Fiction and Genre Contributions to a literary history of referentializing reading after the establishment of the modern practice of fiction

• Applicant: Privatdozent Dr. Benjamin Gittel
• Subject Area: German Literary and Cultural Studies (Modern German Literature)
• Term: from 2017 to 2020
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 392946741

The aim of the research project is to demonstrate the existence of genrespecific referentialising reading techniques after the establishment of modern fiction practice in the last third of the 18th century, to describe them in their respective specifics, and to explain their function in the historical context. To this end the project conducts exemplary analyzes of reception documents from different periods. The project focuses on the fictional, constitutively reality-related genres of autofiction, historical novel, "tendentious novel" (germ. Tendenzroman), and roman-à-clef as well as three core study periods in which these genres became very fashionable. Thus, established approaches in literary history are supplemented by a decidedly reception-oriented perspective, which first focuses on specific genres instead of the category "individual work", which secondly recognizes the fictionality dimension of these works as central and which contributes thirdly to the thesis of the differentiation of the modern practice of fiction.In order to demonstrate genre-specific reading practices with their regularities between genre assignment and assignment of meanings as well as their specific norms, the literary critics' reception of selected genre representatives is analyzed quantitatively and qualitatively using a praxeological method. Furthermore, the project determines the relationship between genre-specific reading practices and modern fictionality practices; it develops a typology of referentializing reading practices; and it explains the fashionability of the abovementioned genres against the backdrop of area-specific repartitions of the knowledge system. The overall objective is to make a fundamental contribution to the literary history of referentializing reading within the modern practice of fiction through exemplary analyzes of significant episodes of German literary history.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants