Cultures of Genre. Poetics in Context, 1750-1950

The goal of my Cultures of Genre is twofold. It aims at a comprehensive re-study of the category of literary genre; and it tries to present aspects of a history of the relationship between orders of knowledge, orders of literary genre and social orderings. Literary genre is perceived as a performative act of cultural classification, in close relationship to other acts of classification: the social order and the order of living beings; as a grouping, not as a group, of literary texts. The theoretical foundation of this point of view is achieved by a culturalist reworking of Pierre Bourdieus sociology. The work aims at a detailed reconfiguration of biology, sociology, and poetics in German literature. First of all, the method of thick description is used to show how the transition from normative to philosophical poetics is to be perceived, within the framework of biology (natural history, from Linné to Buffon) and early sociology. Next to a biology of genres there is to be found a populist variant of folkish approaches to culture, spanning from Justus Möser to the Grimm brothers. Herders peculiar culturalist theory of genre is to be discussed within the realm of philology and theology. In Chapters 4 to 6 the main focus is on Goethes concept and practice of genre. Important formulas of modern genre theory do directly go back to Goethe; his whole intellectual biography may most significantly be read in terms of genre and generic boundaries. Goethes habitus biography, the question of how his intellectual and even bodily behavior fits into the changing social environments of his life and times, is addressed via his accomodations of concepts regarding literature/art, knowledge and society. The chapters concentrate on epic (Die Geheimnisse, fragment), opera (continuation of Mozart/Schikaneders Magic Flute) and novella (Novelle), trying to establish new ways of contextualization of literary artworks. An intermediary chapter traces the ways how genre systems react to changes in their social environment. The question of gender and genre is addressed (Karoline v. Günderrode) in the first part of the chapter; the second part discusses the role of generic norms in times of revolutionary upheaval (Adalbert Stifter). Chapter 8 discusses the new ways of genre poetics accompanying the rise of classical Modernism in German literature. Genre is playing a crucial role not only in Modernism as such, discussions of genre also contribute to the foundation of modern philology and philosophical Aesthetics, from Scherer and Dilthey up to Walter Benjamin and Georg Lukcs. As in Goethezeit, biology and sociology show their presence within seemingly genuine aesthetic realms. Die remaining chapters are devoted to the literary oeuvres of Hofmannsthal and Brecht, showing individual negotiations of literary creativity, social orderings, and historical change.