. A more fruitful move would be to regard any such claim as a causal hypothesis or prediction andthen run tests on groups of non-professional readers to test its validity. Here once again we see the need tomove from the purely semiotic to the empirical psychological dimension (Fokkema/Ibsch 2000, chapters 1 and2).

LT contains at least one other kind of theory specific to the human sciences, namely theories whose objects,are not literary products but rather the informal theories about the nature of literature, its kinds, elements,functions and effects held by members of a given cultural community. This kind of study is referred to astheory-theory in cognitive studies, and its rationale is that the literary behaviour of members of a communitywill be decisively influenced by their beliefs about literature, no matter whether or not these beliefs are upheldby the literary theorist (the same way that human behaviour is influenced by folk beliefs about the working ofthe human mind, regardless of whether or not such views are upheld by psychology or sociology) and that anylocal historical explanation of the nature and change of literature at a given time and place must therefore take

these theories into account.

Finally, theory assaying. As we have seen, experimentation is hardly a feasible way of assessing the merit ofsemiotic theories of literature, unless claims about effect or impact on actual people are involved. Butnumerous conceptual criteria formulated in the philosophy of science (Bunge 1989, vol. 2, 394400) do applyin this field too. One could mention well formedness, consistency and valid mode of argumentation as formalcriteria; linguistic exactness, conceptual coherence (the predicates expressed by the theoretical vocabulary aresemantically homogeneous and interconnected) and eventual observational interpretability as semantic ones.Among epistemological criteria, consistency with much of the established knowledge in literary studies andrelated disciplines, ability to answer many of the underlying questions, depth, unifying power and ability tosuggest further research are clearly good making features of any LT. Another important feature would be a

theorys elasticity or ability to accommodate, sometimes through internal modification, new unforeseen casesor ones initially ignored. This is most important in our field, since the object itself is subject to frequent majorchanges.

Literary theorizing is defined by its responsibility for a culturally demarcated domain of phenomena,literature, and not by any particular philosophical framework, set of presuppositions, theoretical vocabulary,concepts or methodology. In addition, everybody agrees the object itself is multi-aspectual and involves severallevels of organization. There is consequently no prima facie restriction on the number and nature of theoreticalframeworks that can legitimately be employed in the study of literature or any of its aspects. This by itselfensures a permanent multiplicity and diversity of approaches in literary theorizing, all of which possessing someinitial justification i.e.pluralism. The different approaches coexisting at any point often differ in their basictheoretic terms, model objects and claims, or they refer to entirely different bodies of data (areincommensurable). The field of LT as a whole will thus inevitably be heterogeneous, often consisting oftheories that are not inter-translatable. Synthesizing them into one grand theory is hence practicallyimpossible. The complexity of the object further implies that no single global theory could account for allobservationally given aspects of literature especially if we want to include both semiotic and social systemones and that a number of partial theories will be needed for this purpose. Most of the approaches orparadigms brought to bear on literary questions or problems originate in numerous other disciplines, includingphilosophy. Literary theorizing as a whole is hence essentiallymultidisciplinary. Since new approaches andperspectives constantly arise in the sciences of culture, mind and society, and since many of them are relevant


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and potentially fruitful for some literary problem, the field of LT is one of frequent paradigm shifts, henceradical discontinuity. Theoretical understanding will be continuous, cumulative or improvable only within eachgiven paradigm.

As crucial is the realization thatthe extension or domain of objectsto be accounted for by LT always forms asubset of a wider domain, no matter what model object (definition of literature) one employs: cultural artifact,

message, media offering, work of art, work of the imagination/fiction, secondary modeling system etc. Intraditional terms, it is but one species of a wider genus. Literary theorizing, unlike linguistics or psychology,does not consequently possess any natural domain, such as language or the human mind, and is in this sensenon-fundamental. Now if literature under any given perspective is but one area of a wider domain, then allgeneralizations formulated in some other discipline(s) about this domain as a whole are eo ipso relevant andmany are (potentially) applicable to literature as well. In other words, much theoretical knowledge aboutliterature is (potentially) contained in the work of other disciplines dealing with the domain as a whole(linguistics, semiotics, cognitive science etc.) What of all this is immediately relevant to the work of a particulartheorist will of course depend on his general perspective and on the questions he is dealing with. Conversely,many of the concepts employed in LT and the regularities formulated in it turn out to be applicable to a widerdomain. Even-Zohar has gone so far as to claim that every single high level law formulated in LT on the basisof observation of literature, and having literature as its initial and intended domain, validly accounts for largersemiotic phenomena, and that the literary specificity of such laws resides only in their manifestation through

particular materials and variations (Even-Zohar 1986, 79). In other words, the specificity of LTs is confined tothe level of corpus- specific descriptive generalizations. Be that as it may, it is cleat that LT is hence animporting as well as exporting activity: borrowing, and checking for applicability to its own corpus, of wider-scope generalisations made in other disciplines (All fictions are, All texts contain), and offering thesedisciplines its own concepts, categories and claims for testing their wider applicability. In addition to thisvertical process there is a constant two way horizontal transfer of concepts, models and claims between samelevel domain-specific disciplines, such as literary and film narratology.

In terms oftheory hierarchy, one can distinguish three levels according to one view. Level I theories are on thisview mid-range, basically descriptive, and deal with one or more aspects, such as kinds of narrators, of aspecific literary corpus. The claims made in them are empirical in the sense of open to textual observation.

Level II theories operate with higher level concepts and theoretical constructs, such as the nature of thenarrative function or the demarcation of narrative texts from other text types. While level I theories arespecifically literary, Level II ones may have wider application as we have just seen, and in this sense may betermed generic theories. Level III theories are generic semi interpreted ones such as communication theory,semiotics, and general action theory. They provide a framework helping us to think of a whole class of entitiesin a variety of domains, but have no empirical content and solve no problems, but help us discover and clarifybasic ideas. In other words, they supply the literary scholar with general research orientations or points of view(on this particular hierarchy see Soerensen 1987, 146154). But level hierarchy can be drawn in various ways.Siegfried Schmidt, for example, has proposed the following four term hierarchy: theory of action; theory ofcommunicative action; theory of aesthetic communicative action; theory of verbal aesthetic communicativeaction.

As a matter of principle, specifically literary theories are non fundamentaland essentially dependenton higherlevel ones to provide their foundation and placement in the wider field of humanistic enquiry. For example,most problem clusters occurring in LTs are specific cases or variants of problems formulated in general termsin higher level theories, such as those of text theory or communication theory. And the same goes forstrategies, conceptual and empirical, employed by literary studies to solve these problems. Since most of suchhigher level theories are formulated in fields other than literary studies, literary theorizing is essentiallydependent on more powerful or deeper theories formulated in other disciplines. On the other hand, LTsseem to have domain specific claims that cannot be derived from claims occurring in higher level theories,even if all the terms and concepts of the LT can be translated into or subsumed under those of the higher level


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theory. In this sense, LTs are not reducible to higher level theories in other disciplines, be they linguistics,cognitive science or sociology.

As we know from Kants critiques, one first asks what can I know, and, in light of the answer given, oneproceeds to ponder what should I do? So here are some suggestions:

Literary theories as text theories have inherent limitations as regards causal explanation, prediction andexperimentation. Whoever insists on having these theory components needs to move to the literatureas social action paradigm.

Any quest for a grand unifying theory in literary studies is probably unwarranted. A series of wellformed partial theories is all we can expect. But this is true of most of the social and even naturalsciences, so it need not be viewed as a deficiency. By the same token, any attempt to create a supertheory by conjoining incommensurable theory paradigms is logically suspect.

All major problem systems and areas of enquiry in literary studies are multidisciplinary (treated by LTplus at least one other discipline). Moreover, the most basic models and claims about them are alsoformulated in other discipline(s). A good literary theoretician consequently needs to constantly follow

work relevant to his area of enquiry in at least one other discipline, and different kinds of problems inLT will require awareness of different discipline( s). Conversely, it is counterproductive for literaryscholars to invent ab initio theories of language, cognition, society or culture where tremendousamounts of valuable work on these subjects are already available in other disciplines. In most cases, thebest result would be a reinvention of the wheel. Only in rare cases, and after having acquired athorough familiarity with available work, will it be possible for a literary theorist to formulate such ahigher level generic theory.

In view of the above, a literary theorist must ask himself: do I want to move to a higher level oftheorizing, which may eventually enable me to construct better, and more vertically integrated LTs?Van Dijk moved from literary to general text theory, Schmidt to media studies, and the Moscow TartuSchool to general theories of cultural systems.

On the other hand, we have seen that many of the concepts and models developed within LT apply toother domains as well. So another important question for the literary theorist is: do I want to extend mywork to distinctly non-literary, sometimes even non verbal corpora as long as my theoretical apparatusapplies to them? (horizontal extension). Mieke Bal, for example, has moved to pictorial narratology,and Chatman to cinema narratology.

Multiple levels of units and of organization are necessary for a powerful LT. But one cannot skip levels,proceeding directly from evolutionary biology to the portrayal of human consciousness in a novel, forinstance. What one ends up with are pure analogies with no mediating mechanisms. The same is trueof premature level reduction, declaring narrative to be nothing other than a cognitive mechanism, forexample.

Current LT, especially in the United States, is characterized by the overabundance of generalspeculation (Theory with a capital T) and dearth of midrange theories or systems of descriptivegeneralizations. The neglect of descriptive poetics leads to grand theories with a poor knowledge baseand, lacking the intermediate level, unable to contribute even indirectly to the conceptualization of data(McHale). The balance obviously needs to be redressed, especially since literature itself is after all aconcrete historical phenomenon.

A wealth of still valuable low and mid-level theories (descriptive poetics of genres, styles, movementsetc.) was produced in the first half of the twentieth century, especially in Germany. This work has beenneglected since 1968 because of its low level of theoretisation, yet its retrieval is essential if we want


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theories that are not only formally strong, but which also possess empirical content and are able toaccount for more than just some 19th and 20th century works or genres.

In this essay I have cited briefly and for illustrative purposes various models, procedures and methodologicalnorms, and kinds of claims occurring in LTs. This was an essential part of my claim that much of what isreferred to as literary theorizing is a rational, inter-subjective and repeatable activity. But the truth of the matteris that, to my knowledge, nobody in recent years has taken systematic, not to say exhaustive, stock of the rangeof these three actually occurring in literary theorizing and its various branches, from textology to the study ofliterature in culture. One crucial part of theoretical self-consciousness would certainly consist of doing this. Inview of the amount of work involved, and the multilingual nature of the project, one would hope thatsomewhere a group of qualified and dedicated researches, similar to the Hamburg Narratology group, will ariseand take up the challenge to the benefit of all literary theorists.

Uri MargolinDepartment of Modern Languages and Cultural StudiesUniversity of Alberta

I wish to express my gratitude to Professor Willie van Peer (Mnchen) for a detailed discussion of this paper, which

provided me with several valuable insights and saved me from some major errors.

Mario Bunge, Philosophy of Science, New Brunswick 1998.

Itamar Even-Zohar, The Quest for Laws and its Implications for the Future of the Science of Literature, in:Gyorgy M. Vajda/Janos Riesz (eds.), The Future of Literary Studies, Frankfurt a.M. 1986, 7579.

Douwe Fokkema/Elrud Ibsch, Knowledge and Commitment, Amsterdam 2000.

Helmut Hauptmeier/Siegfried J. Schmidt, Einfhrung in die empirische Literaturwissenschaft, Braunschweig 1985.

Roman Ingarden, Gegenstand und Aufgaben der Literaturwissenschaft, Tbingen 1976.Brian McHale, Whatever Happened to Descriptive Poetics?, in: Mieke Bal/Inge Boer (eds.), The Point of Theory,

Amsterdam 1994, 5665.

Uri Margolin, The (In)dependence of Poetics Today, PTL4 (1979), 545586.

, Of What is Past, Passing or to Come: Temporality, Aspectuality, Modality and the Nature of Narrative, in:David Herman (ed.), Narratologies, Columbus 1999, 142166.

Igor Melcuk, Three Main Features, Seven Basic Principles, and Eleven most Important Results of RomanJakobsons Morphological Research, in: Roman Jakobson, Verbal Art, Verbal Sign, Verbal Time,Minneapolis 1985, 178200.

Home>Vol 1, No 1 (2007)>MargolinIn: JLT 1/1 (2007), 196-207.2009-03-20JLTonline ISSN 1862-8990http://www.jltonline.de/index.php/articles/article/view/58/244
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Albrecht Koschorke

A map of the current scholarly landscape would show various paradigms gaining new ground, concepts movingfrom one place to another, and skirmishes shifting back and forth on the boundaries between disciplines and

knowledge cultures. It would be apparent from such a map that, for several decades, literary theory has (in partunintentionally and without knowing it) been pursuing what amounts to an expansionist policy. More thananything else, this expansion is a reflection of the linguistic turn and its consequences. Since the linguistic turn,it has become common practice to consider how not just literature but knowledge in general is bound up withtexts, rhetoric, written culture, and consequently mediality per se. This has led to the introduction of a wholeseries of additional and anything but straightforward terms that had previously appeared to be the preserve ofthe fine arts: poetics and its derivatives, performance, evidence, representation, fiction, and the imaginary. Allthese words have a place of their own, so to speak, in the field of aesthetics in the narrower sense. They are,however, increasingly being applied to the whole range ofsocial aisthesisand therefore to the social productionof knowledge itself, which is gradually receiving more and more attention in the context of cultural studies.

According to received opinion, scholars of literature study the poetic invention of artificial worlds that are freedof and set apart from the harsh reality to which everyday life is subject. On closer examination, however, thetwo spheres are not so clearly set apart as it would seem, for social realities unfold in the context of openpossibilities too, not least in so far as they relate to the future. A societys sense of future, the collective ability to

imagine things feared and opportunities taken, brings into play an ability very similar to that acquired in andstimulated by engagement with literature and other arts. And we do not even own the past as an unchangeablefact it is continually refashioned and produced afresh in collective memory. This too is a creative process,one that paradoxically affects with particular intensity the very elements of a culture that are felt to be animmutable inheritance (the key term here is the invention of tradition). Such invented pasts themselves

contribute to the self-perception of any given present, which is itself equally dependent on an element ofinvention, selection, interpretation, and aesthetic or medial arrangement. Seen in this light, forms of poetic

fashioning can be found everywhere in fact, we could almost speak of apoetics of society.

One particularly successful and, so to speak, expansionist category in the study of literature is the concept ofnarrative. It entered the study of historiography via the New Historicism and thereafter found its way into thephilosophy of science. A narrative turn has also been announced in the social sciences, with narratology itselfplaying an increasing role in the latter field. Generalizing, it can be said that crucial aspects of social meaningare produced through narration.

Narrative theory grounded in the study of literature flourished considerably in the 1960s and 1970s (Barthes,Genette, and Lotman; in the German-speaking world, Kte Hamburger, Eberhard Lmmert, and FranzStanzel). In some respects, it has since suffered the fate of a niche interest, but it has also returned to the stage

of theoretical debate thanks to a well-received introduction by Matas Martnez and Michael Scheffel andseveral large-scale research projects. [1] This is a paradigmatic demonstration of how misleading andunproductive it is to argue, as happens above all in German studies in Germany, about whether to movetowards the broader perspective of cultural studies or lay fresh emphasis on the study of literature itself. [2] It isnow commonplace in the study of politics, law, management theory, and not least the history of science topoint out that the states of affairs under consideration are constructed through narrative. This places newdemands on literary theory as the source of the concepts used, but not necessarily in such a way that the studyof real literature has to suffer as a result. On the contrary: the better the models developed in the study of

literature on the basis of objects that are, so to speak, the true responsibility of that field, the greater their
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potential for application to other textual worlds that are, to some degree at least, subject to comparableconditions of production and reception.

The challenges that result from what has been said above are readily apparent. In what follows, I illustrate themwith respect to some key concepts of literary theory.

(1) Recent studies have given due attention to the insight thatfictions, rather than being subsidiary and lackingin function, organize our social reality in its entirety. This reality is fictional in a profound sense: it is basedonfictions. Without persistent concepts of character and representation whose past history stretches back into theworld of rhetoric and classical theatre, there would not even be any addressable participants in the socialprocess at all. All institutions depend on such attributions and are to this extent fictive entities, but they can stillbe treated as part of reality and thereby exert influence.

Similarly, we speak of scholarly fictions without meaning simply false scholarship. It follows from this that weneed a new analysis of the relationship between fictionality and facticity, one more precise than those currentlyavailable. On the one hand, this is a task for epistemology; on the other hand, it brings into play issues of genrewith which literary theory is well acquainted. The invented worlds of literature, after all, are a way of dealingwith real problems and they perform this function not despite but because of the fact that they assert the

freedom to suspend the reality principle with its central true/false distinction.

(2) In like manner, the first everyday way of understanding the quality imaginary that comes to mind is the

paraphrase made up, which places it in contrast with the irrevocably factual. Yet and this was stillappreciated in the old rhetorical theory of human capacities there is no cognitive process not subject to thefaculty of the imagination and its synthesizing ability. Only in the imaginary do the parts come together as awhole, only in the imaginary can wholes be perceived and created. This is true also on the level of collectiveprocesses. Societies can come into being and organize themselves only if they make the world in which theyfind themselves a meaningful one. And this they do by drawing up images of themselves as wholes, developingon the basis of such images (the idea of the nation, for example) techniques of political representation that are,in the strict sense of the word, imaginary: the function of the visible representatives is to embody the invisible

social whole and thereby bring it, so to speak, into the picture.

This artificial creation of wholeness has its less attractive side too phantasms of the other, the excluded, theenemy. Even enemies, real as their actions may be, are imaginary constructs. Here at least, if not before, wereach the point at which the study of cultural mechanisms touches on pressing contemporary issues. No literarytheory can refuse to attempt to provide models for the emergence of influential political myths, theirdissemination in the mass media, and their exploitation in practice.

(3) Against this background, the narrativeorganization of complex social interrelationships, more generally thenarrativity of knowledge itself, has a crucial role to play. Corresponding possibilities for a narratology informedby cultural theory present themselves. Such a narratology will need to clarify where specifically the cultural

achievement of narration lies in relation to other ways of sequentializing data and events; where, in the mannerof a field theory of cultural semiotics, narration comes to thrive; and what discourses take a liking to narrativeand where, conversely, narrative taboos are dominant.

It is important here to distinguish between different levels in the organization of knowledge. Narrative can havethe function of presenting knowledge, thereby adopting no more than a minor role in the wings, so to speak.But it can also reach deep into the structure of objects of knowledge, thereby becoming something like anepistemic operator. Sometimes narratives even do this in places where they are not accredited with any official

epistemological function, as in the field of modern natural science. In fact, narration is not confined to thecultural pole of the nature/culture dichotomy that first took shape in the eighteenth century. A general narrative


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theory of the kind outlined here should therefore be concerned with the following overarching questions: onwhat basis was this dichotomy itself constructed, and what, in fact, is the scope of cultural approaches in theworld of modern knowledge?

Albrecht KoschorkeFachbereich Literaturwissenschaft: GermanistikUniversitt Konstanz

Walter Erhart (ed.), Grenzen der Germanistik. Rephilologisierung oder Erweiterung?, Stuttgart/Weimar 2004.

Albrecht Koschorke, Codes und Narrative: berlegungen zu einer Poetik der funktionalen Differenzierung,in: Walter Erhart (ed.), Grenzen der Germanistik. Rephilologisierung oder Erweiterung?,Stuttgart/Weimar 2004, 174185.

Matas Martnez/Michael Scheffel, Einfhrung in die Erzhltheorie[1999], Mnchen 62005.

[1] Martnez/Scheffel 2005. [zurck]

[2] This dispute has tended to be pursued in an institutional context rather than in the form of proper debate.A wide range of suggested compromises can be found in Erhart 2004, which contains the proceedingsfrom a conference sponsored by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (Germanys research funding

agency). See also Koschorke 2004, which argues along similar lines to this brief position statement.[zurck]

Home>Vol 1, No 1 (2007)>Koschorke

In: JLT 1/1 (2007), 208-211.2009-03-20JLTonline ISSN 1862-8990

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Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht

Not unlike Literary Studies (and German Literaturwissenschaft) whose emergence as academic institutions anddisciplines goes back to the later decades of European Romanticism, Literary Theory has a well circumscribed

historical origin. It occurred during the early twentieth century when, for the first time, in several Europeancountries, and under locally different circumstances, young scholars launched the idea that Literary Studiesneeded a programmatic conceptual underpinning in order to acquire legitimacy as a scientific enterprise.

Today, we may interpret those converging endeavors as reactions to a crisis that had overcome Literary Studiesafter a short century of its existence as a new, dynamic, and conquering academic discipline that is as afunctional equivalent of theology in relation to Literature which, as a discourse, had taken over, in nineteenthcentury bourgeois societies, the place traditionally reserved for Religion. During that first happy century of itshistory, Literary Studies had indeed promoted the reading of Literature as a quasi-transcendental expression oftwo different horizons of social knowledge and cultural imagination. In those nations whose statehood hademerged from a successful bourgeois revolution, like in Great Britain, the United States, or France, literary

texts from all historical ages and in all languages were appreciated as illustrations of central concepts and valuesof Enlightenment philosophy. In those countries, by contrast, whose birth as nations had taken the moredramatic form of a resurrection from humiliating moments of defeat, as it was the case with Prussia and mostother German States, with Russia and, later during the nineteenth century, also with France and with Spain,Literature (and that meant quite strictly in these cases: texts in the respective national languages) was seen as theafterglow of a glorious, mostly medieval national past.

While these transcendental horizons of 19th century nationhood had enjoyed a status of unquestioned realitiesthrough several generations, they became the object of an all-pervasive and scientifically grounded scepticism inthe years before 1900. As the frames of reference beyond Literature and beyond Literary Criticism were fastvanishing in reaction to this attack, a series of concerns began to come up within Literary Studies that hadremained mute as long as the discipline was able to simply see Literature as the expression and illustration ofEnlightenment values or of an idealized national past. From an institutional point of view, the mostfundamental of these emerging concerns was the one about the task of Literary Studies, in absence of itstraditional horizons of reference. Secondly, the search for a metahistorical and transcultural definition ofLiterature appeared to be a necessity as soon as it was no longer understood that literary were all those textsthat could be used as illustrations for the transcendental horizons of reference. In similar fashion, the questionbecame relevant what the relationship between Literature, on the one side, and Music and the Arts on theother side might be (but also, for example, between Literature, the State, and the Economy) now that such fieldsof practice could no longer be expected to simply and automatically converge in normative cultural frames.

These were some of the predominant concerns for example in the debates of the Russian Formalists who, after

1910, came together as the first intellectual and academic movement that, quite explicitly, wanted to berecognized as developing a Theory of Literature. Now, while Formalism, in the political environment of theearly Soviet Union, failed to impose a thoroughgoing reform of Literary Studies along the lines of its ownanswers to those new questions, and while neither Formalism nor any other Theories of Literature thatfollowed were ever successful in producing generally accepted solutions to these problems, they all contributedto keeping the discipline of Literary Studies alive by replacing much hoped for solutions through intense butunending discussions.

We can then say that, paradoxically, Literary Theory saved Literary Studies by making its early twentiethcentury crisis potentially eternal. In other words: Literary Criticism is an academic discipline that may have


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survived until the present day thanks to its own incapacity of finding an adequate conceptual andepistemological grounding. This is a way of describing the improbability of Literary Theory as an academic

subdiscipline and as a discourse and viewing an institution from the angle of its improbability will alwaysmake us feel, with relief or indignation, that it would have been possible to live without it. So we must say,grudgingly perhaps, that while Literary Criticism might have had a hard time sustaining itself without LiteraryTheory, humankind would certainly continue to exist in the absence of both.

During the first half of the twentieth century, most Literary Theories were spinning off, as it had already beenthe case with Russian Formalism, from the new structuralist theories of Language and from related practicesin the analysis of literary style. After World War II, by contrast, Literary Theories developed a tendency toadopt their key intuitions, rather than from modes of intellectual concentration on the text, from Philosophyand from other disciplines in the Humanities that were not always centrally and not even necessarily text-related. Following the short international age of New Criticism, as it had first constituted itself during the 1920sin Britain and the United States through a self-reflexive attitude vis--vis literary analysis and as it had beenimposed upon Literary Studies in most Western countries during the late 1940s and the 1950s, in reaction totheir ideologization through fascist and communist regimes, Marxism and Psychoanalysis, Phaenomenologyand Hermeneutics, theories of Gender and theories of History began to develop, in different contexts, theirheavy influence on Literary Theory. For the longest time, however, these discourses and disciplines continued

to produce new answers to the traditional questions of Literary Theory (to questions regarding the keyfunctions of Literary Criticism, the general definition of Literature etc.) without ever coming close to aconsensus. Also, up until the 1980s, there was a certain rhythm of alternation between intellectualconfigurations that tried to make Literary Theory as scientific and rigorous as possible (Structuralism,Marxism, Reception Theory etc.) and others (New Criticism, Deconstruction, New Historicism, for example)that emphasized their more impressionistic styles and even their closeness to literary writing itself. For thelongest time, however, the multiple episodes of epistemological borrowing and readjustment in reaction totheories and philosophical positions that, in their origin, were not focused on Literature, left the centralposition of Literature and of literary phenomena within Literary Theory untouched.

This implicit tradition came to an end in the early 1980s, when the return of yet another academic generationto Marxist principles and concepts, together with a more surprising interest in empirical research methods anda fascination for ethnic and gender identities began to trigger a tendency towards redefining and complexifyingLiterary Studies, deliberately and programmatically, into Cultural Studies. Roughly at the same and almost

exclusively at German universities, a similar movement came underway for the transformation of Literary

Studies into Media Studies.

The undoubted intrinsic conquests and merits of Cultural Studies and of Media Studies which, by the way,

have both maintained an astonishing distance from each other, will not be at stake here. Nor will we discuss thehistorical reasons for their emergence among which there might have been both a frustration with LiteraryTheorys incapacity of solving its key questions (no consensus about a foundational concept of Literature after

an almost century-long debate) and the vague feeling, during the 1980s and 1990s, that Literature, as adiscourse and as a medium, was beginning to fade into the past. Much more important and less frequentlymentioned is the observation that this double movement of departure into Cultural Studies and Media Studiesseems to have left the field of Literary Theory without the energy of intellectual innovation. Whoever teachescourses on the history of Literary Theory today and uses one of the numerous anthologies with texts from this

tradition, will realize that, after many decades of constant transformation and change, no new, internationallysuccessful paradigms have occupied the center stage of Literary Theory since the early days of Gender Studies

and of Postcolonial Studies, i.e. for more than a quarter century now. After a good ninety years into itshistorical existence that were filled with constant provocations, changes, and revisions, this hiatus should bediagnosed as one end of Literary Theory, even if the intellectual pertinence and the curricular status of thefield may well be more safely established today than ever before.


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The end of Literary Theory, however, has by no means become synonymous with an end of Literary

Studies, as many of us would have feared (and some of us would have hoped) as recently as in the 1970s. On

the contrary, the number of academic classes is clearly increasing, internationally and quite steeply, that simplyconcentrate on the oeuvre of a literary author, on a specific literary genre, and sometimes even on an individualliterary text, without any perspectives of theoretical or political legitimation. While more and moresophisticated research projects and paradigms are emerging within the realm of Literary History, the latest

tone in the academic engagement with Literature may be characterized as predominantly existentialist. If,however, literary texts from the past and present resonate strongly today, once again, with concerns ofindividual (and sometimes also collective) existence, it appears only natural that Literary Criticism at this pointis returning to a renewed, rather un-programmatic closeness with Philosophy.

I hesitate to call this new closeness between Literary Studies and Philosophy a dialogue because it seems to

emerge from a multiplicity of intellectual needs and inspirations rather than from disciplinary planning andpolitics. A side effect of this distance from programmatic disciplinary claims may lie in the impression thatLiterary Studies today has a much greater respect for philosophical texts and philosophical traditions thanLiterary Theory used to show during much ofthe second half of the twentieth century when, quite often andalmost brutally, philosophical books were reduced to the little they had to say about Literature. And yet

Literary Theory has survived as a discursive and as an intellectual space perhaps only as an effect ofwidespread institutional inertia. Do we need Literary Theory in the early twenty-first century?

The only acceptable reaction to this question lies in another question, i.e. in the question whether there hasever been a field or a discipline in the Humanities that responded to a real and truly irreplaceable societal

need. If, as I suppose, the answer is negative, then this means that we, the humanists, should make good, i.e.selfish use of the spaces that we possess, instead of questioning their right to exist or instead of using them toproblematize the existence of our profession as we have done, to a large extent, throughout the history ofLiterary Theory. This self-reflexive obsession may also explain why the range of literary phenomena thatLiterary Theory has ever intensely dealt with is so reduced if we compare it with the countless proposals for areform or for a complete reconceptualization of our entire discipline. Today, I find it increasingly tiresome to

argue for the disciplinary, political, or even epistemological legitimacy of topics and questions that my students,colleagues, and I are fascinated by.

In this spirit and under this premise, I hope that Literary Theory will return, rather sooner than later, to the

big question concerning the relation, the interference, and the joint effects of textual content and literary form.If, since the eighteenth century, some intellectuals have been complaining about the scandal of Philosophy,

i.e. about the impression that Philosophy, since the age of Plato, has not come any closer to solving some of itskey problems, then the scandal of Literary Studies may be that we have not developed any good answers to

those questions concerning the function of literary form that amateur readers expect us to deal with primarily and successfully.

Hans Ulrich GumbrechtDepartment of Comparative LiteratureStanford University

Home>Vol 1, No 1 (2007)>Gumbrecht

In: JLT 1/1 (2007), 212-216.2009-03-20JLTonline ISSN 1862-8990http://www.jltonline.de/index.php/articles/article/view/60/248
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The Journal of Literary Theory (JLT)Vol 1, No 1 (2007).Ed. by Jannidis, Fotis / Lauer, Gerhard / Winko, Simone

Issue: New Developments in Literary Theory and Related Disciplines.Section: In What Direction is Literary Theory Evolving? 91-216

"Editorial: In What Direction Is Literary Theory Evolving?"Journal of Literary Theory1.1 (2007): 191.*http://www.jltonline.de/index.php/articles/article/view/55/2402009

Fricke, Harald. "Response: Theses on Literary Theory [Statement on: In What Direction Is Literary TheoryEvolving?]"Journal of Literary Theory1.1 (2007): 192-93.*http://www.jltonline.de/index.php/articles/article/view/56/2422009

Schnert, Jrg. "Response [Statement on: In What Direction Is Literary Theory Evolving?]" Journal of Literary

Theory1.1 (2007): 194-95.*http://www.jltonline.de/index.php/articles/article/view/57/1192009

Margolin, Uri. "Response [Statement on: In What Direction Is Literary Theory Evolving?]" Journal of LiteraryTheory1.1 (2007): 196-207.*http://www.jltonline.de/index.php/articles/article/view/58/2442009

Koschorke, Albrecht. "Response [Statement on: In What Direction Is Literary Theory Evolving?]" Journal ofLiterary Theory1.1 (2007): 208-11.*http://www.jltonline.de/index.php/articles/article/view/59/2462009

Gumbrecht, Hans Ulrich. "An End to Literary Theory [Statement on: In What Direction Is Literary TheoryEvolving?]"Journal of Literary Theory1.1 (2007): 212-16.*http://www.jltonline.de/index.php/articles/article/view/60/2482009
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