Coordination Funds

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The concept of adventure refers to an elementary nucleus of storytelling – ‘elementary’ in a narratological as well as in a psychological sense. Adventure is not only a genuinely narrative term, but also, and unlike other basic literary concepts, a term of distinctly medieval origin. The narrative, perceptual and experiential pattern that goes by that name has proved extremely adaptive, despite all the criticism levelled against it in the modern age. It has seen more than one literary renaissance and has crossed over into ever new areas of culture (like film, computer games, advertising, tourism, etc.). Often, in such crossovers the originally narrative character of adventure is no longer taken into account. Since that character is essentially textual a philology of adventure is required in order to integrate the term into an anthropology of storytelling. Adventures call for a reflection on chance, fate, daring, risk and the event horizons of storytelling, on our claim for meaningful sequence and on our ways of making sense. As a concept implicating narrative as well as experiential aspects, adventure also enables us to address the libidinal dimension of narrative, raising questions that cannot be asked in the established vocabulary of structural narratology. In the first funding period our research unit established four methodological perspectives on adventure: the points of view of literary history, the psychology of literature, narratology, and the theory of fiction. For the second period, our aim is to make this fourfold approach more concrete. We will investigate the narrative representation of three fields of experience which are of special importance to the narratology of adventure: social order, violence, and love. In an additional research area called “Beyond Adventure” we will focus on instances of self-limitation and self-transgression in the adventurous mode of storytelling.