Encyclopedic Narration. Poetics of Knowledge in the Vernacular Novel of Late Medieval and Early Modern Period (14th to 16th Century)

百科全书式的叙述。

• 批准号: 329389881
• 负责人: Professor Dr. Mathias Herweg
• 金额: --
• 依托单位: Abteilung Germanistische Mediävistik und Frühneuzeitforschung
• 依托单位国家: 德国
• 项目类别: Research Grants
• 财政年份: 2017
• 资助国家: 德国
• 起止时间: 2016-12-31 至 2022-12-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://gepris.dfg.de/gepris/projekt/329389881?language=en
• 关键词: Encyclopedic; Narration.; Poetics; Knowledge; Vernacular

Drawing on a series of paradigmatic texts from the 14th to 16th centuries, this research project examines the forms and functions of encyclopedic narration in the vernacular novel between the late medieval and the early modern period as well as their poetological aspects. We conceptualize encyclopedic narration in general as a literary style of writing that integrates encyclopedic knowledge into narrative, while at the same time adapting and transforming the interpretative models and schemes of the encyclopedic knowledge of the time. Subsequently, encyclopedic narration is understood as a heuristic concept that defines aspects of content as well as principles of narrative structure in literary texts. To the extent that encyclopedic writing adapts encyclopedic practices and models as literary patterns, it differs from narratives that represent knowledge more generally.Its extensive form predisposes the vernacular novel to encompass various discourses and a variety of interdisciplinary knowledge between the Late Middle Ages and the early modern period. Therefore, the focus of the project is on the question of implicit poetics of encyclopedic narration, and how it shapes the vernacular novel. Our hypothesis is this: the vernacular novel, by way of literary adaptation and the transformation of encyclopedic contents and structures, that is, by way of de-contextualizing as well as re-contextualizing contemporary discourses of knowledge, emerges as a poetic vehicle and mediator of universal knowledge. In the process of literary narration, the vernacular novel claims to establish the precarious unity of this knowledge in new and different ways. Re-contextualizing encyclopedic knowledge thus goes hand in hand with re-configuring this very same knowledge in terms of form as well as content. Thus, the novel establishes itself as a literary genre that is able to critically reflect, question, and even parody encyclopedic knowledge.Our project adds to already existing research on the relation between literature and discourses of encyclopedic knowledge by introducing a hitherto neglected historical approach that focuses on the macro-period between the Middle Ages and the early modern period, taking the novel as exemplary genre. By investigating the connection between configurations of knowledge and narrative structures in the premodern novel as well as the ensuing processes of transformation (e.g., defictionalization of literary worldmaking), this project contributes to the shaping of a historical poetics of knowledge in premodern vernacular literature.

本研究以14 - 16世纪的一系列典型文本为基础，考察中世纪晚期至近代早期白话小说中的叙事形式、功能及其诗学意义。我们一般将非传统叙事概念化为一种将非传统知识整合到叙事中的文学风格，同时适应和转变当时非传统知识的解释模式和方案。随后，叙事学被理解为一个启发式的概念，它定义了文学文本的内容方面以及叙事结构的原则。在某种程度上，通俗小说将通俗小说的实践和模式作为文学模式，这与更普遍地表现知识的叙事不同，其广泛的形式使白话小说倾向于包含中世纪晚期和现代早期之间的各种话语和各种跨学科的知识。因此，本课题的研究重点是探讨小说叙事的隐性诗学问题，以及它是如何塑造白话小说的。我们的假设是：白话小说通过文学改编和对传统内容和结构的改造，即通过对当代知识话语的去语境化和再语境化，成为普遍知识的诗性载体和中介。在文学叙事过程中，白话小说以新的、不同的方式主张建立这种知识的不稳定的统一。因此，重新将百科知识置于语境中，与从形式和内容上重新配置这一知识密切相关。因此，小说确立了自己作为一种文学体裁，能够批判性地反映，质疑，甚至戏仿非传统知识。我们的项目通过引入迄今为止被忽视的历史方法，关注中世纪和近代早期之间的宏观时期，以小说为典范体裁，增加了现有的研究文学和非传统知识话语之间的关系。通过研究前现代小说中知识结构和叙事结构之间的联系以及随之而来的转化过程（例如，文学世界创造的缺陷化），这一项目有助于形成一个历史的知识诗学在前现代白话文学。