Riddles, Irony, Community: Enlightenment Paradigms in the Italian Poetry of the Eighteenth Century

• Applicant: Marc Schäfer
• Subject Area: European and American Literary and Cultural Studies
• Term: since 2026
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 572144986

The research project aims to adress the question of the significance of 18th century poetry for the Italian Enlightenment movement and the development of a programme of Enlightenment literature. In doing so, it responds to a gap in research and aims to counter a widespread view according to which the texts written in the Settecento are considered negligible and neither stylistically nor substantively innovative. One of the central hypotheses, contrary to this popular prejudice, is that Italian poetry enables complex debates combining poetology and Enlightenment programmes. It builds on a deep theoretical reflection on poetry in early modern Italian literature, which has a decisive influence on the relationship between literature and Enlightenment in Italy at the beginning of modernity. The project will examine how understanding and new knowledge are conveyed in poems and how new forms and ways of a specifically poetic mode of understanding are created by the texts. This examination will focus on the aspects pertaining to the ironic manner of speaking and the riddle as a figure of thought. Conversely, the focus will be on the question of how processes can be regulated through poetry that are intended to lead to the formation and shaping of communities. In this context, both socio-historical and form-historical questions play a role. Processes of literary academy formation in the Settecento will be analysed, which lead to the formation of a specific poetic field. In addition, questions of enigmatisation and ironisation are brought to the forefront, as they are closely linked to the aspect of community constitution. In particular, irony can serve as a mechanism of exclusion and as a means of unifying a community of reception. The studies outlined here are also to be understood as a contribution to a more general and potentially cross-cultural investigation of the relationship between the Enlightenment and poetry.

• DFG Programme: Position