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Starting with the Early modern period,
the project examines the changing definitions of what
the subject of literature is. Special attention is paid
to the onset of a productive re-interpretation of Aristotle's
Poetics. This re-interpretation has two consequences.
It leads to a restriction, because the object of literary
mimesis is perceived as a type, always staying the same,
an epitome of perfect action, rather than in certain
actions of certain characters in certain situations.
On the other hand, the re-interpretation extends the
subject matter of the Poetics to whatever is
imaginable, as can be seen in Francesco Robortello's
first printed commentary on Aristotle's Poetics
(1548). Via historical research the project aims at
making a fruitful contribution to the systematic question
of whether - from a present point of view - a subject
of literature can be still assumed: for Robortello and
Scaliger as well as for Gottsched, Blackenburg and even
Friedrich Schlegel the possibility of a normative definition
of the subject of literature was a matter of course;
after 1800 this self-evidence was called into question.
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