Dedicated literature
In the broadest sense, engaged literature is any literature that reveals a political, social, religious or ideological commitment and presents and promotes this with the means of literature.
Engaged literature is not primarily about aesthetic values or stylistic experiments. So it does not exist - according to the L'art pour l'art principle, for example - for its own sake.
The term engaged literature was coined in 1945 by Jean-Paul Sartre . Due to the fluid transitions between committed literature, trend literature , political literature and religious poetry, it is difficult to clearly delimit the terms. In contrast to trend literature, which sees its purpose in the direct political or other non-artistic effect, the committed literature is characterized by its own aesthetic value. Their secondary effect separates them from active action, for example by a politician .
Dedicated literature has existed at all times and among all peoples. Examples can be found in the Jacobins , in Polish literature , in the writings of Junge Deutschland , in the anti-fascist and pacifist literature of the time of National Socialism , in statements against the Vietnam War , in French existentialism , workers' literature or ecology, as well as in literature the right political opposite side and the conservatives.
In addition to Bertolt Brecht and Anna Seghers , particularly successful representatives of literary engagements in recent German-language literature include Heinrich Böll and Elfriede Jelinek , the latter two of whom were even awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature .
literature
- Theodor W. Adorno : Commitment. In: Notes on literature. Edited by Rolf Tiedemann (= Collected Writings 11). 3. Edition. Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main 1981, ISBN 3-518-57232-6 , pp. 409-430.
- Ursula Geitner: State of the art: engagement semantics and contemporary literature research. In: Engagement. Concepts of the present and contemporary literature . Edited by Jürgen Brokoff, Ursula Geitner, Kerstin Stüssel. V&R unipress, Göttingen 2016 (= literary and media history of the modern age, vol. 1), ISBN 978-3-8471-0256-4 , pp. 19–58.
- Marlies Janz : On the commitment of absolute poetry. On the poetry and aesthetics of Paul Celan . Syndicate, Frankfurt am Main 1976, ISBN 978-3-8108-0014-5 .
- Helmut Peitsch : commitment / tendency / partiality. In: Basic aesthetic terms. Edited by Karlheinz Barck u. a. Vol. 2: Decadent-Grotesque. Metzler, Stuttgart / Weimar 2010, ISBN 978-3-476-02355-1 , pp. 178-223.
- Jean-Paul Sartre : What is literature? Ed., Newly translated and with an afterword by Traugott König (= Collected Works in Individual Editions 3). Rowohlt Taschenbuch, Reinbek bei Hamburg 1981, ISBN 3-499-14779-3 .
- Gero von Wilpert : Subject dictionary of literature (= Kröner's pocket edition . Volume 231). 8th, improved and enlarged edition. Kröner, Stuttgart 2001, ISBN 3-520-23108-5 , pp. 211-212.
Individual evidence
- ^ Günther Schweikle, Irmgard Schweikle (ed.): Metzler Literature Lexicon . Terms and definitions. JB Metzler, Stuttgart 1990, ISBN 978-3-476-00668-4 , p. 123 .
- ^ Wilpert: Subject dictionary of literature . 2001, p. 211-212 .
- ↑ a b c Wilpert: Subject dictionary of literature . 2001, p. 207-208 .
- ^ Ilija Trojanow : Defense of the do-gooder . It's easy to go through life as a cynic, but it doesn't help anyone: an apology for an ostracized commitment. In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung , November 25, 2017, No. 274, p. 18.
- ↑ Elfriede Jelinek: "... the worst thing is this male system of values and norms to which women are subject ..." (interview). in: Gabriele Presber: Art is female. Knaur, Munich 1988, ISBN 978-3-426-03905-2 , pp. 106-131, p. 110.