An Introduction to a Historical-Typological Systematics of Literary Development

Abstract

First, the article explains the metaphorical meaning of the notion of development, comparing it with its original meaning in the natural sciences, and discovering that research into literary development also demands a definition of the agent, a substratum, of the foundation of the development. This substratum is portrayed differently on different levels: in the development of some authorial opus, as a persona of the real author, in the development of national literature, as a language. A specific problem is posed by the determination of a substratum’s development in supranational units (European, world, oriental literature), literary periods and orientations, types and genres. In all these cases it is impossible to explain a development without a prior determination of the notional “essence” of these terms. The article refers to different developmental models and in illustrative cases outlines the roles played in them by internal and external causes. This is the basis for the second part of the article, which questions the possibility of a conceptually coherent analysis of development in European literatures or European literature as a whole. This seems possible to achieve with the application of the geistesgeschichtliche method, which explains a succession of literary periods and orientations on the basis of the metaphysical grounds that determine “the life world” of historical humans. From this perspective the development of European literature from Antiquity to post-modernism is outlined. It turns out that the historicity of notions concerning periodization need to be complemented by those concerning typology (verism, hermeticism, classics), since it is only at the intersection of the two that the real significance of literary notions is demonstrated. In conclusion the article attempts a transfer of historical and typological notions from the European literary framework to the oriental literature of the Antiquity and the Middle Ages, and concludes that it is not possible to thus translate historical concepts, because the substratum of these literatures are comprised of different religious and metaphysical systems. Nevertheless, the use of typological categories is justifiable even for these literatures, although in the context of different historical developments.