Ralf Grüttemeier

Liesbeth Korthals Altes

G. J. Dorleijn

The autonomy of the arts and literature is a central issue in the current debate on the 'crisis' in contemporary culture. In this debate, the tension between two conceptions of art - conceived as autotelic, or as serving social, ethical, ideological or commercial ends - plays a key role. For literature, two periods are particularly interesting in this respect: the period around 1900, and the turn of the millennium. The former is considered to witness the consecration of the autonomy of the arts with respect to morality or social utility, and of its prestige as 'high art', against the background of compelling countermovements, such as the Arts and crafts movements or socialist art. The second period, on the other hand, has been analysed as displaying, in post-modern Western cultures, an opposite tendency towards deautonomization. 'High' literature and art are deemed to have lost their ideological and moral autonomy, their aesthetic superiority, and their independence with respect to commercial interests. The essays in this volume investigate these often strategic claims and conceptions, taking into account the social, political and institutional contexts in which they are articulated. To analyse the issue of the autonomy of literature offers incisive insights into conflicting standpoints about the function of literature in society, revealing its connection to law, social responsibility, gender, and political, national and religious identities. Combining in an often innovative way institutional, historical and hermeneutical approaches, the collected essays intend to shed new light on the historical and national specifics of the debate about the function of literature.

A Critical Assesment

The Autonomy of Literature at the Fins de Siècles (1900 and 2000)

Barend van Heusden

This volume contains a selection of essays presented at the international conference on Cultural Crises in Art and Literature, held in Groningen in November 2002, in a special session on the question of the autonomy of the arts. Do we witness, in western culture, the end of the autonomy of the arts as it has been conceptualized and institutionalized since the eighteenth century? Indeed, developments of quite a different nature seem to have contributed to a blurring of boundaries between art and non-art, art and the market, art and politics or ethics, as well as between the arts themselves, and between 'high' and 'low' art. Although this volume does not pretend to map this complex process in its entirety - partly because it is impossible to step out of one's own history - it is meant as a contribution to the elucidation of the process itself, offering some challenging explanations as to the heat of the current debate.

Problems and Perspectives

Aesthetic Autonomy

Manet van Montfrans

The human condition in rural, provincial locations is once again gaining status as a subject of European 'high fiction', after several decades in which it was dismissed on aesthetic and ideological grounds. This volume is one of the first attempts to investigate perspectives on local cultures, values and languages both systematically and in a European context. It does so by examining the works of a variety of authors, including Hugo Claus, Llamazares, Bergounioux and Millet, Buffalino and Consolo, and also several Soviet authors, who paint a grim picture of a collectivized – and thus ossified – rurality. How do these themes relate to the ongoing trend of globalization? How do these works, which are often experimental, connect – in their form, topics, language and ideological subtext – to the traditional rural or regional genres? Far from naively celebrating a lost Eden, most of these 'new Georgics' reflect critically on the tensions in contemporary, peripheral, rural or regional cultures, to the point of parodying the traditional topoi and genres. This book is of interest to those wishing to reflect on the dynamics and conflicts in contemporary European rural culture.

Rural and Regional Motifs in the Contemporary European Novel

The New Georgics

Ethos and Narrative Interpretation examines the fruitfulness of the concept of ethos for the theory and analysis of literary narrative. The notion of ethos refers to the broadly persuasive effects of the image one may have of a speaker’s psychology, world view, and emotional or ethical stance. How and why do readers attribute an ethos (of, for example, sincerity, reliability, authority, or irony) to literary characters, narrators, and even to authors? Are there particular conditions under which it is more appropriate for interpreters to attribute an ethos to authors, rather than to narrators? In the answer Liesbeth Korthals Altes proposes to such questions, ethos attributions are deeply implicated in the process of interpreting and evaluating narrative texts. Demonstrating the extent to which ethos attributions, and hence, interpretive acts, play a tacit role in many methods of narratological analysis, Korthals Altes also questions the agenda and epistemological status of various narratologies, both classical and post-classical. Her approach, rooted in a broad understanding of the role and circulation of narrative art in culture, rehabilitates interpretation, both as a tool and as an object of investigation in narrative studies.

The Negotiation of Values in Fiction

Ethos and Narrative Interpretation

Dick H. Schram

Bijdragen van Nederlandse literatuurwetenschappers over recente ontwikkelingen in hun vak.

Liesbeth Korthals Altes

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