Literature in Context

Since centuries there has been an active (although not always proportionally intensive) exchange of culture between the Dutch- and German-speaking countries. A lot of writers have acted as cultural mediator and a number of them have played an important role in the Dutch field of language, respectively German field. Moreover, over different periods one has looked closely at each others literature. In this respect we can think of the influence Franz Kafka or writers in excile had on Dutch literature and of the huge success of Dutch writers in the German-speaking countries the last decade. Since the breakthrough of writers as Hugo Claus, Harry Mulish and Cees Nooteboom mid eighties, Dutch literature has conquered its own position in the German-speaking regions. Nevertheless, so far no systematic research has been done on the special relationship between German and Ducth literature. On the contrary, aspects such as the systematic correlation with foreign literature, intensive contacts between German and Dutch writers or the perception of German literature in The Netherlands and Flanders are lacking in most of the German surveys on the history of Ducth literature as well as in Dutch literary-historical works on German literature. Important literary-historical perceptions are in this respect threatened to disappear. Therefore, this project does not traditionally seperate Dutch and German literature as quasi-autonomous from the so-called extra-literary reality, which represents other arts and foreign literature. Because of the special focus on the interaction between Dutch and German literature and the role of their mutually translated literature, it will be pointed out for the first time how concepts or systems of the Dutch perception of German literature in context and vice versa originate and continuously change. The project team will not only explore new ways concerning content. The representation of the research results will also open up fresh ground. The history of Dutch and German literature of the 19th and 20th century based on their correlation will be put on the Internet as a WWW-cluster. The foundation for this in Europe unique cluster, in which the user can search for new data in an associative and synthetic way and freely change of perspective, is represented as the Dokumentationstelle of German literature in The Netherlands and Flanders and of Dutch literature in foreign countries. This Dokumentationstelle was set up by the Wiener Nederlandistik and already contains over 30.000 bibliographical data and receptiondocuments.

Literatures `appear` at their borders with other literatures, other systems or elements. This is the fundamental idea behind the project Literature in Context. With Literature in Context we wished to show more than the various forces and mechanisms exerting themselves in the vast field of literatures in the international context. From the outset we decided on a system that makes borders perceptible. On the one hand Literature in Context demonstrates how and why systems are separated, and on the other that they nevertheless cannot be isolated from one another. The heart of the project is an innovative and dynamic WWW cluster on the history of 19th and 20th century literature in the Dutch and German languages with special reference to the interrelationships between the two literatures. (http://www.ned.univie.ac.at/lic/). Literature in Context distinguishes itself by its particular attention to the poetics of the authors treated and by situating the author profiles and the (comparative) literary-historical accounts in a wide cultural and social historical context. The cluster - which, with the support of the European Programme Kultur 2000, has in the meantime been extended to include bibliographic information, author profiles and literary-historical analyses in the fields of Polish, Slovak, Slovenian, Czech and Hungarian literature - will this year be expanded further to include the fields of English, Spanish and Afrikaans literature (financed by the Nederlandse Taalunie and, again, by Kultur 2000). As opposed to the initial concept, Literature in Context now describes much more than the less researched interrelationships between literatures in the Dutch and German languages. The system is exceedingly dynamic, but nevertheless structured in a clear hierarchical way. On the higher level the results of both the synchronic and the diachronic comparisons are presented. This level automatically refers to the lower level, that is, to the author profiles, bibliographic information, links etc. In this way new cross references are practically generated continuously and new fields of research are constantly identified. For the project phase 2000- 2004 four seminal points were formulated: the historical novel, the literature of the European transformation period (1980-2000) and the preceding turn of the century, and the literature of the 20th century`s fifties and sixties. The project was concluded with a conference under the title Reception, Interaction and Integration, at which the most important scholarly problems of the project Literature in Context were discussed (on this, see Leopold Decloedt, Herbert Van Uffelen u. Elisabeth Weissenböck (Ed.), Rezeption, Interaktion und Integration, niederländischsprachige und deutschsprachige Literatur im Kontext. Edition Praesens, Vienna, 2004, ISBN 3-7069- 0252-4, brosch., 331 pp.)