Between historical distance and a performance of presence: entanglements of 'history' and contemporary reality in epic texts of the Italian Renaissance.

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Klaus W. Hempfer
• Subject Area: European and American Literary and Cultural Studies
• Term: from 2014 to 2022
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 253375654

In Ariosto’s Orlando furioso, the narrative technique of entrelacement operates as an epistemological metaphor for a contingent historical world that follows no inherent logic. Only the poet who narrates this world is capable of lending it the kind of order that teleological constructions of history always already presuppose. Based on this and other findings from the first funding period, the follow-on project investigates whether and in how far the complex narrative possibilities opened up by Ariosto were adopted in subsequent pre-Tassian epics, whether they came to be codified in formal poetics, or whether they were eventually abandoned. In so doing, the project takes account of religious and poetological restrictions which did not yet have the same normative status for Ariosto. As in the first funding period, entrelacement and other forms of multi-threaded and digressive narration will once again be at the centre of inquiry. In this context, the project seeks to establish a theoretical framework that addresses two major issues: on the one hand, the concept of ‘multi-threadedness’, largely neglected in existing narratological scholarship, is in need of further differentiation; on the other hand, multi-threaded narration is to be brought into relation with digression as an epistemological and methodological habitus that is characteristic of the period in question, a habitus that also exerts its influence on specific genres of theoretical and argumentative discourse, namely the dialogue and the essay in the vein of Montaigne. Against this background, the project will focus on the controversial thematisation of narrative varietà in the context of the contemporary debate over the merits of the romanzo; in light of the theoretical explorations previously mentioned, there is good reason to expect findings that go beyond the scope of existing research. Further to this, and most importantly, the project will engage with narrative practice after Ariosto, a field of inquiry that has attracted scant scholarly attention so far. Based on a substantial corpus of mostly little-known and under-researched epics, the project’s goal is to explore if and how these texts deploy multi-threaded narratives and set up correspondingly complex narrative worlds. Another key question to be considered is which epistemological dispositions and ‘ideological’ premises can be discerned behind the preference for this kind of narrative approach, or, conversely, its rejection.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants