The Study of Literature in its European and American Settings:

with Reference to Slovene and German Fiction

Miran Hladnik

Milano--Ljubljana

Virida Visconti (Milano 1351– Stična1407), the mother of Habsburg Emperor Ernest der Eiserne)

The Study of Literature in its European and American Settings: with Reference to Slovene and German Fiction

>

better:

The study of literature in America, Germany andSlovenia

better: Multiple concepts of literary scholarship (American,

German, Slovene)

SummaryLiterary study in America differs from Literaturwissenschaft in Europe. American literary scholarship is predominantly a part of the traditional humanities, engaged in the educational and cultural endeavour, while European literary studies, in particular German ones, seek to be a part of social sciences. Non-American literary studies (especially Slavic studies) are weakly represented in the Arts&Humanities Citation Index, what proves a local limitation of the humanities. I claim the quantitative analysis of literary system, is thus moving towards the social sciences area. Quantitative research encompasses the genre prediction and the analysis of the regional, historical and economic conditions, gender etc. Wikipedia articles on literature in 270 languages break the local limitation of literary discourse, enabling comparison between different concepts of literary system.

My purpose today

1. To make it clear how literary studies differ from country to country and how big the differences between national philologies are.

2. To advocate for the quantitative approach in literary studies.

How the need for empirical approach has been detected?

• Siegfried J. Schmidt (1990): Literary scholarship in the future will be a part of empirical cultural studies, or it will be completely marginalized.

• In the past the theoretical concept within dominant literatures have been shaped on a basis of just a few well chosen texts which served as archetypes. That is why our subject will always seem inadequate. Instead of starting with general theory, we should rather start with our own data and form an independant deffinition of the subject.

Empirical study means

1. obtaining material evidence (data) with experiments or by observing

2. measurement of data and

3. verifiability of measurements

Empirical and statistical approach to literature means:

• to deal with text corpora instead of with only one text

• to neglect the "literary value", i. e. the difference between elite literature and popular literature

• to consider the whole literary system and not only the texts

• to use a computer as a tool for managing database and for presentation of research results

Wikipedia challenge

• 270 languages• 40 languages include Portal:Literature• English Wp is in the first place with 3,3 mio articles• German Wp is the second with 1 mio articles• Italian Wp is in the fifth place (after French and Polish)

with 690,000 articles• Slovene Wp is in the 34th place with 87,000 articles

(http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/List_of_Wikipedias < Languages < English Wp)

German vs. English book

• very long subtitles • pedantic publication data• long tables of contents• structured in layers with nested

numbering systems • acronyms, tables and

footnotes • exhaustive list of literature

consulted

• hard covers, yellowish, thick paper

• begins with a picture or a dedication

• the title page has a vignette, chapters begin with illuminated letters, the typeface is large and luxurious

• the index is short and lucid• no footnotes • the date of publication is

sometimes impossible to find

Two humanities?

Traditional• bound to traditional

Humanities• local (area studies)• pedagogically oriented • takes place at universities• American

-------------------------• Slovene literary study is a part

of South-East- European studies

Modern• tends to Social sciences• tends to be international • research oriented• takes place at institutes• European

---------------------------• Slovene literary study is a

part of general study of literature

Science vs. humanities

Physics, Chemistry• English??• American??• German??• Italian??

Literary studies• English• American• German• Italian ...

What is Literaturwissenschaft?

• Russian literaturovedenie• Polish literaturoznawstwo • Czech literární věda• German Literaturwissenschaft• Slovene literarna veda

'scholarship' -- 18.000 : literarna znanost 'science' --700 hits in Google

• study of literature (7 mio hits in Google)

• literary criticism (4,4 mio)

• literary studies (3,6 mio)

• literary scholarship (0,08 mio)

• literary science (0,024)

Wrong translations of literary criticism in Wikipedia

• литературная критика

• Literaturkritik

• literarna kritika

• critica letteraria

How do we call our profession?

• English: literary critic (534,000 hits in Google), literary scholar (85,000), literary historian (56,000), literary scientist (3300), literary theoretician (1400)

• German: Literaturwissenschaftler (159,000), [Literaturkritiker (115,000),] Literaturhistoriker (108,000), Literaturforscher (8800)

• Italian: critico letterario (73.000) • Slovene: Literarni zgodovinar (20,500), [literarni

kritik (18,000),] literarni teoretik (1200), literarni znanstvenik (600), literarni raziskovalec (500)

Trivialliteratur• Slovene trivialna literatura (1700)• German Trivialliteratur (48,600)• English trivial literature (only 7660 occurencies

in English)• English popular literature (German

Populärliteratur, Slov. popularna literatura, Italian letteratura popolare) is only a type of Trivialliteratur

• German Wikipedia links Trivialliteratur to English formula fiction

Some more translational difficulties

• Kmečka povest – German Dorfgeschichte, Bauernroman, no English term

• Ženski roman – German Frauenroman, no English term

• Planinska povest – German Bergroman, Bergerzählung, English mountain story/novel, Italian romanzo di montagna, no encyclopedic entry

Arts and Humanities Citation Index (AHCI) in 1990

• North America -- 63% of the entries

• Western Europe -- 24% journals

• Eastern Europe -- 3% journals

• Slavic literatures -- 7 journals only

Humanist's social roles

1. Educator

2. Intellectual: (a) opinion maker and public speaker, (b) arbiter in cultural matters

3. Researcher

Who has practiced the empirical approach to literature?

• Researchers from outside the Humanities (Fucks 1968)

• Linguists (quantitative stylistics, linguistic computing)

• Marketing research for the book trade

• Literary scholars

Examples of empirical literary research

• German historical novel (http://www.uibk.ac.at/germanistik/histrom/ Uni Innsbruck)

• Slovene historical novel (http://www.ff.uni-lj.si/oddelki/slovenistika/mh/szr.pdf)

• Slovene rural story (http://lit.ijs.si/kmpov1.html)

German historical novel

http://www.uibk.ac.at/germanistik/histrom/ -- Projekt Historischer Roman, Institut für Germanistik, Universität Innsbruck

Some empirical findings concerning Slovene literature

• Each national literature develops its own specific set of generic labels for narrative prose.

• The longer the text, the greater the likelihood that the subtitle will indicate the genre.

• Subtitles were more common in the 19th than in the 20th century: awareness of genre is gradually being lost.

• Historical prose is on average 50 % (i. e. 15,000 words) longer than rural prose.

• Women writers’ share within historical novel is 4 times greater than within rural story (4 % : 16 %).

• Writers born in Eastern Slovenia (Styria) produced twice the amount of historical novels as they produced rural story, while Central Slovenia writers prefered rural story instead.

• In Slovene rural story, love triangles f-m-f are by one third less freqent than love triangles m-f-m, due to the banned rivalry among women.

• One of the most amusing counts concerns the body parts: the use of five most frequent body parts (hand, eye, head, face, heart) is specific for each author, depending on author’s gender, genre, and period.

Production of the Slovene historical novel

0

5

10

15

20

25

30

35

40

V besedah (n*100.000)

Število del

Slovene historical fiction (—) and rural fiction (——) getting longer and longer

20000

30000

40000

50000

60000

70000

80000

1850–1915 1916–1935 1936–1945

Po

vpre

čni o

bse

g v

bes

edah

Kmečka prozaZgodovinska proza

References• Peter Denley: The computer revolution and "redefining the Humanities.'' David S.

Miall (ed.), Humanities and the Computer: New Directions. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990.

• Douwe Fokkema: The study of literature. E. Zürcher et al. (ed.), The Humanities in the Nineties: A View from the Nederlands. Amsterdam: Swets and Zeitlinger, 1990.

• Empirical Studies of the Arts. http://baywood.metapress.com/• Wilhelm Fucks: Nach allen Regeln der Kunst: Diagnosen über Literatur, Musik,

bildende Kunst – die Werke, ihre Autoren und Schöpfer, 1968. • Miran Hladnik: The Study of Literature in its European and American Settings with

Reference to Slovene Fiction. Slovene Studies XVII/1–2: 139–54. http://lit.ijs.si/hum_ang.html or http://www.kakanien.ac.at/beitr/theorie/MHladnik1.pdf

• Miran Hladnik. For other publications see http://lit.ijs.si/hlad_bib.html.• Miran Hladnik: Slovene student projects in Wikipedia and Wikisource.

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Slovene_student_projects_in_Wikipedia_and_Wikisource . 2008

• Moshe Koppel et al.: Gender, Genre, and Writing Style in Formal Written Texts. http://www.cs.biu.ac.il/%7Ekoppel/papers/male-female-text-final.pdf

• Ton Langendorff: Support for the humanities: Some international statistics. The Humanities in the Nineties ..., 1990.

• Siegfried J. Schmidt: Looking back–looking ahead. Literary Studies: Trends in the Nineties = Poetics 21 (1992).