Research Group

Projects

Our starting point is that we view the study of literary texts in the wider sense of the term as inseparable from the investigation of their historical contexts, whether these are conceived in social, political, intellectual or cultural terms. In giving our project the working title Cultural History & Literary Imagination, we mean to indicate that the main focus of our inquiries will be on the role of the literary, social and historical imagination in cultural history but also on the interpretation of processes within cultural history through literary texts, media and related forms of documentary evidence. Our immediate interest is in the period since the sixteenth century, but there is obviously much scope for interaction with other research efforts concerned with the early modern, medieval, classical periods, or with non-European cultures.

We believe the time is ripe for collaborative research of this kind because of the following combination of circumstances:

Recent debates in a number of fields (including cultural and historical anthropology, cultural studies, ethnography, cultural geography, and the history of ideas) have focused on a conception of culture as a process, and have drawn on the model of 'interpretation' for this purpose. Such debates, which seek to address the forms and functions of both representation and performance within a historically defined setting, constitute a challenge to literary studies to re-define and re-think the complex relationship between texts, broadly perceived, and their respective cultural and intellectual contexts.

The impact of mass media in the twentieth century has called into question any sense of clear distinction between literature and other forms of cultural expression. In the light of this development it has become necessary to review the viability of traditional procedures of textual analysis, and the relationship between literary and other means of communication. Although recent media theory and seemingly more traditional philological approaches seem to exclude each other, a historically and contextually orientated approach to the formation of specific cultural, intellectual and epistemic trends makes it necessary to combine both technological and philological expertise.

In response to the cultural and political changes of the late twentieth century, a tradition of 'cultural studies' has become established in the English-speaking world which often exclusively focuses on the analysis of contemporary attitudes and draws for this purpose on modes of theorising which tend to have a de-historicising effect. There is therefore arguably a need to restore the balance of cultural analysis by relating the features of contemporary culture to processes of historical development. It is in this respect that the English-speaking cultural studies and the German tradition of a historische Kulturwissenschaft have much to learn from each other.

The recent influence of 'critical theory' on literary studies has set some intellectual currents in motion (e.g. intertextuality, 'otherness', intercultural studies and cultural materialism) which may contribute directly to the purposes of our project, but it has also created a climate of academic opinion in some quarters which is actively hostile to the traditions of historical investigation. It is therefore appropriate to re-examine the intellectual foundations of these approaches.

In response to the growing internationalisation of the humanities, it would be of considerable advantage to establish and foster direct relationships between academic institutions in Cambridge and equivalent institutions and research groups abroad. Cultural History & Literary Imagination provides a forum for such collaborations in order to enhance intellectual exchange between the University of Cambridge and other institutions in Europe and the United States.

It is in the nature of literary studies that they involve interdisciplinary perspectives, interpreting literary works, for example, in social, political and intellectual, as well as cultural contexts: the complex issues involved in discussing the cultural construction of meaning through literature in the widest sense of the term demand an interdisciplinary approach that has been neglected in much recent literary and historical scholarship. A major focus for the research group is thus the relevance of literary forms and communication for cultural processes and with regard to their effect on the historical imagination. This re-assessment of the theoretical issues within the humanities in the twenty-first century can only be achieved, however, by a scholarly examination that is both interdisciplinary and historical in nature.

Against this complex and multi-faceted background, the research group Cultural History & Literary Imagination seeks to investigate the following issues, which have become recurring themes of its seminars, workshops and conferences:

a) The material conditions of culture and their representation in literature
We would wish to examine the effects of changing conditions of culture on literary practice, such as the cultural and literary interpretation of the sciences in the eighteenth century, the impact of industrialisation, technology and experimental sciences since the nineteenth century, the confrontation of 'high' culture with popular culture in the wake of the First World War, and the impact of new media in the course of the twentieth century.

b) The construction of cultural meaning through literary texts and traditions
We would want to examine texts which address experiences of cultural crisis and aim to provide a community with a sense of orientation in such circumstances, or which provide evidence of paradigm shifts in cultural self-perception, including the establishment of artificial cultural 'foundation myths' that inform the political imaginaire of a given epoch.

c) The sites of history and cultural memory
Both in France (Pierre Nora) and in Germany (Aleida Assmann, Etienne François and Hagen Schulze), the issue of cultural memory has been a focus of much recent discussion, but it remains a very difficult concept to address because it implies both the detailed description of underlying historical currents and the tracing of imaginary constellations of historical meaning. We would want to examine the metaphors and models through which the past is commemorated in literary texts and by other means, and we would also wish to examine the values and functions of 'place', 'space' and 'environment' within the cultural imagination and with regard to the formation of imaginary traditions that shape cultural and historical identity in Europe since the sixteenth century.

d) The methods and functions of cultural inquiry
Here we wish to take up the impulses of current debates in Germany about the functions of academic inquiry in relation to literature and culture. While some aspects of these debates relate specifically to processes of institutional change in Germany since 1990 (which may be worthy of investigation in themselves), their interest to us lies primarily in the fundamental reconsideration of the purposes of literary study which they also entail. Our immediate focus would be on theoretical discussions of the relation between image and text, of text as a medium of cultural memory, of the relation between literarture and science, and of intercultural processes.

Recent speakers and contributors have included Aleida Assmann (Konstanz), Jürgen Barkhoff (Dublin), Paul Bishop (Glasgow), Peter Burke (Cambridge), Manfred Engel (Saarbrücken), Ulrich Gaier (Konstanz), Karl S. Guthke (Harvard), Ortrud Gutjahr (Hamburg), Susane Hauser (Kassel), Leonard Olschner (London), Roger Paulin (Cambridge), Stefan Rieger (Erfurt), Ritchie Robertson (Oxford), Paul Julian Smith (Cambridge), Nigel Thrift (Bristol), Helen Watanabe-O'Kelly (Oxford), and others.

For further information on the seminar programme, as well as for information on upcoming and previous events, follow the links on the left.

Announcements about the research group's events are also distributed regularly on the following international electronic mailing lists: GERMAN-STUDIES@JISCMAIL.AC.UK (United Kingdom), H-GERMAN@H-NET.MSU.EDU (United States), and H-SOZ-U-KULT@H-NET.MSU.EDU (Germany)