William Lovell digital

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Maximilian Bergengruen
• Subject Area: German Literary and Cultural Studies (Modern German Literature)
• Term: since 2023
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 522592161

A digital edition of Ludwig Tieck's epistolary novel William Lovell is applied for, which will present the texts of the three authorized editions equally - i.e. without prioritizing a first or last hand edition - and make the revisions from the editio princeps to the second and third edition visible; individually and in a collated version. This three- or fourfold presentation is supplemented by a commentary, an index, and a search function; each relating to all three versions. The preliminary work for the project has shown how far-reaching and substantial the changes between the different versions are. The edition project applied for here should make it possible to reconstruct the upheavals in Tieck's own work on the basis of these revisions, and this as reflections on the epochal changes in which he works. A first working hypothesis is as follows: The Lovell emerges as an early Romantic text in critical engagement with the late Enlightenment. It is revised for the first time when Tieck reorients himself towards a more realistic mode of representation. In this course, as first samples have shown, the plot becomes less digressive, numerous letters are shortened, mysteries and ambiguities are eliminated. Lovell is altered a further time when Tieck enters his late phase, in which - as an extension of his early realist ambitions - he re-raises early Romantic topoi but subjects them to ironic scrutiny. If this tendency could be stabilized by the edition, it could be shown that the aforementioned ironic resumption of early Romantic elements is directly related to the rereading in the correction.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants