Historical-critical edition of Otto Ludwig's »Romanstudien«

• Applicant: Dr. Matthias Grüne
• Subject Area: German Literary and Cultural Studies (Modern German Literature) ; General and Comparative Literature and Cultural Studies
• Term: from 2017 to 2020
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 358077796

The aim of the project is a historical-critical edition of the »Romanstudien« (»Studies on the novel«), a text from the estate of the writer Otto Ludwig (1813-1865). Ludwig is one of the main authors of the German realism of the 19th century. However, he owes this position not so much to his literary texts, but rather to his extensive theoretical work. The so-called »Romanstudien« are a particularly relevant part of this work. It is a workbook which was used by Ludwig over the period of 15 years to record his thoughts on the theory of the novel. Beside important statements on the poetics of Realism, these diary-like notes contain thorough examinations on the structure of narrative, foreshadowing the narrative theory of 20th and 21st century in many regards. The edition of the »Romanstudien« is therefore of high importance not only for research in German realism but also for the interdisciplinary field of narratology. A complete and critical edition of Ludwigs text still has not been published yet. For the first time, the planned edition offers the full text according to the standards of the modern edition philology. The guiding principle for the constitution of the edited text is to present Ludwigs notes in a readable and quotable form without ignoring the fragmentary and private character of the manuscript. The edition will include extensive annotations and a detailed index which enables the reader to fully understand the argumentative and conceptual relationships in the text.The edition of the »Romanstudien« will first be published in print form. In order to ensure the re-use and long-term availability of research data, it is planned to convert the transcriptions in machine-readable form and to store this data in a digital repository. The virtual research environment TextGrid provides the necessary infrastructure for this purpose. An agreement on the use of TextGrid has been reached with the Göttingen State and University Library, which is responsible for the project management. The conversion and storing of the data lay the ground for the future development of a hybrid edition in which the digitized reproductions of the manuscript pages, the transcriptions and their XML-Codes are presented next to the edited text.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants