Literary History

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Literary History

• Introduction to Literary and Cultural Studies
• Text Meyer, Michael English and American
  Literatures. Second Edition. Tübingen Francke,
  2005. 13-18

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Uncle Sam Bids Good Riddance to the Deportees
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Historical Understanding of the Text

• ability to
• understand and locate a literary work in its
  historical and cultural context
• to compare a literary text it with
  coevals/contemporaries (intertextual references)
• understand all the hints, pun, allusions given in
  the text

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Historical Understanding of the Text

• ability to
• understand and locate a literary work in its
  historical and cultural context
• to compare a literary text it with
  coevals/contemporaries (intertextual references)
• understand all the hints, pun, allusions given in
  the text
• understand the historical formation of the form
  of the text
• ? All these components imply a sufficient
  knowledge of the history of language

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How could you now describe literary history with
the metaphor of the map?

• Literary history functions as an orientation
• (finding our feet in the literatures in
  English)
• Literary histories always represent only a
  selection of texts
• (excluding and including literatures)
• The map metaphor indicates that literary
  histories are models rather than true-to-life
  representations

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What does literary history represent?

• Literary histories are the result of a process
  of construction. They do not offer an objective
  representation of the literary past they produce
  models and narratives of this past with the
  assistance of literary-historical categories.
• (Nünning, Introduction 153)

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Comparison of different literary histories

• Which literary texts or events are included?
• ? Is this selection based on a broad or a narrow
  definition of literature?
• According to which aspects are these books
  structured?
• ? What is the primary principle of organization?

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PeriodsAccording to which criteria are literary
periods established?
For example

• Historical periods, events, political leaders
• Victorian Lit. Colonial Period,
  Enlightenment.
• Authors and their works
• The Age of Chaucer, The Age of Shakespeare
• History of Art
• Baroque, Renaissance, Postmodernism.
• Language
• Old English, Middle English Literature
• Centuries

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What does this process of selection also imply?

• Selection evaluation/ value judgment
• (? e.g. exclusion of ethnic literatures, female
  authors.)
• ? literary histories play an important role in
  the cultural process of canon formation

Literary Canon
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synchrony vs. diachrony

• The synchronic dimension of literary history
  organizes literary phenomena that exist at the
  same time ? e.g. genres
• The diachronic dimension is based on divisions
  into periods ? historical change