Positionen des Lesers im „Vierfachen Schriftsinn“, dargestellt an Tschechows Der Mensch im Futteral, Faulkners Schall und Wahn und Kafkas Der Prozess.
An analysis of narrative texts to determine the knowledge of literature with regard to Ricœur's hermeneutics
The fact that an unreflective approach to literature and other media can have far-reaching consequences is unfortunately demonstrated far too often in the dispute between dogmas and interpretations about "the word". In high-profile debates about the representation and reception of violence in the media, for example, there are repeated calls for reading skills and the correct understanding of texts. "The ability to read" alone is no guarantee for the correct decoding and encoding of signs; on the contrary, it can even be instrumentalized for demagogy. Literacy therefore requires critical and metacritical skills that require the reader to self-reflect on his or her approach to reading (and the implicit presuppositions that accompany it). This demand goes hand in hand with my research interest in literary theory and criticism as a self-critical science that scrutinizes the process of reading and critically questions the ideologies behind it.
In this doctoral project, access to the knowledge of literature is to be problematized. As an example of the theoretical, methodological and ideological presuppositions that influence a reading of the text, the doctrine of the fourfold sense of scripture will be examined in its methodological and theoretical framework, as it has a rich tradition that can be traced back to the Homeric exegeses and extends to the Jewish and Christian tradition of biblical hermeneutics in the Middle Ages. Such a recourse has the advantage of making the approach to texts, the representation of knowledge systems in texts and their reception historically plausible. Furthermore, the treatment of the fourfold sense of writing enables a special focus on theoretical problems of hermeneutics and epistemology. A revision of the tacitly assumed assertions about the approach to literature on a metacritical and hermeneutical level should pave the way for presenting a philosophically and literary-scientifically founded proposal for accessing the knowledge of literature with the help of hermeneutical, new-historical, discourse-analytical and ideology-critical approaches to literary theory, among others. Ideally, a dialog between literary studies and various disciplines such as philosophy, history and theology should be sought. The method to be developed in the dissertation will be supported by the application to literary texts (Tschechow Der Mensch im Futteral, Faulkner Schall und Wahn and Kafka Der Prozess).
Supervisor: Prof. Dr. Martina Wagner-Egelhaaf, Prof. Dr. Horst-Jürgen Gerigk
Education
since 04/2015 PhD student, Graduate School Practices of Literature, University of Münster 2014 Master of Arts, German Philology, Philosophy Projects and Professional Experience
05/2015 - 04/2015 Research Assistant, Institute for German Language, Mannheim 10/2009 - 05/2014 Student Assistant, Institute for German Language, Mannheim Scholarships and Awards
since 09/2015 Doctoral Fellow, German Literature and Critical Thinking, Northwestern University