Hervadás : Érzékeny regények tudástörténeti megközelítésben = Wilting : Novels of sensibility in the context of the history of knowledge

Antal, Áron (2024) Hervadás : Érzékeny regények tudástörténeti megközelítésben = Wilting : Novels of sensibility in the context of the history of knowledge. IRODALOMTÖRTÉNETI KÖZLEMÉNYEK, 128 (3). pp. 328-352. ISSN 0021-1486

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Abstract

Interpretors of 18th century novels related literary sensibility often face the challenge of dealing with non-literary knowledge. The texts of the era under discussion are filled with various signs of intradiscursive connections, linking different fields of the dynamically changing scholarly and scientific knowledge of this time, combining these with the schemes, metaphors and analogies of common reason. The following paper argues – mainly focusing on German novels of the literary Empfindsamkeit – that within the frame of anthropological questions concerning human sensibility, the reviewed group of texts can be compared with case histories and read as fictive examples of decent or ill behaviour. Special attention is paid to the phenomena of organic metaphors, according to their crucial role in transforming the ideas on the psycho-physiological conditions of human sensibility into a far-reaching inventory of poetic tools. In this context, the functioning of human-plant analogies is also demonstrated through the comparison of J. G. Herder’s philosophical text Vom Erkennen und Empfinden der menschlichen Seele and A. C. Kayser’s novel Adolfs gesammlete Briefe.

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