Shifting Modes of Writing. Style(s) in the Eighteenth Century

• Applicant: Dr. Annika Hildebrandt
• Subject Area: German Literary and Cultural Studies (Modern German Literature)
• Term: since 2024
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 536380604

With support by the DFG, the intemational conference Shifting Modes of Writing. Stylè(s) in the Eighteenth Century took place at the Leibniz Center for Literary and Cultural Research in Berlin on October 6-8, 2021. The aim was to give new impulsesto research on concepts ofliterary style in a historical perspective. The conference gave scholars from different philological disciplines the opportunity to discuss well-known literary-historical assumptions on the development of the modern concept of style from transnational, epistemotogical, aesthetic, and linguistic points of view. The conference proceedings will offer fresh historicai and systematic perspectives on an etusive key concept of literary theory. The volume is therefore of particular scholarly importance. lt will be published as a supplement to a well-established journat of German studies which is also known for its inclusion of comparative approaches. The contributions to the conference volume all start from the•observation that the category of style was changed in the eighteenth century 10 accommodate new ways of thinking about modes of writing. Style was extricated from the rhetorical system and developed into an ambiguous concept of its own, evidenced by the creation and reassignment of numerous adjectives that turned style into an aesthetic category. ln contrast to the previously dominating schematic distinction between genus sub!ime, genus mediocre and genus humile, qualities such as naïve and gracious (French: naïf, gracieux, German: naiv, scherzhaft), humourous (German: !aunisch) or even emphatic (German: kräftig) styles ofwriting were now identified and discussed as individual or generic hallmarks. The volume explores how the category of style was pluralized, historicized, and individualized. ln the eighteenth century, style was applied, for example, as a linguistic marker for social and ethnic groups. At the same time, the interest in style also shows a growing awareness of the intrinsic logic of languages, as reflected in contemporaneous practices and theories oftranslation. ln different media formations (e.g. text and music, orality and writing), too, affordances and shortcoming of the concept of style became evident. . . The publication explores these movements between languages, literatures, media and semantic fields by opening up comparative horizons in the European context and by presenting approaches from both literary studies and linguistics. lt will thus make a substantial research contribution to the field of comparative German Studies and attract the attention of researchers interested in the literary and cultural history of the eighteenth century as well as scholars interested in key questions of literary theory.

• DFG Programme: Publication Grants