DOCSLIB.ORG

Erich Auerbach (1892–1957): Sampling and Synthesizing Western Literature

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Erich Auerbach (1892–1957): Sampling and Synthesizing Western Literature University of Southern Denmark Erich Auerbach (1892–1957) Sampling and synthesizing western literature Engberg-Pedersen, Anders Published in: History of Humanities DOI: 10.1086/704848 Publication date: 2019 Document version: Final published version Citation for pulished version (APA): Engberg-Pedersen, A. (2019). Erich Auerbach (1892–1957): Sampling and synthesizing western literature. History of Humanities, 4(2), 319-324. https://doi.org/10.1086/704848 Go to publication entry in University of Southern Denmark's Research Portal Terms of use This work is brought to you by the University of Southern Denmark. Unless otherwise specified it has been shared according to the terms for self-archiving. If no other license is stated, these terms apply: • You may download this work for personal use only. • You may not further distribute the material or use it for any profit-making activity or commercial gain • You may freely distribute the URL identifying this open access version If you believe that this document breaches copyright please contact us providing details and we will investigate your claim. Please direct all enquiries to [email protected] Download date: 29. Sep. 2021 Erich Auerbach (1892–1957): Sampling and Synthesizing Western Literature Anders Engberg-Pedersen, University of Southern Denmark safield, comparative literature is usually confronted with a problem of method. From its intellectual origins in the Romantic period to its gradual institution- A – alization in the 1870s, its post World War II blossoming, and up until today, scholars of comparative literature have not been content with the well-established traditions and intellectual frames and divisions operative within and between the na- tional philologies. Comparatists are constantly forced to devise new ways of establish- ing and engaging their research objects. The raison d’être of the field lies in the belief that other, more interesting, more relevant, or more powerful questions and explana- tions may be had if the study of literature is not first partitioned and restricted by na- tionality or language. For comparatists, the problem of method is also a promise. It is therefore not surprising that Erich Auerbach’s Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature is widely regarded as one of the seminal texts in the field.1 In 1935 Auerbach (1892–1957), a Jew, had been forced to give up his professorship in Romance philology at the University of Marburg due to the increasingly hostile climate of national socialism. Like many other persecuted Jews he fled to Istanbul, where he would succeed another of the leading figures in the comparative study of literature, Leo Spitzer, at Istanbul University. Like Spitzer, Auerbach would eventually emigrate to the United States, where he held positions at Pennsylvania State University and at Princeton University be- fore he became Sterling Professor of Romance Philology at Yale University. Yet it was in exile in Turkey that Auerbach wrote the book that would set an exam- ple for the next several decades of scholarship. Written at the edge of Europe and against the background of a continent ravaged by belligerent nationalism, Mimesis is very much a book about Europe. Bringing together the literatures of Western Europe from Homer to Virginia Woolf, Auerbach’s great endeavor is to trace the ways in which reality has 1. The English translation by Willard R. Trask appeared seven years later and remains the standard reference: Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature (Princeton, NJ: Princeton Uni- versity Press, 1953). A fiftieth-anniversary edition with an introduction by Edward Said was published in 2003. History of Humanities, Volume 4, Number 2. http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/704848 © 2019 by Society for the History of the Humanities. All rights reserved. 2379-3163/2019/0402-0016$10.00 319 This content downloaded from 130.226.087.005 on November 29, 2019 01:15:13 AM All use subject to University of Chicago Press Terms and Conditions (http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/t-and-c). THEME 320 | HISTORY OF HUMANITIES FALL 2019 been represented in literature over a span of some three thousand years—a daunting task, and an insurmountable one, as Auerbach himself notes at the end of Mimesis, if it were not for his development of a new methodological approach. In each of the twenty chapters, Auerbach first immerses himself and his readers in a scene from an exemplary text. Through a magisterial explication de texte, or close reading, of the few carefully selected pages, he then develops an interpretation that marries stylistic analysis to the larger social and intellectual context where Auerbach could draw on his vast knowledge of European history and culture. The question that propels his inquiry is this: When has European literature rep- resented everyday reality in a serious manner? In antiquity, Auerbach notes, literary representation was governed by the doctrine of distinct levels of style and topics. A high style was reserved for the serious, the tragic, and the sublime, whereas the comic and the pleasant were rendered in the low or intermediate styles. In the ancient doc- trine, a stylistic hierarchy corresponds to a hierarchy of topics. The realistic depic- tion of everyday life was incompatible with the serious or the sublime. With the Old Testament, however, this “stylistic differentiation” gives way to “stylis- tic mixing.”2 In the Old Testament stories, we encounter for the first time what Auer- bach variously labels “serious realism,”“domestic realism,” or “existential realism,” where everyday phenomena are treated in a seriousmannerandminglewiththetragicandthe sublime.3 In Homer’s Odyssey, the characters capable of generating tragedy or sublimity belong primarily to the ruling class—when they are not gods—and their conflicts work themselves out in open battles. By contrast, the Old Testament stories depict domestic conflicts such as the hereditary dispute between Cain and Abel or the marital discord be- tween Abraham, Sarah, and Hagar. Yet these commonplace scenes and events of daily life are permeated by conflict and suffused by the influenceofthedivinetosuchadegreethat theseriousandthesublimeareinseparablefromtheeveryday.InAuerbach’slargerhis- torical frame, Dante’s Commedia, completed in 1320, forms the next triumph of the se- rious representation of reality followed by the French realists of the nineteenth century. While the immense argumentative arc of the book impresses, Mimesis is a profoundly untheoretical book. Auerbach was brought up in the German philological tradition of Wilhelm Dilthey that cast the methods and practices of the Geisteswissenschaften in clear opposition to the laws and abstractions of the natural sciences, and Auerbach was skep- tical of anything that smacked of abstract system building. In “Epilegomena,” abriefcom- mentary on Mimesis published in 1953, seven years after the original German version of 2. Erich Auerbach, Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2003), 563. 3. Ibid., 555, 22, 561. This content downloaded from 130.226.087.005 on November 29, 2019 01:15:13 AM All use subject to University of Chicago Press Terms and Conditions (http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/t-and-c). ERICHAUERBACH(1892– 1957) |321 the book had appeared, he stressed the necessary particularism of literary scholarship. General concepts that designate literary epochs or groups such as Renaissance, Baroque, Romanticism, symbolism, and so on, have value only insofar as they “elicit in readers or THEME hearers a series of ideas that facilitate for them an understanding of what is meant in the particular context. They are not exact.”4 Even the key concepts of his own study are de- liberately and often frustratingly undefined and at times seemingly inconsistent. As Ed- ward Said noted in his foreword to the fiftieth-anniversary edition of the English trans- lation of Mimesis, “there is something impossibly naïve, if not outrageous that hotly contested terms like ‘Western,’‘reality,’ and ‘representation’ ...are left to stand on their own, unadorned and unqualified.”5 At the same time Mimesis is, on the face of it, a profoundly unscholarly book. The book lacks almost entirely the apparatus of footnotes and references, as well as academic debates and positioning, that are so central to scholarship. In a famous passage in the epilogue, Auerbach exonerates himself with a description of the conditions of his exile. In Istanbul, in the midst of the war he had no access to the well-stocked German libraries that had previously supported his research. As he put it, “international communications were impeded; I had to dispense with almost all periodicals, with almost all the more recent investigations, and in some cases with reliable critical editions of my texts. Hence it is possible and even probable that I overlooked things which I ought to have consid- ered and that I occasionally assert something which modern research has disproved or modified. I trust that the probable errors include none which affect the core of my ar- gument.”6 Writing with knowing ignorance of recent specialized criticism did result in minor errors, but it also liberated Auerbach from the onerous task of reading up on scholarship on so many subjects. Thus, he concluded, “it is quite possible that the book owes its existence to the lack of a rich and specialized library.”7 Auerbach’s remarks about the book’s genesis may not have been entirely correct. In the 1930s and 1940s, Istanbul was hardly an intellectual backwater, but a cosmopolitan city in which Auerbach could converse with colleagues, use their private book collections, and visit local monasteries, whose holdings were anything but insignificant.8 Nevertheless, Mimesis remains an un- usual book, particularly for a scholar brought up in the German academic tradition. 4. Ibid., 573. 5. Edward W. Said, “Introduction to the Fiftieth-Anniversary Edition,” in Erich Auerbach, Mime- sis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2003), xxiv.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Incomparable: the Destiny of Comparative Literature, Globalization Or Not Author(S): Jan M
    Incomparable: The Destiny of Comparative Literature, Globalization or Not Author(s): Jan M. Ziolkowski Source: The Global South, Vol. 1, No. 2, Globalization and the Future of Comparative Literature (Fall, 2007), pp. 16-44 Published by: Indiana University Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40339271 Accessed: 20-04-2016 05:33 UTC Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at http://about.jstor.org/terms JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. Indiana University Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The Global South This content downloaded from 210.212.230.205 on Wed, 20 Apr 2016 05:33:57 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms Incomparable: The Destiny of Comparative Literature, Globalization or Not Jan M. Ziolkowski ABSTRACT This essay traces the history, current state, and potential future of comparative literature. The great expansions have coincided with as- pirations for international understanding. The term first emerged af- ter the Napoleonic wars. The field soared in the late 19th century, be- came a discipline after the Second World War, and experienced its most vigorous growth (of departments and programs) in the U.S. during the Vietnam War. Comparative literature has always worried its supporters as well as its skeptics.
    [Show full text]
  • Narratology, Hermeneutics, and Midrash
    Poetik, Exegese und Narrative Studien zur jüdischen Literatur und Kunst Poetics, Exegesis and Narrative Studies in Jewish Literature and Art Band 2 / Volume 2 Herausgegeben von / edited by Gerhard Langer, Carol Bakhos, Klaus Davidowicz, Constanza Cordoni Constanza Cordoni / Gerhard Langer (eds.) Narratology, Hermeneutics, and Midrash Jewish, Christian, and Muslim Narratives from the Late Antique Period through to Modern Times With one figure V&R unipress Vienna University Press Bibliografische Information der Deutschen Nationalbibliothek Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek verzeichnet diese Publikation in der Deutschen Nationalbibliografie; detaillierte bibliografische Daten sind im Internet über http://dnb.d-nb.de abrufbar. ISBN 978-3-8471-0308-0 ISBN 978-3-8470-0308-3 (E-Book) Veröffentlichungen der Vienna University Press erscheineN im Verlag V&R unipress GmbH. Gedruckt mit freundlicher Unterstützung des Rektorats der Universität Wien. © 2014, V&R unipress in Göttingen / www.vr-unipress.de Alle Rechte vorbehalten. Das Werk und seine Teile sind urheberrechtlich geschützt. Jede Verwertung in anderen als den gesetzlich zugelassenen Fällen bedarf der vorherigen schriftlichen Einwilligung des Verlages. Printed in Germany. Titelbild: „splatch yellow“ © Hazel Karr, Tochter der Malerin Lola Fuchs-Carr und des Journalisten und Schriftstellers Maurice Carr (Pseudonym von Maurice Kreitman); Enkelin der bekannten jiddischen Schriftstellerin Hinde-Esther Singer-Kreitman (Schwester von Israel Joshua Singer und Nobelpreisträger Isaac Bashevis Singer) und Abraham Mosche Fuchs. Druck und Bindung: CPI Buch Bücher.de GmbH, Birkach Gedruckt auf alterungsbeständigem Papier. Contents Constanza Cordoni / Gerhard Langer Introduction .................................. 7 Irmtraud Fischer Reception of Biblical texts within the Bible: A starting point of midrash? . 15 Ilse Muellner Celebration and Narration. Metaleptic features in Ex 12:1 – 13,16 .
    [Show full text]
  • Erich Auerbach's Philology of Extremity
    436 Sarah Pourciau SARAH POURCIAU Istanbul, 1945 Erich Auerbach’s Philology of Extremity Erich Auerbach’s Mimesis has a profoundly pessimistic conclusion. The present paper takes seriously the consequences of the apocalyptic rhetoric therein introduced for Auerbach’s humanist historicist project, arguing that Auerbach holds responsible his own brand of secular humanism – whose story his book tells and whose method it implements – for the “Nivellierungseffekt” he so clearly deplores. As an exile on the outskirts of European space and time (Istanbul, 1945), Auerbach possesses a privileged philological perspective from which to synthesize a history nearing its end; the techniques he employs in order to do so, however, are for him complicit in the destruction. The final chapter of Mimesis, so often considered a weak point of the work, provides a condensed and lyrical account of this predicament. The final pages of Erich Auerbach’s Mimesis (1946) tell a story about endings. The end of the historicist era, the end of historical differentiation, the end of ir- reducible otherness, the end of European unity, the end of meaningful time, and the end of human history all make a subtle but readable appearance in the last chapter of his epoch-making study of western literary realism, under the aspect of a devastating and irreversible process of cultural leveling: Unterhalb der Kämpfe und auch durch sie vollzieht sich ein wirtschaftlicher und kultureller Ausgleichsprozeß; es ist noch ein langer Weg bis zu einem gemeinsamen Leben der Men- schen auf der Erde, doch das Ziel beginnt schon sichtbar zu werden; am sichtbarsten, konkretesten erscheint es schon jetzt in der absichtslosen, genauen, inneren und äußeren Darstellung des beliebigen Lebensaugenblicks der verschiedenen Menschen.
    [Show full text]
  • The Hebraic and Hellenic Models in the Western Literary Canon: the Case of Erich Auerbach
    Edebiyat Vol. NS 4, pp. 63-86 © 1993 Harwood Academic Publishers GmbH Reprints available directly from the publisher Printed in the United States Photocopying permitted by licence only The Hebraic and Hellenic Models in the Western Literary Canon: The Case of Erich Auerbach V assilis Lambropoulos Ohio State University, Columbus, USA It is unusual to see a paper on Greece in a journal of Middle Eastern studies or a MESA conference program. The canonization of Greece as the birthplace of Western civilization has isolated the study of its history from that of its Eastern neighbors. At the same time, the strong Eastern influences on its Byzantine and modern culture have made its post-classical heritage a marginal territory which cannot be confidently placed within specific geographical or historical (or even academic) boundaries. Greece as "Hellas," as an ideological construct, belongs by definition to the West, where it was created, and epitomizes its privileged ancestry and position in the world. I would like to suggest that an investigation of the Western uses of this con­ struct and model would be directly relevant to a promising trend in the area of Middle Eastern studies, the genealogy of orientalism. A host of recent books and articles has explored the invention of the Orient in the European discourses of literature and scholarship. This genealogy can benefit greatly from a similar study of " Hellas" with which the Orient has often been compared. In this essay, I intend to offer an example of the study I am proposing - a microscopic reading of a canonical book of criticism whose history of literature depends on the Hellenic model for a universal (and therefore exclusive) definition of Western identity.
    [Show full text]
  • Exile and Criticism: Edward Said's Interpretation of Erich Auerbach
    Soc (2015) 52:275–282 DOI 10.1007/s12115-015-9898-y CULTURE AND SOCIETY Exile and Criticism: Edward Said’s Interpretation of Erich Auerbach Avihu Zakai1 Published online: 14 April 2015 # Springer Science+Business Media New York 2015 Abstract The literary critic, Edward Said (1935–2003), Philology itself, the branch of literary studies that most examined literature in light of social and cultural poli- loudly cultivates distance from ideology and engage- tics. He analyzed in his words the close connection ment with the most arcane details, might instead be an between history and literature, and exile and history, a authentically – and repeatedly, in one strong voice after subject that occupied much of his life of the mind. another – political activity. Ironically, Said was totally silent about the force, the María Rosa Menocal, Shards of Love: Exile and the passion, the drive to write and invest texts with history Origins of Lyric,1994 in his approach to the writings of the German-Jewish philologist and literary critic Erich Auerbach (1892– Edward Said (1935–2003), who was for many years 1957). In discussing his works, Said gives no sense of Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Co- the historical, ideological and philological context with- lumbia University, was a Bliterary critic who examined in which the famous philologist wrote his works, while literature in light of social and cultural politics.^1 For nevertheless acknowledging that Auerbach always re- example, in his essay BHistory, Literature, and Geogra- ferred to the Bsocial environment^ of a given writer. phy,^ 1995, he analyzed the close connection between My goal is not only to illuminate the suspicious absence history and literature, and exile and history, a subject of historical and ideological context in Said’s treatment that occupied much of his life of the mind since the of Auerbach’s works, but also to offer possible answers time he was Ba graduate student at Harvard in the late why he did so.
    [Show full text]
  • Marilynne Robinson's Gilead As Modern Midrash
    Brigham Young University BYU ScholarsArchive Theses and Dissertations 2010-11-29 Marilynne Robinson's Gilead as Modern Midrash Robert J. Taggart Brigham Young University - Provo Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/etd Part of the Classics Commons, and the Comparative Literature Commons BYU ScholarsArchive Citation Taggart, Robert J., "Marilynne Robinson's Gilead as Modern Midrash" (2010). Theses and Dissertations. 2445. https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/etd/2445 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by BYU ScholarsArchive. It has been accepted for inclusion in Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of BYU ScholarsArchive. For more information, please contact [email protected], [email protected]. Marilynne Robinson‟s Gilead as Modern Midrash Robbie Taggart A thesis submitted to the faculty of Brigham Young University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts V. Stanley Benfell, Chair George Handley Susan Howe Department of Comparative Studies Brigham Young University December 2010 Copyright © 2010 Robbie Taggart All Rights Reserved ABSTRACT Marilynne Robinson‟s Gilead as Modern Midrash Robbie Taggart Department of Comparative Studies Master of Arts It is the intent of this project to show that Marilynne Robinson‟s novel Gilead might be profitably read within the context of the rabbinical exegetical tradition of midrash. It examines Gilead as a midrashic retelling of the Abraham story in the Bible, and shows how reading it in this light illuminates some of the key theological and social concerns at play in the novel. Midrash offers a unique model for reading Gilead because it combines elements of intertextuality, narrative theology and formal exegesis.
    [Show full text]
  • INTRODUCTION to the FIFTIETH-ANNIVERSARY EDITION by Edward W
    INTRODUCTION TO THE FIFTIETH-ANNIVERSARY EDITION by Edward W. Said ... human beings are not born once and for all on the day their mothers give birth to them, but that life obliges them to give birth to themselves. - Gabriel Garcia I\Iarquez THE influence and enduring reputation of books of criticism are, for the critics who write them and hope to be read for more than one season, dispiritingly short. Since World War Two the sheer volume of books appearing in English has risen to huge numbers, thus further ensuring if not ephemerality, then a relatively short life and hardly any influence at all. Books of criticism have usually come in waves associ­ ated with academic trends, most of which are quickly replaced by suc­ cessive shifts in taste, fashion, or genuine intellectual discovery. Thus only a small number of books seem perennially present and, by compar­ ison with the vast majority of their counterparts, to have an amazing staying power. Certainly this is true of Erich Auerbach's magisterial of published Mimesis: The Representation Reality in Western Literature, by Princeton University Press exactly fifty years ago in a satisfYingly read­ able English translation by \Villard R. Trask. As one can immediately judge by its subtitle, Auerbach's book is by far the largest in scope and ambition out of all the other important critical works of the past half century. Its range covers literary master­ pieces from Homer and the Old Testament right through to Virginia Woolf and Marcel Proust, although as Auerbach says apologetically at the end of the book, for reasons of space he had to leave out a great deal of medieval literature as well as some crucial modern writers like Pascal and Baudelaire.
    [Show full text]
  • Global Translatio: the “Invention” of Comparative Literature, Istanbul, 1933
    Global Translatio: The “Invention” of Comparative Literature, Istanbul, 1933 Emily Apter Any language is human prior to being national: Turkish, French, and German languages first belong to humanity and then to Turkish, French, and German peoples. —Leo Spitzer, “Learning Turkish” (1934) In many ways, the rush to globalize the literary canon in recent years may be viewed as the “comp-lit-ization”of national literatures throughout the humanities. Comparative literature was in principle global from its in- ception, even if its institutional establishment in the postwar period as- signed Europe the lion’s share of critical attention and shortchanged non-Western literatures. As many have pointed out, the foundational fig- ures of comparative literature—Leo Spitzer, Erich Auerbach—came as ex- iles and emigres from war-torn Europe with a shared suspicion of nationalism. Goethe’s ideal of Weltliteratur, associated with a commitment to expansive cultural secularism, became a disciplinary premiss that has endured, resonating today in, say, Franco Moretti’s essay “Conjectures on World Literature,” in which he argues that antinationalism is really the only raison d’eˆtre for risky forays into “distant reading.” “The point,” he asserts, “is that there is no other justification for the study of world literature (and for the existence of departments of comparative literature) but this: to be a thorn in the side, a permanent intellectual challenge to national litera- This essay grew out of dialogue with Aamir Mufti, whose own essay “Auerbach in Istanbul” provided crucial inspiration. I also acknowledge with profound gratitude the contribution of Tu¨lay Atak, whose discovery and translation of Spitzer’s “Learning Turkish” article proved indispensable.
    [Show full text]
  • Typology and the Holocaust: Erich Auerbach and Judeo-Christian Europe
    Religions 2012, 3, 600–645; doi:10.3390/rel3030600 OPEN ACCESS religions ISSN 2077-1444 www.mdpi.com/journal/religions Article Typology and the Holocaust: Erich Auerbach and Judeo-Christian Europe Malachi Haim Hacohen History Department, Duke University, Box 90719, Durham, NC 27708, USA; E-Mail: [email protected] Received: 25 May 2012; in revised form: 7 July 2012 / Accepted: 11 July 2012 / Published: 17 July 2012 Abstract: In response to Nazi exclusion of the Jews from German society on racial grounds, Erich Auerbach (1892–1957), a secular Jewish intellectual inspired by cultural Protestantism and Catholicism, formed a vision of a cosmopolitan Judeo-Christian civilization that reintegrated the Jews as biblical founders and cultural mediators. But the integration expunged any mark of traditional Jewishness. Focusing on Christian figurative thinking (typology), Auerbach viewed the binding of Isaac through the crucifixion, and contemporary Jews as civilization‘s (unwilling and undeserving) martyrs. In the aftermath of the Holocaust, his cosmopolitanism reached a crisis, reflected in his postwar vision of Western decline. The progressive mandarin who had begun his intellectual life elevating Dante‘s care for everyday life and sympathizing with French realist social critique ended endorsing Hugh of St. Victor‘s alienation from reality and Pascal‘s acquiescence in totalitarian rule. Keywords: Auerbach; émigrés; cosmopolitanism; Judeo-Christian; typology; Holocaust; figura; Akedah; Mimesis; everydayness 1. Introduction Among the Jewish émigrés who sought sanctuary in World War II on the outskirts of the old continent, in Istanbul University, was literary historian and philologist Erich Auerbach (1892–1957), author of the monumental Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature (1946) [1,2].
    [Show full text]
  • Text Integral
    DACOROMANIA LITTERARIA FONDATOR: SEXTIL PUŞCARIU CONSILIUL DIRECTOR THOMAS HUNKELER (Fribourg), LAURENT JENNY (Geneva), KAZIMIERZ JURCZAK (Cracovia), MARIELLE MACÉ (Paris), WILLIAM MARX (Paris), NICOLAE MECU (Bucureşti), VIRGIL NEMOIANU (Washington), ANTONIO PATRAŞ (Iaşi), LAURA PAVEL (Cluj-Napoca), OVIDIU PECICAN (Cluj-Napoca), ION SIMUŢ (Oradea), T. SZABÓ LEVENTE (Cluj-Napoca), CĂLIN TEUTIŞAN (Cluj-Napoca), GISÈLE VANHÈSE (Calabria), CHRISTINA VOGEL (Zürich) COMITETUL DE REDACŢIE EUGEN PAVEL – director ADRIAN TUDURACHI – redactor-şef MAGDA WÄCHTER – redactor-şef adjunct COSMIN BORZA, DORU BURLACU, ALEX GOLDIŞ IOAN MILEA, DORIS MIRONESCU, MAGDA RĂDUŢĂ, ANDREI SIMUŢ, ADRIANA STAN, LIGIA TUDURACHI (secretar ştiinţific de redacţie), LAURA ZĂVĂLEANU © Institutul de Lingvistică şi Istorie Literară „Sextil Puşcariu” ISSN 2360 – 5189 ISSN–L 2360 – 5189 COMITETUL DE REDACŢIE ACADEMIA ROMÂNĂ 400165 Cluj-Napoca, Str. Emil Racoviţă, nr. 21 Filiala Cluj-Napoca Tel./ fax: +40 264 432440 400015 Cluj-Napoca, Str. Republicii, nr. 9 e-mail: [email protected] Tel./ fax: +40 264 592363 web: http://www.dacoromanialitteraria.inst- e-mail: [email protected] puscariu.ro ACADEMIA ROMÂNĂ Filiala Cluj-Napoca Institutul de Lingvistică şi Istorie Literară „Sextil Puşcariu” DACOROMANIA LITTERARIA Vol. II 2015 SUMAR • SOMMAIRE • CONTENTS Libre accès : circulation des idées théoriques dans la culture littéraire contemporaine Free Access: The Circulation of Theoretical Ideas in Contemporary Literary Culture Dossier coordonné par / Edited by Oana Fotache,
    [Show full text]
  • Form and Representation in Auerbach's Mimesis
    ALEX WOLOCH Form and Representation in Auerbach’s Mimesis Since criticism has long understood literature to be embedded within—or, at least, as not entirely free from—politics, and since nearly everyone, today, would identify their ideological position (in one way or another) with the value of “democracy,” it is not surprising that this value has been espoused on both sides of numerous aesthetic and theoretical debates.1 Who would want to say that his or her critical position is not the democratic one: whether through the positions that we draw out of our own advocacy of—or simple intimacy with—a particular text or through the critique by which we mark an asserted distance with another? A case in point would be the boisterous arguments, throughout the twentieth-century, over realism as literary value and critical-aesthetic term. Proponents of realism have often seemed very capable of marking, and eager to mark, the affiliation of their work with democracy. The realist text, for example, seeks to foreground—and to confer aesthetic dignity onto—ordinary life, common experiences, mass culture. Realism widens the franchise of the represented, accounting for new histories, under-recognized particularities, emergent subjects. Alternatively, it grasps the systematic, interconnected nature of modern life. Opponents of realism (whether literary or critical) also have readily understood their position and work as fundamentally democratic. Here, we find a critique of any top-down, authoritative (potentially authoritarian) representation, any fixing of an actually unfixed, dynamic world through the congealing of lived, plural realities into a singular “reality” or of motile, fluid selfhood into static, literary “character”.
    [Show full text]
  • ROMANCE STUDIES in GERMANY and WERNER KRAUSS (2002, 7,300 Words)*
    THE RULE AND THE EXCEPTIONS: ROMANCE STUDIES IN GERMANY AND WERNER KRAUSS (2002, 7,300 words)*/ The title of Peter Jehle's very useful book, Werner Krauss and Romance Studies in the Nazi State,1/ indicates his twofold goal. It makes for a work where some chapters could stand as weighty independent studies, such as those on the early Auerbach or on Krauss's Corneille studies; and also for one full of excursuses and turns, whose final chapter follows the beginning of Krauss's projects after 1945 and his stance in the GDR. I shall not follow his mixture of chronological and thematic articulation, perhaps difficult to avoid in a pioneering work dealing with huge amounts of unknown materials, but use this and other work of his, as well as work by Frank-Rutger Hausmann,2/ to discuss both headings, while concentrating, as Jehle also does, on the central French studies at the expense of Iberian and Italian ones. It will be apparent that I agree with Jehle's basic stance and most of his judgments, for his book is not only a treasure trove of data (it has 500 notes, over 800 lines of bibliography and an index of 500 names) but also a valiant and largely successful attempt to throw light on two highly significant and willfully obscured chapters of German intellectual and political history. 1. On "Romanistik" German Romance Studies Leading up to Nazi Time In some reviews from the end of the Weimar period, Walter Benjamin inveighed both against separating literary history from general history and against the premises of what eventually came to be called "cultural science" (Kulturkunde), which were a lay ritual celebrating "eternal values" of "word art".
    [Show full text]