The Tyrol / The South Tyrol - A literary Topography

Based on the thought of literature representing and providing insight into mental scopes, while at the same time constructing and deconstructing them, the research project aims to document literary modellings in the area Tyrol/South Tyrol and to comprehend its development. Special emphasis is thereby put on the mutual constitution of empirical and imaginary spaces. The chosen research area, frequently apostrophized as borderland, gained its significance as geographic and semantic space through manifold (e.g. political-ideological) factors. As a transit region it has largely been formed through its literature. Many authors writing in German or other foreign languages have moulded it through their literature, thus constantly reinventing it. Supported by newer approaches of cultural- scientific spatial theory, literary geography and study of regional literature, the constructed literary scope will be traced in a theoretically grounded monograph. At the same time, its genesis will be analyzed at the base of exemplars. The research project is based on numerous texts by authors from Austria and foreign countries, all of which have shaped Tyrol/South Tyrol with their literature. Texts or paragraphs in which Tyrol/South Tyrol has literary importance are to be gathered in a database and allocated to places they refer to. In this way, beyond geographical topography, an imaginative space of texts will allow insight into the symbolic order of the envisioned research area. This documentation will mainly provide information about the selection of scenes, in other words, it will become clear which places were used in literature at which time, and by whom. A comparison between diverse literary designs of the research area will shed light on the question of which regional spatial concepts have been (and still are) handed down in literature (thus also promising insight into existing mental representations of space and their genesis). Based on selected micro-spaces, it will be demonstrated how literary texts, in connection with an extra-textual, intertextual and intermediate framework, construct or deconstruct concrete places, and at the same time how literary locations prefigure the perception of places. A second focus will be on the analysis of aesthetical methods for the creation of space. The research project is positioned at the intersection of spatial and topographical turn. Questions of literary geography (pertaining to the referentiality of places and texts, techniques of topographical writing and constitution and function of places in literary texts) are to be conjoined with the perspective of cultural studies. Currently prevailing concepts of space will be tested for their applicability in specific literary research. Methodical contemplation of this research will be resulting in a scholarly essay, thus critically reviewing criteria of literary studies (e.g. criteria of specifically topographic literature, assessment issues) as well as poetological modes of localisation or non-localisation (e.g. disassociation, re-localisation, re-naming, combination of real and fictional locations).

Tyrol / South Tyrol, situated in the middle of Europe and frequently apostrophized as borderland, has always been a crossing area and attraction pole for many. Several authors writing in German as well as in other languages have literally moulded the region in their texts thus constantly reinventing it. Literature represents notions of spaces but also constructs and deconstructs them, which forms the basic idea of the research project Tirol/Südtirol. Eine literarische Topographie. Hence, the project has analysed the literary modelling of the chosen region in narrative texts from the 19th and 20th centuries. The main focus was on the documentation, interpretation and mediation of the relations between narrative and empirically perceptible spaces. The project was closely linked to the field of literary geography, also taking up ideas from spatial research of cultural and social studies. The focal point of interest was on the selection of settings and on narrative techniques of the literarization of real places. The project aimed to describe the imaginary geography of Tyrol and South Tyrol and to interpret its relations to the non-literary reality. The analysed primary texts were documented and evaluated in a research database. Partial results were published on the interactive Literatur-Landkarte (literature map) specifically developed for this project. This map documents textual as well as biographical relations of authors within the geographic space and presents relations between texts and places, writers and places as well the relations of texts among another. Many papers about single writers and places contextualize those connections and show material like text excerpts, bibliographical data and pictures. The Literatur-Landkarte is the first attempt in Austrian science and literature of digital processing and publishing of the literary topography of a region. The representation of the digital topography can be used in many different ways. It is a valuable source of information for people interested in literature, teachers of all grades, cultural mediators and students, as well as for tourism associations or municipalities.