W drodze do narratologii historycznej

The paper presents the concept of fundamentally new direction in the field of narratological studies – historical narratology. The author suggests turning to the research experience accumulated in Russian historical poetics by A. Veselovsky, P. Ricoeur’s and W. Schmid works. Narratology is seen as a theory of forming, storing and transmitting the event experience of the presence of the human self in the world. In particular, the work deals with diegetic picture of the world, with the historical dynamics of the most important types of narrative intrigue, and with the ethos of narrative. The most important characteristics of narrative are integrated into the concept of narrative strategy of a particular discourse. The emergence, spread and coexistence of narrative strategies in the diachronic dimension of the culture of storytelling as a form of human communication is at the core of research interest in historical narratology.

Epilogue

The epilogue takes stock of the volume’s insights, reflects on the connections and tensions between the contributors’ individual approaches, and delineates how the kinds of critical intervention and conceptual recalibration offered here can set the scene for future interdisciplinary work. It sums up and explores the variations in perspective that remain in the light of the volume as a whole, while also sounding out the emerging common ground that can be established in spite of the sometimes irreducible—and productive—differences. It also draws out and comments on the recurring concerns of this volume—which cluster in particular around the issues of historically contingent reception aesthetics, dynamics of performance, affect, intermediality, narrative ontology, and differences between genres—in order to show how the volume as a whole advances the developing theoretical field of historical narratology. In doing so, it makes the case for the importance of expanding the scope and methods of narrative theory through incorporating specifically classical parameters of narration to confront and address some of the unsatisfactory dimensions of structuralist narratology. In this way, the epilogue also sketches avenues for future research and points out the ways in which the present volume seeks to set an agenda for new directions in classical and interdisciplinary scholarship.

Mittelhochdeutsche Erzählverfahren und theologisches Wissen

The question of the cultural conditions of narrations as a paradigm of historical narratology corresponds to one of the main interests of medieval literary studies: how is literature anchored in its extra-literary fields of reference? However, problems with the modeling of text and context have led to literary texts being understood in a more abstract way as forms of cultural practice, whereas the concrete contexts are neglected. As a result of this development, different cultural theoretical premises are encountered in the field of historical narratology that can hardly be related to one another. In this situation, our paper wants to highlight the importance of very specific text-context references, especially between theological knowledge and the narrative methods (Erzählverfahren) of Middle High German literature. Firstly, the autodiegesis in Rudolf von Ems’s Der guote Gêrhart is interpreted with respect to the question of intentionality, as discussed in Peter Lombard’s Book of Sentences. Secondly, ambiguities in the figuration and the narrative perspective in Ritter von Staufenberg are explained in the horizon of a literary demonology, as it is rooted in Augustinian theology and is developed by Walter Map and Gervasius of Tilbury. With this approach we want to argue that theological knowledge influenced the vernacular narrative not only on the level of content, but also in narrative methods.

Zum Aufbruch der Frühmittelaltergermanistik

The article builds on current discussions about the status of the Early Middle Ages German philology and demonstrates on the basis of various thematic areas the research perspectives for the Old High German literature. Along three subject areas (historical narratology, interdisciplinarity, mediation of Old High German in school and college), currently discussed topics such as coherence, speech scenes, figures, sound studies as well as the tradition of early literature are outlined and their relevance is illustrated through selected text examples.