Discourse Networks, 1800/1900This 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 Vale;ry'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, Mallarme;, Bram Stroker, the Surrealists, Rilke, Kafka, and Freud, among others. |
Contents
Prelude in the Theater | 3 |
THE MOTHERS MOUTH | 25 |
Learning to Read in 1800 27 Motherliness and Civil Service | 53 |
LANGUAGE CHANNELS | 70 |
The Impossibility of Translations 70 The Golden Pot | 77 |
Authors Readers Authors | 108 |
THE TOAST | 124 |
Feminine Reader 124 and the Kingdom | 148 |
THE GREAT LALULĂ | 206 |
Technological Media | 229 |
REBUS | 265 |
Psychoanalysis and Its Shadow 273 A Simulacrum of Madness | 304 |
QUEENS SACRIFICE | 347 |
Afterword to the Second Printing | 369 |
| 419 | |
| 449 | |
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Common terms and phrases
able according alphabetization already Anselmus appear became become beginning body brain bureaucratic called child classical completely continue course culture difference discourse network dream effect everything exist experiment experimental eyes fact Faust finally follows Freud function German Goethe hand hermeneutics Hoffmann human ideas imagination individual interpretation Kittler's language learned letters lines literary literature longer material meaning medium method mother mouth nature never Nietzsche notes occurs once original particular philosophical play poet poetic Poetry position possible practice present produced pure question readers reading reason recording relation remains rules Schreber sense signified signs simply single soul sound speak speech Spirit things thought tion translation turn typewriter unconscious understand universal voice whole woman women words writing written
References to this book
Money/Space: Geographies of Monetary Transformation Andrew Leyshon,Nigel Thrift No preview available - 1997 |
Bibliographic information
| Title | Discourse Networks, 1800/1900 |
| Author | Friedrich A. Kittler |
| Edition | illustrated, reprint |
| Publisher | Stanford University Press, 1990 |
| ISBN | 0804720991, 9780804720991 |
| Length | 459 pages |
| Subjects | › › Literary Criticism / Books & Reading Literary Criticism / European / German |
| Export Citation | BiBTeX EndNote RefMan |