Das Wissen der Literatur

Literary studies have recently benefited from inquiries into the historical transformations of knowledge. From the perspective of literary studies, there is the need to interpret references and allusions made in and by literature to discourses interwoven with the history of scientific and technological knowledge, to fields of knowledge informed by social and cultural practices, and to modes and operations regarding aesthetics and logics of representation. The field of research covers the following four points: I) Relations between literature and canonic fields of knowledge and science II) functions and effects of recording and storing, processing and retrieving, communicating and circulating different forms of knowledge in literature, III) media-based institutional conditions which affect various literary discourses and – more fundamentally – an entire »system of literature« within a certain period, and IV) reflections on methodological and theoretical questions.

Abridged text. To read the unabridged text, see the German version of this web site.