Fiktion, Wissen, Gedächtnis

If one wants to understand what literature is from a longue durée perspective, it is instructive to examine the terms ‘fiction’, ‘knowledge’ and ‘memory’. Grouped into three sections, analytical studies each focusing on one of these three terms are compiled in this book. These studies introduce suitable theoretical models in this respect, which have been customised so that they can be used in textual analysis. In this way, the book aims to reveal important foundations of literary theory and analyse them in terms of their potential to explain literary texts. This also results in feedback effects between theoretical discourse and literary practice to the extent that they thematise their own foundations, often through self-reflection, and devise implicit theoretical models. The studies deal with texts from Il Novellino and by Dante, Boccaccio, Cervantes, Diderot, Jean Paul, Foscolo, Balzac, Baudelaire, Zola, Capuana, Proust, Simon, Levi, Semprún, Perec and Modiano. This book will also appeal to non-Romanists, which is why all quotations in a foreign language have been translated.