Peter Handke's notebooks. A genetic-critical and annotated digital edition

• Applicant: Dr. Ulrich von Bülow
• Subject Area: German Literary and Cultural Studies (Modern German Literature)
• Term: since 2020
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 435049492

Peter Handke's notebooks which he has been constantly writing since the early 1970s represent a unique collection. Currently, 75 notebooks with a total of 10,900 written pages from 1971 to 1990 are accessible to researchers in the German Literature Archive Marbach (DLA) and the Literary Archive of the Austrian National Library in Vienna (ÖNB). The character of the notebooks, shifting between working notes and drafts, travel journals, reading annotations, book excerpts and diary notes, make them a unique source for a wide range of philological questions. Due to their intermedial design (text-icon relationship) they rank among artworks. The project's concern is basic philological research. It aims to develop a genetic-critical and annotated digital edition of a first part of 22 notebooks that is being realized by an editorial team of the two joint project partners ÖNB and DLA. The edition will provide philologically verified, easy-to-read texts which can be quoted and verified with the help of the facsimile. It will also establish a short but informative commentary and biographical contextualization (open access). According to modern standards all texts will be encoded with TEI in order to make them available to additional functions, e.g. an index of persons, institutions, dates or works. All documents can be specifically searched for. The project is based on the technical infrastructure for digital editions developed and proven on a pilot project by the ÖNB but modified by individually graphic solutions and adaptions of new tools. The transparency of text codes and the publication of the editorial reports will enable similar projects to benefit from our experiences.The digital edition will facilitate and support any profound source-based readings as well as research on Handke's literary endeavors and interpretations of the author’s work; it will enable new insights into Handke's poetics, the influence of his readings on his literary work, into the biographical basis of literary motifs or his specific way of working and writing for instance his poetical turn towards a modern classical narration.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants
• International Connection: Austria
• Cooperation Partner: Privatdozent Bernhard Fetz, Ph.D.