Literary Form. History and Culture of Aesthetic Modeling
The Return of Form
Form and Model
Theory of Form
Form-Processing
Culture of Form
Papers
List of Works Cited
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1. The Return of Form
The growing interest in the idea of form that has quite recently emerged in history of science, literature, and media studies seems to point to an increasing need: the re-evaluation of the productivity and agency of literature ‘as such’. This novel ‘consciousness of form’ aims to address two counter-trends in academic research: the expansion of the literary in the fields of discourse history and its reduction to a matter of narration. Instructive as the two approaches undoubtedly are, they tend to cast a shadow on the processes of aesthetic production that were once termed “languages of form” or “morphogenesis” (Gestaltbildung) (cf. Walzel 1923). That these attempts to introduce a “poetics of form” (Burdorf 2001) were by no means reducing the complexity of literary discourse to a system of aesthetic immanence can be derived from André Jolles’ early concept of a Formenwelt. This “world of forms” is always a result of (or at least entangled in) an “occupation of the mind” – a Geistesbeschäftigung as its contemporary epistemic context. At the same time, the idea of an ‘entangled form’ does not suggest refraining from detailed analyses. In fact, interpretation should “observe when, where and how language, without ceasing to be a system of signs, can be and will be a Gebilde” (Jolles 1930) – a formation or composition of forms.
The Münster Conference on Literary Form will build upon the recent interest in form and modeling (cf. e.g. Petersen 2014). It will explore both the poetics and the history of form through case studies that cover a wide range of topics – with regard to literary history as well as to affiliated discourses and academic fields. It aims to trace the functions of poetic form-processing (genesis, transfer and transformation). It will analyze the “states of formal aggregation” or formalization (e.g. in the concept of “generic knowledge” found in medieval literature or classified in Jolles’ works as “simple form” – “actualized form” – “artistic form”, Jolles 1930). Furthermore, the conference will trace the cultures and milieus of form (for instance intermediary forms between in the classic and the popular) together with their strategies and policies of form. The conference also distinguishes between the concept of poetic form and its competing notions (such as signature, contour, gestalt, structure, and system). It also covers well-established binaries like chaos vs. form, form vs. matter, content vs. form, as well as their dynamic counterparts in concepts like morphology and ‘inner form’, or form as operational self-reference (e.g. in the theory of systems).
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2. Form and Model
Poetic texts establish models of reality that have been constituted, rendered visible, and made accessible (for reconfiguration and interpretation) by aesthetic form. On the other hand, however, literary forms also ‘result’ from modeling – from planning, testing and controlling –, carried out on different levels of aesthetic poiesis to regulate the scope of action: the micro level of devices, the meso level of poetic concepts and the macro level of cultural fields. Thus, as a history of models and devices, literary history is constituted by the mutual relations of individual culture, discourse, model, and form. It may be claimed that “works of art become discursive through their form” while discourses are formed in works of art (Baßler 1994). Forms of discourse thus provide the models of a certain knowledge, agency, or structure for poetic usage while contemporary discourses are pre-modelled and re-modelled in fictional forms.
A central question of the conference will be the way in which poetic modeling and form-processing constitute each other in producing a specific work of art. Heuristically, poetic form may be related to three types of modeling: conceptual modeling based on a model hypothesis (the level of judgement), semiotic and material modeling (the level of representation/device), generic modeling (the level of classification/convention/norm).
While modeling and being modeled, forms are also triggers of a double temporalization: On the one hand, they may act as the conditions, sources, media and generators for, and prior to, (poetic) models, such as structural units, (master) tropes, plot characters or prototypes, genres, literary strategies and normative poetics. On the other hand, forms also serve as applications, i.e. as results or post-processings of (poetic) modeling (Mahr 2012, Tenev 2012, Wendler 2013).
In aiming at a history of literary forms (and thus a history of literary modeling) the conference will highlight three related fields of research: I. Theory of Form as a poetics of form (history of concepts), II. Form-Processing as a dynamics of production of signs, texts and genres (history of devices) III. Culture of Form as a practice of cultural and medial mediation of forms (history of transfers). The Conference on Literary Form thus takes into account canonical approaches to poetic form and genre, together with the latest research and attempts at transdisciplinary modeling.
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