Literature in the Age of Illustrated Periodicals: Stages of the complex history of text-image relations (19th Century)

• Applicant: Privatdozentin Dr. Madleen Podewski
• Subject Area: German Literary and Cultural Studies (Modern German Literature) ; Theatre and Media Studies
• Term: from 2015 to 2020
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 282457319

The interdisciplinary project focuses on the multiple relationships that forms literature and images/pictures in illustrated periodicals of the 19th century. In doing so it makes an innovative contribution to the study of the role that literature plays in modern visual cultures. Therefore, illustrated magazines are particularly important because since the 1830s they are both an important place of publication for literature and a central instance for training, dissemination and differentiation of images and text-image-relationships. Following recent conceptions, illustrated periodicals are considered as complex clusters in which ideas of "literature" and "image" are subject to a permanent, periodic process of discussion. Therefore, within the manifold controversies on the relationship between images and literature, carried on across the 19th century, illustrated periodicals assume an important and specific role. They rise to the position of new flexible institutions of negotiation: Literature here is always simultaneously brought together with multiple dimensions of text-image-relationships, with different, even conflicting discussions on images as well as with pictures in concreto. Thus, the project aims to revive and bring together the hitherto neglected and isolated research on literature in illustrated magazines in overarching issues: What contributions make literature to the evolution and transformation of modern visual culture within a central area of the 19th centurys print media culture? How literature changes gradually along with images within the magazines specific environment of multifaceted and condensed options for text-image-relationships? What range of forms are developed here? In analyzing four periodicals which are central for the history of the 19th century illustrated magazines, (Das Pfennig-Magazin der Gesellschaft zur Verbreitung gemeinnütziger Kenntnisse (1833-1852), Europa. Chronik der gebildeten Welt (1835-1844), Die Gartenlaube. Illustriertes Familienblatt (1853-1937), and Berliner Illustrirte Zeitung (1891/92-1945)), the project makes accessible a complex, ramified, gradually changed history of text-image-relations.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants