Miniature (literature)

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Miniature , especially prose miniature and lyrical miniature , as a genre in literature generally refers to a very short text, and is - undifferentiated and depending on the thematic context - as a synonym for terms such as short story , novella , fragment , anecdote , vignette , microfiction , Nanofiction or Flash Fiction used.

The more precise literary definition of miniature - the term, like vignette, was chosen analogously to the term in painting - is “pictorial description, short text with numerous pictures painted with words”.

Definitions and examples

Miniature is not uniformly defined except for the relative brevity of the text. Due to its brevity, miniature is a very general definition as a synonym for short story, novella, fragment, anecdote, vignette, microfiction, nanofiction and flash fiction.

Another definition relates to the analogy of the term to painting, with the literary miniature drawing a picture with words.

Prose miniatures

Prose miniature is a literary genre of the writers of the 20th century that works particularly with pictorial description: "Texts that use numerous pictures - painted with words". Christina Niem uses the term in this meaning: "By drawing miniatures of social conditions in the years after the First World War, the economic crisis and inflation at the beginning of the Weimar Republic, she presented social reality in a very unpretentious manner and without any particular comment."

Stefan Zweig (1881–1942) specified his work Sternstunden der Menschheit , published in 1927, with the explanatory addition fourteen historical miniatures and drew 14 historical images from his own personal point of view.

Further prose miniatures can be found in the works of Robert Walser (1878–1956), Franz Kafka (1883–1924) and Robert Musil (1880–1942) and, due to their brevity and intensity, are perceived as having “great poetic power and concentration” .

Lyric miniatures

Well-known forms of lyrical miniatures are haiku (Japanese 俳 句;), Japanese short poems, and haiku containing haibun (Japanese 俳 文 for comical portrayal), as well as short poems based on haiku such as the often cited In a Station of the Metro ( In a station der Metro ) by Ezra Pound (1885–1972), which only evokes "an image" and has "no action" (no verb ):

"The apparition of these faces in the crowd:
Petals on a wet, black bough."

"The appearance of these faces in the crowd:
petals on a wet, black branch."

Poems by Erich Kästner (1899–1974) and Kurt Tucholsky (1890–1935) are counted among the lyrical miniatures of the late 19th and early 20th centuries : “The lyrical miniature, the quick-to-consume, easy-to-understand poem was through Erich Kästner and Kurt Tucholsky have become typical models of the time ... ”, as well as works of the late poetry of Bertolt Brecht (1898–1956) and that of the Mongol Daschdordschiin Natsagdordsch (1906–1937), the“ master of lyrical miniature ”.

Before this period, Friedrich Hölderlin (1770–1843), then Elena Andreevna Švarc (Jelena Schwarz) (1948–2010) was mentioned.

Individual evidence and explanations

  1. ^ Karl Schubert: Investigations into the form of presentation of the short prose by Stephen Crane . K.Urlaub, 1968, p. 28.
  2. ^ Lower Saxony Education Server: Prose Miniature ; accessed on March 13, 2017.
  3. ^ Institute for Film, Theater and Empirical Cultural Studies at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz: Dr. Christina Niem ; accessed on March 15, 2017.
  4. ↑ Christina Niem: Lisa Tetzner's fairy tale hikes. A miniature on the subject of "light and shadow" , in &. Zeitschrift für Kulturanthropologie / Volkskunde , No. 13 (2009), pp. 13–19.
  5. ↑ Stefan Zweig: Great moments of mankind: Fourteen historical miniatures. Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1964, ISBN 3-10-097051-9
  6. ↑ Michaela Slaná: Stefan Zweig: Great moments of mankind , Philosophical Faculty of the Masaryk University , Brno (2014); accessed on March 16, 2017.
  7. ↑ Bernhard Böschenstein,: The explosive power of miniature. On the short prose of Robert Walser, Kafkas, Musils, with an antithetical opening to Thomas Mann , Hildesheim: Olms (2013) (= Germanist texts and studies, vol. 91).
  8. ↑ According to Matsuo Bashō's literary theory, a successful Haibun should also contain allusions to the thought pictures of famous poets, scholars, monks, etc.
  9. ↑ Birgit Heid: Miniatures from the Palatinate: Haibun . Books on Demand, April 13, 2015, ISBN 978-3-7386-7980-9 , p. 2.
  10. ↑ Frauke Berndt and Stephan Kammer: Amphibolie, Ambiguität, Ambivalenz . Königshausen & Neumann, January 2009, ISBN 978-3-8260-4000-9 , p. 227.
  11. ^ Dieter Lamping: Handbook of Poetry: Theory, Analysis, History . JB Metzler, November 18, 2016, ISBN 978-3-476-05479-1 , p. 446.
  12. ^ Dagmar Herrmann, Johanne Peters and Volker Pallin: Germans and Germany in Russian poetry . Fink, 1988, p. 230.
  13. ^ Klaus Hammer: Five fingers of one hand , Das Blättchen, 10th year (Berlin), September 3, 2007, issue 18; accessed on March 18, 2017.
  14. ↑ Ruth Mariß: "In this city with four million souls, a soul seems to be pretty rare": Mascha Kaléko's poem 'Scrawled on a café table' and the end of love in the big city . Books on Demand, July 31, 2013, ISBN 978-3-7322-2540-8 , p. 10.
  15. ^ Helmut Koopmann: Brecht's poetry: new interpretations . Königshausen & Neumann, 1999, ISBN 978-3-8260-1689-9 , p. 149–.
  16. ^ Weimar contributions . Aufbau-Verlag, 1984, p. 2003.
  17. ^ Friedrich Strack: Titan technology: Ernst and Friedrich Georg Jünger on the technical age . Königshausen & Neumann, January 2000, ISBN 978-3-8260-1785-8 , p. 227.
  18. ^ Bernhard Symanzik: Miscellanea Slavica Monasteriensia . LIT Verlag Münster, 2013, ISBN 978-3-643-12348-0 , p. 501.