Elliptinen synteesi

(sosiaalihistoriallisen) kirjallisuushistorian kirjoittamisen vaikeudesta

• Liisa Steinby Turun yliopisto

DOI: https://doi.org/10.30665/av.74942

Abstrakti

Elliptical Synthesis: On the Difficulty of Writing Social History of Literature

The article sets off with a few examples from the nineteenth-century discussion on literary history writing which shows that this always was a much-disputed topic. However, writing an overview of the development of literature in a given area or period appears now a more problematic venture than ever. This is not only because of the plurality of different approaches in contemporary literary scholarship and the immense amount of research done in each specific field, but the subject of study now appears more complicated than before, because most literary scholars today insist on contextualizing literature socially and culturally. In addition, the synthesizing task of the literary historian may today seem per se precarious because of the general suspicion of any “grand narratives”. In the article, these difficulties are first illustrated by describing the perspectives adopted in Hansers Sozialgeschichte der deutschen Literatur (1980-2004) and its public scholarly criticism. A comparison is then made with similar projects in Finnish literary history writing, namely Suomen kirjallisuushistoria (1999) and Suomen nykykirjallisuus (2013). It is proposed that no complete theoretical modelling for the literary historical description can reasonably be required, but rather there should be a deep-going reflection of the main principles that are being followed in the literary historian’s inevitably elliptical synthesis.