Abstract

GUMBRECHT, Hans Ulrich. Shall We Continue to Write Histories of Literature?. Hist. graf [online]. 2010, n.34, pp.111-132. ISSN 1405-0927.

The title-question is serious, i.e. it is not geared to produce a self-congratulatory answer for the tradition of literary studies and its historical work. But the reason that makes this question serious has little (if anything) to do with interior movements in the discipline of "Literary Studies." Rather, this essay departs from the thesis that, over the past three or four decades, the "chronotype" (the construction of time) in which we (the "western" cultures, and perhaps even "global culture") are living, has undergone a profound transformation; and that this transformation makes obsolete the central assumption that had founded not only "Literary History," as a genre, for more than two centuries -- i.e. the assumption that one could "learn" (learn how to make prognostics) from the historical unfolding of any phenomenon, with "literature" being an eminent case in point. If this "historicist" chronotope is no longer ours, then the question arises of what among our new relationship to the textual body called "literature" may qualify as specifically "historical," and which types of new discourses they might enhance.

Keywords : Literary History; second order observer; theory; literary criticism; historicity; Literature.

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