Friedrich A. Kittler: Discourse Networks 1800/1900 (1985–) [German, English]
Filed under book | Tags: · communication, discourse, history of literature, language, literary theory, literature, media, media archeology, media technology, media theory, philosophy, psychoanalysis, psychophysics, technology, writing
“This 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. Friedrich Kittler 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 artful structure of the book begins with Goethe’s Faust and ends with Valéry’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, Mallarmé, Bram Stroker, the Surrealists, Rilke, Kafka, and Freud, among others.”
Aufschreibesysteme 1800/1900
First published in 1985
Third, completely revised edition
Publisher Wilhelm Fink Verlag, Munich, 1995
ISBN 3770528816, 9783770528813
524 pages
Discourse Networks, 1800/1900
Translated by Michael Metteer, with Chris Cullens
Foreword by David E. Wellbery
Publisher Stanford University Press, 1990
ISBN 9780804720991
496 pages
Reviews: Franz Futterknecht and David Wellbery (Poetics Today, 1987, EN), Robert C. Holub (German Quarterly, 1987, EN), Thomas Sebastian (MLN, 1990, EN).
Wikipedia (DE)
Publisher (DE)
Publisher (EN)
Aufschreibesysteme 1800/1900 (German, 3rd ed., 1985/1995, removed on 2024-2-6 upon request from Brill)
Discourse Networks, 1800/1900 (English, 1990, updated to the full book on 2014-1-30 via poshumano, updated to single-page OCR’d version on 2014-1-31 via Marcell Mars)
Online version of Index of persons (at Monoskop wiki)
Comments (3)Florian Cramer: Exe.cut(up)able statements: Poetische Kalküle und Phantasmen des selbstausführenden Texts (2011) [German]
Filed under book | Tags: · aesthetics, algorithm, avant-garde, code, code poetry, experimental literature, history of literature, information aesthetics, kabbalah, literature, net art, poetry, software, text, theory
“From the antiquity to today, there has been poetry that literally performs computations, processing its own letters. Prototyped by magic and Pythagorean mathematical aesthetics, it encompasses such diverse forms as kabbalist and Lullist language combinatorics, word permutation poetry, ludistic poetry, computational text collage, aleatoric, stochastic and recursive texts, Oulipian constraints, computer-generative literature, poetry in programming languages, and codeworks. Just like visual and sound poetry poetize the graphetic and phonetic dimensions of words, these writings show that computation is a dimension of language. On top of that, their poetics is rife with speculative and contradictory programs: often one and the same text form is at once being instrumentalized for total art and anti-art, mysticism and technicism, order and chaos. This has resulted in a fantastic literature whose speculative imagination manifests itself in the arrangement of letters rather than the semantics of the text. The book includes close readings of a 17th century sonnet (Quirinus Kuhlmann’s “XLI. Libes-kuss”), a 20th century musical composition (Alvin Lucier’s “I am sitting in a room”) and a 21st century net.art codework (mez breeze’s “_Viro.Logic Condition][ing][ 1.1_”), and discusses limitations of existing literary and media theory for criticism of these works.
A shorter, less scholarly English-language mutant of this book has been electronically published in 2005 as Words Made Flesh: Code, Culture, Imagination.”
Publisher Wilhelm Fink Verlag, October 2011
343 pages
Note: the book has just become free for Open Access publishing and is offered here for download in its manuscript version, licensed under Creative Commons Attribution Unported 3.0.
Comment (0)Jonathan Goodwin, John Holbo (eds.): Reading Graphs, Maps, and Trees: Responses to Franco Moretti (2011)
Filed under book | Tags: · history of literature, literary criticism, literary theory, literature, reading
Franco Moretti’s Graphs, Maps, Trees: Abstract Models for Literary History is one of the most provocative recent works of literary history. The present volume collects generalist and specialist, academic and nonacademic responses by statisticians, philosophers, historians, literary scholars and others. And Moretti’s responses to these responses. Originally written as contributions to an online book event hosted at The Valve, and edited for this volume, these essays explore, extend and criticize many aspects of Franco Moretti’s work. They will be of interest to anyone interested in Moretti’s brand of “distant reading”; or in the prospects for quantitative approaches to literary style and genre; or recent interdisciplinary work in the humanities generally.
Contributors: Bill Benzon, Tim Burke, Jenny Davidson, Ray Davis, Jonathan Goodwin, Eric Hayot, John Holbo, Steven Berlin Johnson, Matthew Kirschenbaum, Sean McCann, Franco Moretti, Adam Roberts, Cosma Shalizi.
Publisher Parlor Press, 2011
Glassbead Books
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License
ISBN 1602352054, 9781602352056
256 pages