Historia Literaria

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Title page JF Reimmann, Historia Literaria (1710).

Historia Literaria is a field of science of the 17th and 18th centuries and literally translates as "history of science" under the then valid term of literature . As a text genre, systematically structured reviews of the most important scientific publications in all disciplines came into fashion in the 17th century. From the Historia Literaria at the end of the 18th century, modern literary history emerged as a text genre - a history that is primarily oriented towards the important writings of a nation and its linguistic works of art.

history

In the view of the 17th and 18th centuries, the “Historia Literaria” - the “reporting from the sciences” - included both the current reporting by the scientific journals and the recording of the old and new scientific books by the large bibliographies that contain the word “ Historia Literaria ”increasingly claimed as a generic term. The standard works of the 17th century appeared in Latin; German production began in the early 18th century and took into account the needs of the German student body, which is important in European comparison, and the scholarship teaching them. The volumes were mostly handy and written for household use. Under a rough breakdown of the sciences, they systematically give subject by subject the breakdown down to the detailed questions of the individual areas of knowledge. Under each heading, a brief historical outline usually opens with statements on the most important works of the individual nations from the Hebrews, Greeks and Romans to the current ones. This is followed by a chronologically arranged, numbered or spelled bibliography of the important titles in the best editions with brief information on the meaning of the respective work, the author or an otherwise memorable note, which is familiar in specialist circles as "curieuses" knowledge.

The Latin project Daniel Georg Morhof and the German collections Jacob Friedrich Reimmann and Gottlieb Stolles became important on the German market - Stolle's editions of the History of Gelahrheit are to be recommended to everyone except for the day, the overview of the knowledge of the 17th and 18th centuries Century in its structure - an overview that the alphabetically sorted, knowledge indiscriminately fragmented lexicons cannot give.

The project of the all-encompassing “Historia Literaria” found itself in a legitimation deficit from the beginning, regardless of the fact that these works proved to be eminently practical in academic work - they offered the footnotes pre-formulated on any topic. The promise was an overview of the entire knowledge. The knowledge itself, however, was limited to literature references. Gottlieb Stolle made no secret of the fact that he himself had not read the cited titles - the knowledge of the science historian consisted in an overview, in the collection of titles, in the knowledge of the importance of each title in the subject. He obtained the information on this in interviews that he conducted with scholars (Stolle's interviews on the occasion of his trip through Germany and the Netherlands, 1703, have been preserved as conversation notes and passed down to Breslau), but above all by reading the current scientific journals . In the absence of legitimation, most of the authors working here pretended to write for adolescents (Reimmann's work is written in dialogue with his son, the most complex scientific work is here, according to the fiction, given to a child for a better overview). After 1700, anyone who had written “Historia Literaria” resolutely for specialist colleagues would have exposed themselves to criticism (even if they were ultimately the audience interested in the overviews).

In the second half of the 18th century, “literary histories” replaced the large overview works: In individual technical questions - in extreme cases this could be obstetrics - literary histories were presented: works that gave a historical overview of the relevant specialist literature.

The project of comprehensive literary history, on the other hand, increasingly focused on the " belles lettres ", the "beautiful sciences". Erduin Julius Koch's outline of a history of the language and literature of the Germans from the earliest times up to Lessing's death , published in the first volume in 1795 , appeared in the middle of a creeping change of subject. The opening of the project remained the old: "Literature" was, if one followed the introduction, still the area of ​​science. For those interested in the history of literature, however, only a very small production of epochal scientific works turned out to be historically interesting. The sciences demanded knowledge about the currently important titles and detached themselves from the weight of the authorities. Progress, the commitment to the latest knowledge, triumphed in the realigned scientific enterprise. Compared to the great scientific milestones of the nation, the majority of Koch's volumes were filled with the “beautiful sciences” - the genres of poetry . Koch's project was followed three decades later by the history of the poetic national literature of the Germans by Dr. GG Gervinus (Leipzig: W. Engelmann, 1835), which was the first to offer a historical narrative instead of a thematically structured bibliography and limited itself to poetry and the novel. The "Historia Literaria" had thus finally become the modern history of literature . The narrative presentation won the literary history of modern style in the 1830s not from the tradition of the “Historia Literaria”, but from the project of an interpretation of poetic and fictional literature, which Pierre Daniel Huet in 1670 with his “Traitté de l'origine des romans” had initiated, and which now (based on the tradition of a single nation) became politically interesting.

For a larger overview see the keyword history of literature

literature

Works of the Historia Literaria

  • Daniel Georg Morhof, Polyhistor Literarius, Philosophicus et Practicus (Lübeck, 1688) [found new editions well into the 18th century].
  • Jacob Friederich Reimmann , attempt at an introduction to the Historiam Literariam (Halle: Rengerische Buchhandlung, 1708–1713).
  • Gottlieb Stolle, Kurtze Instructions for the History of Gelahrheit , 1 (Halle: Neue Buchhandlung, 1718) [found new editions and expanded volumes in the 1720s and 1730s].
  • Alphons Leroy, Litterary History and Practical Lessons in the Art of Childbirth (Frankfurt / Leipzig / Meiningen: J. Mayer, 1779) [Library catalogs offer a large number of other titles under Litterary History, Litterary History and Variants].
  • Erduin Julius Koch , outline of a history of the language and literature of the Germans from the oldest times up to Lessing's death , 1 (Berlin: Verlag der Königl. Realschulbuchhandlung, 1795).

Johann Gottfried Eichhorn, Litterary History (1805)

literature

  • Michael S. Batts: A History of Histories of German Literature [= Canadian Studies in German Language and Literature, 37] (New York / Berne / Frankfurt a. M. / Paris, 1987).
  • Jürgen Fohrmann : The project of German literary history. Origin and failure of a national poetry historiography between humanism and the German Empire (Stuttgart, 1989).
  • Martin Gierl, “Taking stock of the learned area. On the development of the 'Historia Literaria' in the 18th century ”, in the horizon of thought and scope for action , Festschrift for Rudolf Vierhaus on his 70th birthday (Göttingen, 1992), pp. 53–80.
  • Helmut Zedelmaier , “'Historia Literaria'. About the epistemological place of learned knowledge in the first half of the 18th century ”, in: Das 18. Jahrhundert 22.1 (1998), pp. 11-21.
  • P. Nelles: "Historia litteraria and Morhof: private teaching and professorial libraries at the University of Kiel", in: Mapping the world of learning: the Polyhistor of Daniel Georg Morhof , ed. F. Waquet, = Wolfenbütteler Forschungen, 91 (Wiesbaden , 2000), pp. 31-56.
  • Paul Nelles, “ Historia litteraria at Helmstedt. Books, professors and students in the early Enlightenment university ”, in Helmut Zedelmaier / Martin Mulsow (eds.) The Practices of Erudition in the Early Modern Age (Tübingen, 2001), pp. 147–175.
  • Olaf Simons: Marteaus Europa or The Roman Before He Became Literature (Amsterdam, 2001), pp. 85–94 and pp. 115–193.
  • Frank Grunert, Friedrich Vollhardt (ed.): Historia literaria. New orders of knowledge in the 17th and 18th centuries. (Berlin, 2007).
  • Tilo Werner: Historia literaria . In: Gert Ueding (Hrsg.): Historical dictionary of rhetoric . Volume 10: Supplements A - Z . De Gruyter, Berlin / Boston 2011, ISBN 978-3-484-68100-2 , Sp. 361–365.