Coordination Funds

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Encouraged by the results of the first project phase, during the next three years, the Research Unit »Journal Literature« would like to continue their investigation into periodic forms of publication as a test field for a literary-media history. The underlying material-philological approach does not merely constitute a methodology but is, moreover, a comprehensive theoretical way of grasping the object of the Research Unit. Periodic forms of publication, whose broad spectrum is assembled under the general concept of ›journal‹, produce textual forms which are extant in specific ways and give rise to specific modes of use. The research carried out so far in the project has shown how vital it is to further differentiate between the poles of ›book‹ and ›newspaper‹ and to consider each individual case in its complex self-positionings and ascriptions. It is against this background that the Research Unit is extending its investigation period beyond the ›long 19th century‹. By broadening the perspective, we hope to be able to grasp how ›the journal‹ is continuously constituted as a medium. Initially, it is a medium of reference; and then, from the end of the 19th century onwards, it is to be seen increasingly in relation to competing mass media (film, radio, and television). The historical extension of the period of investigation also aims at obtaining systematic benefits, by diversifying the journal-type material, as well as the media constellations that are reflected in it. The overriding media-differential question is how journal-mediality gets constituted in contrastive but also in imitative relation to other media. Basic key distinctions in the study of journal-literature employed in the first phase will be pursued further. We will continue working with these distinctions, but we will supplement them with a second triad of distinctions which allow for a greater differentiation of media formats and of historical cultures of reception. In addition to the fundamental distinction of ›journal-mediality/media constellations‹, the temporal and the spatial coordinates of journal-literary reception will be more closely examined. The ›market/transfer‹ distinction targets the spatiality of journal culture. On the one hand journals appear at a place that is distinguished from but stands in an exchange with other places. On the other hand, the journal itself is understood as a marketplace in which miscellaneous coming from various media competes for attention. The temporality of journal culture is analysed using the distinction ›ephemerality/permanence‹. The journal can be strikingly defined via its tie to the fleeting passage of time; but it also raises the question of repetition, of re-use in anthologies or books, and of archiving, and has to be positioned against broadcast media of the 20th century.