Narrative fractures. Heterogeneity in early German prose

• Applicants: Professor Dr. Thomas Althaus; Professorin Dr. Elisabeth Lienert
• Subject Area: German Literary and Cultural Studies (Modern German Literature) ; German Medieval Studies (Medieval German Literature)
• Term: since 2021
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 467048903

This project examines the heterogeneity of early German prose (prose novel and short prose). It focuses on narrative fractures as indicators of a difference that creates textual complexity. In close collaboration between medieval and early modern German studies, the project analyses narrative strategies of productively used heterogeneity in systematic and diachronic perspectives. It thus correlates issues of recent research on historical narratology and the history of knowledge.The analyses of heterogeneous textures in early German prose are based on texts collected in two anthologies by Frankfurt publisher Sigmund Carl Feyerabend: i.e. the Buch der Liebe (1587) as a representative corpus of prose novels and the Kurtzweilige vnd Lächerliche Geschicht Vnd Historien (1583) as a representative collection of short prose narratives of that time. This sets a time frame of approximately a century, spanning from the first prints of the collected texts in the 1470s to Feyerabend’s compilations. The systematic description of the narrative field (cross-section analyses) is combined with a diachronic investigation of its historical genesis (longitudinal analyses), the question of narrative fractures with the further question of the narrative modelling and conventionalisation of patterns of heterogeneous narration in the late 16th century.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants