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Research Areas

The research at the school focuses on an internationally oriented study of literature that involves comparing texts from various languages and cultures. By drawing on methods of comparative literary studies, the graduate school takes on a major feature of the literary research that has been successfully performed at Freie Universität Berlin for years: It is characterized by a modern concept of language and literature that permits researchers to grasp the sheer variety of languages, to study literary history in the context of a modern history of knowledge and consciousness, and to establish a theoretical basis for the study of the poetic fundamentals, genres, styles, and rhetorical strategies used in literature. Instruction is offered by co-teaching teams. A large portion of the curriculum is dedicated to topics with practical applications in order to help doctoral candidates to prepare for later careers in the fields of research or the teaching of literature.

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These are the research areas covered by the School:

Research Area I: Comparing Texts - Textuality and Intertextuality

Research Area II: Comparing Systems - Rhetoric, Poetics, Aesthetics

Research Area III: Comparing Signs - Literature and Language

Research Area IV: Comparing Epistemic Orders - Literature and Discourses of Knowledge

Research Area V: Comparing Texts in Contexts - Literature and Cultural Difference

Research Area VI: Comparing Media - Literature and the Other Arts

Research Area VII: Comparing Theories - Positions of Literary Theory

Research Area VII: Comparing Versions - Editorial Studies

Research Area IX: Comparing Literary Life - The Literary Field - Berlin Now!

Research Area I: Textuality and Intertextuality

Projects in this research area will investigate the following fields: the collation of texts; the history of literary models and paradigms; the relationships between ‘classic’ and ‘popular’ literature; concepts of genre and fiction; literary self-reflection; the referentiality of texts; historical transformations of texts and the processes of literary reception within and outside of Europe.

The research conducted at the Friedrich Schlegel Graduate School is up to date and internationally oriented. It is grounded in an awareness of the constructional character of linguistic and textual conditions of cultural experience. This provides insight into the dynamics of the literary construction (or deconstruction) of meaning as an object of aesthetic experience.

Research area I will focus on the following topics:

Textuality as Construction
Intertextuality and Interpretation
Diachronic Aspects of Textuality

Research Area II: Rhetoric, Poetics, Aesthetics

Rhetoric, poetics, and aesthetics are the three discourses that have engaged in a trans-disciplinary, theoretically sophisticated comparative literary criticism even before the emergence of modern philology. Today, they are part of the area of research sometimes referred to as ‘general literary studies’. This field does not only attempt a general methodological reflection of the research activities of individual philologies. The analysis of rhetoric, poetics, and aesthetics is a fundamental work, and closely connected with every historical inquiry - even though it has at times been somewhat neglected in the history of the individual philologies.

Research area II will focus on the following topics:

Language and Affect: Tropes, Figures, Stylistics
Poetics of Genre, Theories of Mimesis, and the Pleasure of the Text
Aesthetics and their Transformations

Research Area III: Literature and Language

Contemporary linguistics generally use literary texts as a mere corpus for descriptive or historical work on the structure of languages. However legitimate, this is not how the relationship between language and literature is perceived here. The Friedrich Schlegel Graduate School focuses on literary texts in their own right, not as material for studies with other objectives. Therefore, research area III is dedicated to a field of interest that has been largely neglected by recent developments in linguistics as well as literary studies. The development of the disciplines has torn apart what used to belong together for centuries. The separation of literary studies and linguistics and the secession of linguistics from philology are due to inner-disciplinary as well as – rather contingent – institutional developments. Thus, the projects within this research area aim at re-establishing a closer relationship between linguistics and literary studies.

Research area III will focus on the following topics:

The History of (Literary) Language and Literature
The Poetic Functions of Language and Literary Language
Writing and Performance
Discourse Traditions
Translation

Research Area IV: Literature and Discourses of Knowledge

This field of interest investigates the epistemological functions of literature between the poles of knowledge reception and knowledge generation. Relevant topics will be the correlation of knowledge (or cognition) and literary fiction; the interferences between literary genres; the discursive constitution of knowledge; the concept of representation with respect to fictional models of knowledge.

Research area IV will focus on the following topics:

The Differences between Literary and Non-Literary Knowledge
Literary Representations of Knowledge
Literary Knowledge and Historical Dynamics
Literary Strategies in Non-Literary Texts

Research Area V: Literature and Cultural Difference

The Graduate School’s focus on comparative literature requires that literary texts are being analyzed within their specific cultural, linguistic and historical contexts. To strengthen the link between literary and cultural studies will not, however, lead to the leveling of differences between literary and non-literary texts. Instead, it begins with an awareness if the fact that genres, rhetorical structures, stylistic features, as well as practices of literary production and reception are not universal. Projects in this research area will focus on the complex relationships between literature and the discourses, media, and institutions of a given society. Against this background, literary studies can be understood as an attempt to bridge and overcome historical and cultural divides. Particular emphasis will be placed on projects investigating processes of cultural differentiation on the one hand, and the clash and hybridization of cultures on the other.

Research in this area will focus on the following topics:

Literature and Historical Differences
Literature and Linguistic Varieties
Intercultural and Transcultural Literary Phenomena
Literature and Cultural Translation

Research Area VI: Literature and the other Arts

This area looks into the various relations literature maintains with other arts – be it the description of a work of art or art form, the evocation or imitation of another art form (as in so called 'filmic writing' or the 'musicalization of fiction'), the combination with another art form (as in a song, an illustrated novel, a play or an opera), or the transformation or translation of literature into another art form (as in dramatized novels or film adaptations).

This research area deals with::

Fundamental Theoretical Concepts
Transformations
Methods of Analysis

Research Area VII: Positions of Literary Theory

This research area is dedicated to the basic principles and concepts of literary studies. It will focus on the comparative analysis and development of new approaches to literary theory and methods of interpretation, but also on the historical reconstruction and systematic determination of key terms of literary studies.

Proffs. Fischer-Lichte and Schülting specialize in methodology, Proffs. Hempfer, Küpper, Menninghaus, Müller-Tamm, Neuwirth, and Pfister are experts on literary theory, and Proffs. Neuber’s and Witte’s main research field is narratology.

Research in this area will concentrate on the following topics:

The Comparison of Theories
Key Concepts
"Literariness"
Anthropological Perspectives

Research Area VIII: The Modeling of Texts: Editorial Studies

Projects in this research area will address questions about the theories of text and editing, theories of authorship, the history of editorial theory, palaeography, codicology, as well as the history of the book and media history. These research fields are analyzed in a comparative dimension, a point of view that is determined by the origins of scholarly editing which goes back to Bible studies and classical philology. Furthermore, Critique Génetique, Copy-Text-Theory and New Philology are other points of interest in this area of research. Modern editorial theory must be formulated in constant reference to the general theoretical developments of literary studies and semiotics. Thus, editorial theory also claims theoretical validity beyond literary texts, i.e. with regard to non-linguistic semiotic systems (i.e. music, text and image compounds etc.).

Research area VIII will focus on the following topics:

The History of Editorial Theory
The Text in Editorial Theories
Palaeography and Codicology
The History of Printing and Media Theory

Research Area IX: The Literary Field – Berlin Now!

The Friedrich Schlegel Graduate School of Literary Studies is located in a city that has enjoyed great literary prestige ever since the 19^th century. It specifically positions itself in the rich and varied literary scene that has emerged here since the fall of the Berlin Wall and has made the new German capital the undisputed center of literary life (Becker 1994) in post-unification Germany. Home of many German and international authors, translators and literary critics, unified Berlin has set up a dense network of institutions and media which turned it into one of the most important places for the literary traffic between the East and the West, and between Central Europe and ‘the rest of the world’.