Published by De Gruyter

Paradigms

Literature and the Human Sciences

Edited by: Rüdiger Campe and Karen S. Feldman

ISSN: 2195-2205

e-ISSN 2195-2213

Overview
Volumes

PEER REVIEWED

This new series presents original scholarly and essayistic work addressing the central status of literature in and for the human sciences. At stake in the monographs and essay collections are paradigms of literary forms for thinking the human sciences: the knowledge involved in a literary work; how modes of reading and writing shape and depend on an epoch or area of thinking; literature's affinities and points of resistance to what we call the humanities and the sciences. In other words, the series examines how literature works with and upon philosophy, rhetoric, technology, anthropology, sociology, statistics, economics, history, experimental science, mathematics etc. Paradigms is primarily concerned with German letters, but also includes its European and comparative literary contexts.
All volumes will be published in English and are first reviewed by the series editors followed by a peer review from two academics in the particular area of specialization. Two to four volumes are planned annually.

Editors
Rüdiger Campe (Yale University, New Haven CT)
Karen S. Feldman (University of California, Berkeley)

Editorial Board
Paul Fleming (Cornell University)
Eva Geulen (Zentrum für Literatur- und Kulturforschung, Berlin)
Rüdiger Görner (Queen Mary, University of London)
Barbara Hahn (Vanderbilt University)
Daniel Heller-Roazen (Princeton University)
Helmut Müller-Sievers (University of Colorado at Boulder)
William Rasch (Indiana University, Bloomington)
Joseph Vogl (Humboldt University, Berlin)
Elisabeth Weber (University of California, Santa Barbara)

Submission Format
The series accepts monographs and edited volumes, if they systematically approach a specific topic and show a high level of coherence and focus.
Please submit an abstract and table of contents with narrative description of each chapter (4–5 pages total, single-spaced) as well as a CV along with the complete manuscript.
Only complete manuscripts can be evaluated. In exceptional cases, abstracts or outlines can be submitted to discuss the general fit of a book with the series’ editors. Please understand that a final commitment for publication can only be reached on the basis of a complete manuscript.
Manuscripts should have a minimum length of circa 200 pages (approximately 500,000 characters including spaces).
Please submit your abstract, table of contents, and CV as one file; the complete manuscript as a second file to Dr. Myrto Aspioti: myrto.aspioti@degruyter.com.

Author information

Series Editors: Rüdiger Campe (Yale University); Karen S. Feldman (University of California, Berkeley)

Supplementary Materials

Book Ahead of Publication 2024

By Hand

Writing Hands and Making Genders in German Culture

Kathryn E. McEwen

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By Hand investigates the persistent absence of female hands from the story of the human hand. Mediating between mind and body, self and world, the hand has long been invested with the power to classify and organize bodies as human or non-human. This project argues that hands are also central to constructing and upholding a binary understanding of gender, in which the singular hand functions as a material and metaphorical instrument of patriarchy.　

Against the dominant narrative, the hands and handed experiences of women reveal the many ways in which the hand is used to create, transmit, or resist these binary gender identities. Close readings of Rahel Levin Varnhagen’s letters, Hannah Höch’s essays on embroidery, and Charlotte Wolff’s psycho-physiological hand analyses offer alternate stories of the hand. Together they not only demonstrate the variety and skill of women’s manual accomplishments, but also trace how hand work becomes gender work. By offering a nuanced consideration of hands as tools for the construction of gendered difference, By Hand suggests a more general reconsideration of the gendered body as a contested site of cultural production.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.0000/9783110707830
ISBN:: 9783110707830
ISBN:: 9783110707922
ISBN:: 9783110633078
Subject:: Cultural Studies
Subject:: Topics in Cultural Studies
Subject:: Gender
Subject:: Literary Studies
Subject:: Topics in Literary Studies
Subject:: Gender and Literature
Subject:: Knowledge
Subject:: Sciences
Publisher:: De Gruyter

Book Open Access 2023

Truth in Serial Form

Serial Formats and the Form of the Series, 1850–1930

Malika Maskarinec, Schweizerischer Nationalfonds (SNF)

Volume 15 in this series

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This volume has its starting point in the veritable explosion of serialized formats in all of forms representation, from painting to printing, beginning in the mid nineteenth century and the well-known fascination with series in biology, mathematics, music, art, or literature. The new media culture of the late nineteenth century, very much shaped by these serialized formats, sees itself confronted with questions of truthfulness in new and profound ways, just as perhaps the accelerated rhythm, anonymity, and broadened accessibility of new media today have created new possibilities for the dissemination of misinformation and, conversely, give us cause to interrogate anew our notions of truthfulness. By examining both the formal operations of both aesthetic and scientific objects in a series form, and the historical context of their publication or presentation, the contributions in this volume examine the often strained, but yet immensely productive relationship between the way in which a series negotiates questions of truthfulness: both by reference to the rules established in its series form or by means of its serial format. This volume provides ten detailed cases of the series form from the history of science and journalism, and the history of painting, photography, and literature as well.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110795110
ISBN:: 9783110795110
ISBN:: 9783110795080
ISBN:: 9783110795158
Subject:: Literary Studies
Subject:: Literary Studies, general
Subject:: Literary History
Subject:: Topics in Literary Studies
Subject:: Knowledge
Subject:: Sciences
Publisher:: De Gruyter

Book 2022

Making an Entrance

Appearing on the Stage from Racine to Nietzsche

Juliane Vogel, Michael Thomas Taylor

Volume 14 in this series

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How does the entrance of a character on the tragic stage affect their visibility and presence? Beginning with the court culture of the seventeenth century and ending with Nietzsche’s Dionysian theater, this monograph explores specific modes of entering the stage and the conditions that make them successful—or cause them to fail. The study argues that tragic entrances ultimately always remain incomplete; that the step figures take into visibility invariably remains precarious. Through close readings of texts by Racine, Goethe, and Kleist, among others, it shows that entrances promise both triumph and tragic exposure; though they appear to be expressions of sovereignty, they are always simultaneously threatened by failure or annihilation. With this analysis, the book thus opens up possibilities for a new theory of dramatic form, one that begins not with the plot itself but with the stage entrance that structures how characters appear and thus determines how the plot advances. By reflecting on acts of entering, this book addresses not only scholars of literature, theater, media, and art but anyone concerned with what it means to appear and be present.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110754490
ISBN:: 9783110754490
ISBN:: 9783110754551
ISBN:: 9783110754384
Subject:: Cultural Studies
Subject:: Genres and Media in Cultural Studies
Subject:: Drama, Theater
Subject:: Literary Studies
Subject:: Literary Genres and Media
Subject:: Drama, Theater
Subject:: Literary Theory
Subject:: Topics in Literary Studies
Subject:: Knowledge
Publisher:: De Gruyter

Book Open Access 2022

Primitive Thinking

Figuring Alterity in German Modernity

Nicola Gess, Erik Butler, Susan Solomon

Volume 13 in this series

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This book examines the discourse on ‘primitive thinking’ in early twentieth century Germany. It explores texts from the social sciences, writings on art and language and – most centrally – literary works by Robert Musil, Walter Benjamin, Gottfried Benn and Robert Müller, focusing on three figurations of alterity prominent in European primitivism: indigenous cultures, children, and the mentally ill.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110695090
ISBN:: 9783110695090
ISBN:: 9783110694680
ISBN:: 9783110695151
Subject:: Literary Studies
Subject:: German Literature
Subject:: German Literature, general
Subject:: 20th Century
Subject:: Topics in Literary Studies
Subject:: Knowledge
Subject:: Sciences
Publisher:: De Gruyter

Book Open Access 2020

Facing Poetry

Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten's Theory of Literature

Frauke Berndt

Volume 12 in this series

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Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten (1714–1762) is known in intellectual history for having established the discourse of philosophical aesthetics with his "Meditationes philosophicae de nonnullis ad poema pertinentibus" (Reflections on Poetry) and "Aesthetica" (Aesthetics), which consists of two books and is considered Baumgarten’s most important work. But this book amends that history. It shows that Baumgarten's aesthetics is a science of literature that demonstrates the value of literature to philosophy. Baumgarten did not intend to pursue such a task, but in working on his philosophical texts and lectures, he ends up analyzing, synthesizing, and contextualizing literature. He thereby treats it not as belles lettres or as a moral institution but rather as an epistemic object. His aesthetics is thus the first modern literary theory, and his articulation of this theory would never again be matched in its complexity and systematicity. Baumgarten’s theory of literature has never been discovered. It waits latently to take its place in intellectual history.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110624519
ISBN:: 9783110624519
ISBN:: 9783110623482
ISBN:: 9783110623314
Subject:: Literary Studies
Subject:: Literary Theory
Subject:: Topics in Literary Studies
Subject:: Knowledge
Subject:: Sciences
Publisher:: De Gruyter

Book 2020

The Restorative Poetics of a Geological Age

Stifter, Viollet-le-Duc, and the Aesthetic Practices of Geohistoricism

Timothy Attanucci

Volume 11 in this series

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This book examines two mid-nineteenth century thinkers – the Austrian writer Adalbert Stifter and the French architect Eugène E. Viollet-le-Duc – who imagined cultural history on the model of earth history: as a history of objects to be restored and worlds to be reconstructed. The nascent field of geology shaped cultural thought; their conservationism, informed by erosion, envisions a future of restorative renewal.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110689471
ISBN:: 9783110689471
ISBN:: 9783110689518
ISBN:: 9783110685534
Subject:: Literary Studies
Subject:: Literary Studies, general
Subject:: Literary Theory
Subject:: Topics in Literary Studies
Subject:: Knowledge
Subject:: Sciences
Publisher:: De Gruyter

Book 2020

Sea Fortune

Literature and Navigation

Burkhardt Wolf, Joel Golb

Volume 10 in this series

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Sea fortune has always been an issue of good faith and good navigation. While in antiquity, fortuna gubernatrix was praised for shielding the seaborne trade, in the Renaissance fortuna symbolized the conquest of chance and danger. Under such auspices, while relying on risk technologies modern seafaring has never lost its adventurous dimension. Understanding their origin remains a challenge for the history of science and the history of literature.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110610734
ISBN:: 9783110610734
ISBN:: 9783110609349
ISBN:: 9783110608953
Subject:: Literary Studies
Subject:: Literary Studies, general
Subject:: Literary Theory
Subject:: Topics in Literary Studies
Subject:: Knowledge
Subject:: Sciences
Publisher:: De Gruyter

Book 2019

Arts of Connection

Poetry, History, Epochality

Karen S. Feldman

Volume 9 in this series

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At the intersection of literary theory, philosophy of history and phenomenology, Arts of Connection: Poetry, History, Epochality explores the representation of connections between events in literary, historical and philosophical narratives. Events in a story can be seen as ordered according to proximate causation, which leads diachronically from one event to the next; and they can also be understood in view of the structure of the narrative as a whole – for instance in terms of the unity of plot. Feldman argues that there exists an essential narrative tension between these two kinds of connection, i.e. between the overarching arrangement or plot that holds together events from "outside," as it were, in order to produce an intelligible whole; and the portrayal of one-by-one, "interstitial" connections between events within the narrative. Arts of Connection demonstrates, by means of exemplary moments in Aristotle and classical German poetics, eighteenth-century philosophy of history, and twentieth-century phenomenology, that the task of connection is a fraught one, insofar as the formal unity of narrative competes or interferes with the representation of one-by-one connections between events, and vice versa.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110631494
ISBN:: 9783110631494
ISBN:: 9783110630589
ISBN:: 9783110763409
ISBN:: 9783110630947
Subject:: Literary Studies
Subject:: German Literature
Subject:: 19th Century
Subject:: 20th Century
Subject:: Literary Theory
Subject:: Narratology
Publisher:: De Gruyter

Book 2019

Bureaucratic Fanatics

Modern Literature and the Passions of Rationalization

Benjamin Lewis Robinson

Volume 8 in this series

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Is justice only achievable by means of bureaucratization or might it first arrive with the end of bureaucracy? Bureaucratic Fanatics shows how this ever more contentious question in contemporary politics belongs to the political-theological underpinnings of bureaucratization itself.

At the end of the 18th century, a new and paradoxical kind of fanaticism emerged - rational fanaticism - that propelled the intensive biopolitical management of everyday life in Europe and North America as well as the extensive colonial exploitation of the earth and its peoples. These excesses of bureaucratization incited in turn increasingly fanatical forms of resistance. And they inspired literary production that provocatively presented the outrageous contours of rationalization. Combining political theory with readings of Kleist, Melville, Conrad, and Kafka, this genealogy of bureaucratic fanaticism relates two extreme figures: fanatical bureaucrats driven to the ends of the earth and to the limits of humanity by the rationality of the apparatuses they serve; and peculiar fanatics who passionately, albeit seemingly passively, resist the encroachments of bureaucratization.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110606935
ISBN:: 9783110606935
ISBN:: 9783110595192
ISBN:: 9783110736694
ISBN:: 9783110606041
Subject:: Literary Studies
Subject:: Comparative Literary Studies
Subject:: Literary Theory
Subject:: Topics in Literary Studies
Subject:: Other Topics
Subject:: Sciences
Publisher:: De Gruyter

Book 2018

The Narratology of Observation

Studies in a Technique of European Literary Realism

Martin Wagner

Volume 7 in this series

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How does literature evoke reality? This book takes cues from the history of scientific observation to provide a new approach to this longstanding question of literary studies. It reconstructs a narrative technique of ‘literary’ observation in which reality appears by mimicking processes of visual perception, and it traces the functioning of this technique through a wide range of European fiction from the early 18th to the late 19th centuries.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110594348
ISBN:: 9783110594348
ISBN:: 9783110595185
ISBN:: 9783110593594
Subject:: Literary Studies
Subject:: Comparative Literary Studies
Subject:: Literary Theory
Subject:: Narratology
Subject:: Topics in Literary Studies
Subject:: Sciences
Publisher:: De Gruyter

Book 2018

Fact and Fiction

Elements of a General Theory of Narrative

Albrecht Koschorke, Joel Golb

Volume 6 in this series

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How can we develop a cultural theory starting with the basic insight that human beings are "storytelling animals"?

Within literary studies, narratology is a highly developed field. However, literary historians have not paid much attention to the large and small stories abounding in everyday discourse, guiding all kinds of social activity, and providing common ground for whole societies—but also fueling controversies and hostilities. Moreover, "narrative" is not only a scholarly category but has come into use in many fields of social activity as a tool for cultural self-fashioning. This book is based on the assumption that to a large extent, social dynamics is modeled in an aesthetic manner via narratives. It explores the narrative organization of cultural spaces and time-frames, the mythological shaping of communities and adversaries, and the co-production of narratives and institutions aimed at stabilizing social life. In this framework, the epistemological problem looms large of how an instrument as unreliable as narrative can participate in the creation of a social consensus regarding truth.

This problem endows the general topics explored in this book with a particularly contemporary dimension.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110349689
ISBN:: 9783110349689
ISBN:: 9783110347081
ISBN:: 9783110384123
Subject:: Literary Studies
Subject:: Literary Studies, general
Subject:: Literary Theory
Subject:: Narratology
Publisher:: De Gruyter

Book 2017

Productive Digression

Theorizing Practice

Anselm Haverkamp

Volume 5 in this series

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Productive Digression is a translation of the ancient term poetics: as a practice of theory. The products produced in the mode of poiesis are ‘digressive’ in that they operate off track; they resist the main stream of every day prose. They do so for various reasons and in various respects. Mostly, they are explained historically, relative to historical contexts and, that is, contrary to what they are meant to resist. Instead, this book investigates the modes of resistance, their epistemology of production, in short, the logic of digression.

The method addresses the singular exemplarity of art and literature; it elucidates the impact of poiesis as an epistemological challenge and redefines the analysis of literature and art as branches of an Historical Epistemology. Proceeding from the state of affairs in 20^th century criticism and aesthetics (Benjamin, Adorno, Blumenberg, Merleau-Ponty), the epistemology of representation (Whitehead, Canguilhem, Bachelard, Rheinberger) is revised in, and with respect to critical consequences (Derrida, Marin, de Man, Agamben). From literary criticism and critical legal studies to the scenario of the life sciences, the essays collected here redirect the logic of research towards the epistemological grounds of an aesthetics underneath the hermeneutics of every day life.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110486216
ISBN:: 9783110486216
ISBN:: 9783110482584
ISBN:: 9783110484960
Subject:: Arts
Subject:: Art Theory
Subject:: Literary Studies
Subject:: Literary Studies, general
Subject:: Literary Theory
Subject:: Philosophy
Subject:: Epistemology
Publisher:: De Gruyter

Book 2016

The Art of Dreams

Reflections and Representations

Barbara Hahn, Meike Werner

Volume 4 in this series

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We all dream; we all share these strange experiences that infuse our nights. But we only know of those nightly adventures when we decide to represent them. In the long history of coming to terms with dreams there seem to be two different ways of delineating our forays into the world of the unconscious: One is the attempt of interpreting, of unveiling the hidden meaning of dreams. The other one is not so much concerned with the relation of dream and meaning, of dream and reality, it rather concentrates on trying to find means of representation for this extremely productive force that determines our sleep.
The essays collected in this book explore both attempts. They follow debates in philosophy and psychoanalysis and they study literature, theatre, dance, film, and photography.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110433852
ISBN:: 9783110433852
ISBN:: 9783110437515
ISBN:: 9783110433531
Subject:: Cultural Studies
Subject:: Genres and Media in Cultural Studies
Subject:: Visual Arts, Photography
Subject:: Literary Studies
Subject:: German Literature
Subject:: German Literature, general
Subject:: Topics in Literary Studies
Subject:: Psychology, Psychoanalysis
Publisher:: De Gruyter

Book 2015

Irony and the Logic of Modernity

Armen Avanessian

Volume 3 in this series

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The logic of modernity is an ironical logic. Modern irony, a flash of genius produced by Romantic theorists, is first discussed, e.g. in Hegel and Kierkegaard, as an ethical problem personified in figures such as the aesthete, the seducer, the flaneur, or the dandy. It fully develops in the novel, the modern genre par excellence: in novels of the early 19th century no less than in those of postmodernity or in those of the masters of citation, parody, and pastiche of classical modernism (Musil, Joyce, and Proust). This book, however, goes one step further. Looking at how such different authors as Schmitt, Kafka, and Rorty identify the political conflicts, contradictions, and paradoxes of the 20th century as ironical and offers a comprehensive account of the constitutive irony of modernity’s ethical, poetical, and political logic.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110424423
ISBN:: 9783110302202
ISBN:: 9783110424423
ISBN:: 9783110424607
Subject:: Literary Studies
Subject:: German Literature
Subject:: German Literature, general
Subject:: 20th Century
Subject:: Topics in Literary Studies
Subject:: Individual Motifs, Motif Research
Publisher:: De Gruyter

Book 2015

The Ends of Satire

Legacies of Satire in Postwar German Writing

Daniel Bowles

Volume 2 in this series

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How are we to think of satire if it has ceased to exist as a discrete genre? This study proposes a novel solution, understanding the satiric in the postwar era as a set of writing practices: figures of inversion, myth-making, and citation. By showing how writers and theorists alike deploy these devices in new contexts, this book reexamines the link between German postwar writing and the history of satire, and between literature and theory.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110359534
ISBN:: 978-3-11-035935-0
ISBN:: 978-3-11-035953-4
ISBN:: 9783110651706
ISBN:: 9783110386844
Subject:: Literary Studies
Subject:: German Literature
Subject:: German Literature, general
Subject:: 20th Century
Subject:: Literary Genres and Media
Subject:: Genre Studies, general
Subject:: Literary Theory
Publisher:: De Gruyter

Book 2015

The Science of Literature

Essays on an Incalculable Difference

Helmut Müller-Sievers, David E. Wellbery

Volume 1 in this series

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One of the most contentious questions in contemporary literary studies is whether there can ever be a science of literature that can lay claim to objectivity and universality, for example by concentrating on philological criticism, by appealing to cognitive science, or by exposing the underlying media of literary communication.

The present collection of essays seeks to open up this discussion by posing the question’s historical and systematic double: has there been a science of literature, i.e. a mode of presentation and practice of reference in science that owes its coherence to the discourse of literature? Detailed analyses of scientific, literary and philosophical texts show that from the late 18th to the late 19th century science and literature were bound to one another through an intricate web of mutual dependence and distinct yet incalculable difference. The Science of Literature suggests that this legacy continues to shape the relation between literary and scientific discourses inside and outside of academia.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110324341
ISBN:: 978-3-11-032394-8
ISBN:: 978-3-11-032434-1
ISBN:: 9783110382198
Subject:: History
Subject:: Topics in History
Subject:: History of Science
Subject:: Literary Studies
Subject:: Comparative Literary Studies
Subject:: German Literature
Subject:: German Literature, general
Subject:: Topics in Literary Studies
Subject:: Individual Motifs, Motif Research
Publisher:: De Gruyter