Epic past tense

The epic past tense is a theory of the literary scholar and philosopher Käte Hamburger (1896–1992), with which she wanted to show that criteria for the fictionality of a text can be derived from its own logic. Having just returned from emigration in Sweden , she published the theory in 1957 in her habilitation thesis The Logic of Poetry .

Unlike the ordinary past tense (as a tense for completed events), the epic past tense, which is used in fictional texts, loses its grammatical function. Hamburger shows this particularly with the sentence:

But in the morning she had to clean the tree. Tomorrow was Christmas.

Such a sentence makes sense only in poetry. According to their theory, which is extremely important in literary studies, the tense does not indicate the past, but precisely the fictionality of the text that is being told. Only then would the connection be made possible between the deictic , i.e. the pointing adverb of time ( tomorrow ) and the past tempus (at was ). This idea of the timelessness of fiction is now being questioned. An important point in the criticism is that what has passed can only be told. On the other hand, an epic past tense can also occur in real communication. Hamburger's theory is not just criticized. Harald Weinrich (* 1927), for example, tried to develop it further and formulated that not only the past tense but all tenses had signal functions and could convey information beyond that of the time.

literature

Käte Hamburger : The Logic of Poetry. Klett, Stuttgart 1957, ISBN 3-608-91681-4 .
Dorothee Kimmich, Rolf G. Renner, Bernd Stiegler: Texts on literary theory of the present. Reclam, Ditzingen 1995, ISBN 3-15-009414-3 .
Harald Weinrich : Tempus. Discussed and told world. Beck, Munich 2001, ISBN 3-406-47876-X .

Web links

" What is the epic past tense? " In: Stuttgarter Impulse
Jochen Vogt: " Epic past tense " In: Invitation to literary studies

Footnotes

↑ See the chapter The epic past tense in: Käte Hamburger : The logic of poetry. Klett, Stuttgart 1957, ISBN 3-608-91681-4 , pp. 63-78.
↑ Cf. Käte Hamburger : The logic of poetry. Klett, Stuttgart 1957, ISBN 3-608-91681-4 , p. 70 f.
↑ Matias Martinez, Michael Scheffel: Introduction to the narrative theory. 3. Edition. Beck, Munich 2002, ISBN 3-406-47130-7 , p. 72.

[1] See the chapter The epic past tense in: Käte Hamburger : The logic of poetry. Klett, Stuttgart 1957, ISBN 3-608-91681-4 , pp. 63-78.

[2] Cf. Käte Hamburger : The logic of poetry. Klett, Stuttgart 1957, ISBN 3-608-91681-4 , p. 70 f.

[3] Matias Martinez, Michael Scheffel: Introduction to the narrative theory. 3. Edition. Beck, Munich 2002, ISBN 3-406-47130-7 , p. 72.