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Toward a Polylogical Philology of the Literatures of the World

  • As the world cannot be adequately understood from the vantage point of a single language, the literatures of the world can no longer be trimmed to a single world literature in the Goethean sense. This recognition bodes well for the future of philology and of literary production. Through multiperspectival writing, knowledge of life may be attainable without being reduced to a single political, medial, cartographical, geocultural, or aesthetic logic. As a laboratory for polylogical thinking, literature does not represent reality, as Erich Auerbach put it. Rather, it represents multiple lived, experienced, or relivable realities. Whoever is open to a polylogical reception of the literatures of the world can perceive and experience how life knowledge transforms into lived knowledge and how knowledge for survival turns into knowledge for living together. However, literature can be more than it is only if it stays aware of the void, of lack, of privation, of the interminable: aware of the end that never is an end. Such a planetary conceptAs the world cannot be adequately understood from the vantage point of a single language, the literatures of the world can no longer be trimmed to a single world literature in the Goethean sense. This recognition bodes well for the future of philology and of literary production. Through multiperspectival writing, knowledge of life may be attainable without being reduced to a single political, medial, cartographical, geocultural, or aesthetic logic. As a laboratory for polylogical thinking, literature does not represent reality, as Erich Auerbach put it. Rather, it represents multiple lived, experienced, or relivable realities. Whoever is open to a polylogical reception of the literatures of the world can perceive and experience how life knowledge transforms into lived knowledge and how knowledge for survival turns into knowledge for living together. However, literature can be more than it is only if it stays aware of the void, of lack, of privation, of the interminable: aware of the end that never is an end. Such a planetary concept of the literatures of the world offers valuable opportunities to all those who do not fall into the trap of contenting themselves with a supposed abundance of text.show moreshow less

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Metadaten
Author details:Ottmar EtteORCiDGND
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1215/00267929-3464841
ISSN:0026-7929
Title of parent work (English):Modern language quarterly : a journal of literary history
Publisher:Duke Univ. Press
Place of publishing:Durham
Publication type:Article
Language:English
Year of first publication:2016
Publication year:2016
Release date:2020/03/22
Tag:knowledge for living; literatures of the world; multiperspectival writing; polylogical philology; transculturation
Volume:77
Number of pages:31
First page:143
Last Page:173
Organizational units:Philosophische Fakultät / Institut für Romanistik
Peer review:Referiert
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