The epic modelling of ideological conflicts in the early modern era

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Bernhard Huss
• Subject Area: European and American Literary and Cultural Studies
• Term: from 2014 to 2017
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 245050044

The basic hypothesis of the project is that the modelling of ideological conflicts constitutes a fundamental structural impetus for epic narrative as well as one of its central topics. Such conflicts emerge, for example, in the opposition between Christian and pagan positions, between the claims to power of Christianity and Islam, between Latin-catholic and Byzantine religion and culture, between latinitas and >barbarism< in Late Antiquity, between the cultures of the Old and the New World, but also in more general terms as a dichotomy between transcendental and secular world views. These oppositions form the very substrate for the modelling of the epic plot. They are linked to spatiotemporal figurations to a great extent, the specific phenotype of which is crucial for the ideological positioning of authors and texts within the Early Modern universe of discourse, and which can also provide evidence for epistemic changes that are relevant for the basic characterization of the period as a whole. By examining the specific chronotopic conflict formations as they pertain to the individual case at hand, the project aims to provide the first comprehensive analysis of the fundamental epistemic problems to be encountered in narrative texts from the 14th to the 17th centuries (with the occasional excursus to later works). The textual corpus will consist of the following works at the least: (a) Petrarca, Africa; (b) Sannazaro, De partu virginis; Vida, Christias; (c) Pusculo, Constantinopolis; Zuppardo, Alfonseis; Filelfo, Amyris; Bargaeus, Syrias; (d) Trissino, Italia liberata dai Goti; Ronsard, Franciade; (e) Gambara, De navigatione Christophori Columbi; Stella, Columbeis; Stigliani, Del mondo nuovo; Placcius, Atlantis retecta; Carrara, Columbus. The analysis will draw on Lotman*s concept of the semiosphere, a term which is specified by Lotman to denote a conflation of the semiospheric organization with the spatiotemporal organization of cultures. Literary texts become the preferred stage on which ideological, spatiotemporally positioned cultural frameworks (artificial semiospheres) are put into relation with each other, and where their respective validity claims are negotiated.The basic question the project seeks to resolve is how these epic conflicts, highly significant as they are for plot composition, manifest themselves via a tension-filled semiospheric structure which simultaneously stages contrary spaces of action and the antagonistic ideologies they correspond to, or to put it differently: how a plot construction rich in chronotopical contrasts is deployed to express the fundamentally different world views the texts have to engage with in an epistemic agon of great relevance for the period as a whole. What is being addressed is thus a desideratum which A. Nünning articulated just recently, namely >>a reconstruction of various historical, period-specific and national-linguistic models of culture and space<<.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants