Discourse networks 1800/1900
Friedrich A. Kittler (Author), Michael Leigh Metteer (Translator), Chris Cullens (Translator), David E. Wellbery
This is a highly original book about the connections between historical moment, social structure, technology, communication systems, and what is said and thought using these systems -- notably literature. The author focuses on the differences between 'discourse networks' in 1800 and in 1900, in the process developing a new analysis of the shift from romanticism to modernism. The work might be classified as a German equivalent to the New Historicism that is currently of great interest among American literary scholars, both in the intellectual influences to which Kittler responds and in his concern to ground literature in the most concrete details of historical reality. The artful structure of the book begins with Goethe's Faust and ends with Valéry's Faust. In the 1800 section, the author discusses how language was learned, the emergence of the modern university, the associated beginning of the interpretation of contemporary literature, and the canonization of literature. Among the writers and works Kittler analyzes in addition to Goethe's Faust are Schlegel, Hegel, E.T.A. Hoffman's 'The Golden Pot', and Goethe's Tasso. The 1900 section argues that the new discourse network in which literature is situated in the modern period is characterized by new technological media -- film, the photograph, and the typewritten page -- and the crisis that these caused for literary production. Along the way, the author discusses the work of Nietzsche, Gertrude Stein, Mallarmé, Bram Stroker, the Surrealists, Rilke, Kafka, and Freud, among others
Print Book, English, 1990
Stanford University Press, Stanford, Calif., 1990
Literature
xxxiii, 459 pages : illustrations ; 25 cm
9780804720991, 9780804716161, 0804720991, 0804716161
20827920
Foreword
I. 1800
The scholar's tragedy: prelude in the theater
The mother's mouth. Learning to read in 1800 ; Motherliness and civil service
Language channels. The im-possibility of translations ; "The golden pot" ; Authors, readers, authors
The toast. Function: feminine reader ; ... and the Kingdom of God
II. 1900
Nietzsche: incipit tragoedia
The great Lalulā. Psychophysics ; Technological media
Rebus. Untranslatability and the transposition of media ; Psychoanalysis and its shadow ; A simulacrum of madness
Queen's sacrifice
Afterword to the second printing
Translation of: Aufschreibesysteme 1800/1900
Translation of: Aufschreibesysteme 1800/1900