Zagreb school

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The Zagreb School is a literary-sociological research direction that was developed at the Philosophical Faculty of the University of Zagreb . Its specialty lies in the coupling of the sociology of form and the writing of cultural history. The names Zdenko Škreb, Viktor Žmegač , Aleksandar Flaker and Ivo Frangeš are associated with it .

development

The school is the result of a systematic institutionalization of modern Croatian literary studies that has been carried out since the 1950s: in 1950 the Croatian Society for Philology was founded. Two years later the Section for Theory and Methodology of Literary History was founded. In 1955 the first anthology with programmatic texts appeared. A year later the study of comparative literature followed, another year later the first volume of the section's own magazine Umjetnost riječi (word art) appeared.

In the first phase, the Zagreb School consisted of representatives from different philologies. The Germanist Zdenko Škreb, the Russianist Aleksandar Flaker and the Croatianist Ivo Frangeš should be mentioned in particular . Against the background of the contemporary German theory of interpretation ( Wolfgang Kayser , Emil Staiger ) and the newly discovered Russian formalism in the 1950s, on the one hand they moved away from historicism and sociologism, but on the other hand they centered the concept of style, so that in the 1960s Years ago, the Zagreb School was also known as the “Zagreb Stylistic School”. Since that time one has worked explicitly on the "problem of the relationship between style element and dominant style". In this context, Flaker developed the concept of stylistic formation (“stilska formacija”) in the 1970s. According to their own assessment, the “circle” around the magazine Umjetnost riječi only had a pronounced interest in questions of literary theory and method history as well as the conviction that literature was a specific form of human, socially relevant activity special logic and aesthetics require a corresponding set of concepts for research.

The second phase begins in the 1970s and is characterized by the opening up to the sociology of culture and literature. The opening took place particularly in the German wing of the school. Although the school remained a “collective endeavor”, the German studies specialist Viktor Žmegač is of particular importance during the second phase. Žmegač himself has been following the tradition of early literary and cultural sociology since the 1960s. He took over the thesis of the social immanence of form formulated by Georg Lukács in 1911 and exemplified it in numerous writings on European culture of the 19th and 20th centuries. The subject-specific reference that was initially determined by the discipline - in this case the text - was more and more replaced by problems that, on the one hand, created a dynamic interrelation with other disciplines (sociology and history) and, on the other hand, allowed the development of one's own disciplinary self-image in relation led these other disciplines.

Guiding principles and timeliness

1. Coupling of sociology of form and the writing of cultural history

The guiding principle of the Zagreb School is the thesis adopted by the early Lukács that form is the actual social category. It makes it possible to hold on to the assumption of an autonomy of art and still establish a relation between literature and society. The school does not focus on the producer, the recipient or the distribution, but on the change in literary forms in the modern age, which can be described in terms of cultural history.

The story of the European novel The European Novel , written by Žmegač, is an example of this principle . History of his poetics . To show how a non-form or non-form became the epitome of literature, Žmegač not only writes a novel, but also a theoretical history. Since there will be no radical shifts within the field of symbolic forms without a programmatic foundation, the development of the large narrative form is presented primarily on the basis of poetological writings, reviews and interpretations - all understood as "evidence of reflection on the possibilities of the novel".

2. Modernity as "reverse mimesis" 

In the handbook Modern Literature in Basic Terms (1991) edited by Dieter Borchmeyer and Viktor Žmegač , the entries made by Žmegač on the terms “modernity”, “modernity” and “postmodernism” follow the tradition of the Zagreb School. They contradict the reading that postmodernism is to be understood as a radicalized continuation of modernity and argues as follows: If one reads postmodernism as an extension of modernity, one absolutizes a secondary phenomenon of modernity (pluralism) and suppresses the primary phenomenon (its progressive dynamics through permanent innovation).

The question of whether epigonality or innovation and creativity predominate today is controversial within social and cultural sciences. The same applies to the question of the aestheticization of society. A significant contribution to their answer is the concept of “reverse mimesis ” coined by the Zagreb School , understood as “a paradoxically formulated contribution to a theory of mental traditions and a diagnosis of forms of life”, in which the conception of art is primary. The term aims directly at the relationship between art and reality, goes back to the literature and art of the fin de siècle , and includes, based on aestheticism, the idea that it is not art that imitates reality, but reality that imitates art. Fixed as an aesthetic priority, a central figure of thought from the turn of the century (reality imitates art) is transferred to modern society. A principle that, in view of a cultural sociological understanding of the present using terms such as creativity and social aestheticization, can claim some topicality. In this sense, one of the tasks of future sociology of literature , formulated within the Zagreb School, is to write the “history of artificiality”.

Quotes

“In addition to those areas whose sociological relevance is undisputed (media and audience sociology), the sociology of form and style will have to come to a large extent: with the task of examining the socio-historical significance of literary art, norms and conventions - and thus gaining knowledge that open up the necessary historical horizon for the 'immanent' structural analysis. "

"Basically, however, the sociology of literature is to be built up as a historical discipline in which the relationship between synchrony and diachrony, far from any rigid opposition, corresponds to the movement of the thing."

Fonts (selection)

  • Žmegač , Viktor: Art and Reality. On literary theory in Brecht, Lukács and Broch , Bad Homburg / Berlin / Zurich: gehlen 1969.
  • Žmegač, Viktor (ed.): Marxist literary criticism . Bad Homburg: Athenaeum, 1970.
  • Žmegač, Viktor (ed.): Methods of German literary studies. A documentation . Frankfurt am Main: Athenaeum 1971.
  • Škreb, Zdenko; Žmegač, Viktor (ed.): On the critique of literary methodology . Frankfurt a. M.: Athenaeum 1973.
  • Žmegač, Viktor: Problems of the sociology of literature. In: On the critique of literary methodology. Ed. Zdenko Skreb, Viktor Žmegač, Frankfurt a. M .: Fischer Arthenäum 1973, pp. 253-282.
  • Flaker , Aleksander; Žmegac, Viktor (ed.): Formalism, Structuralism and History. On literary theory and methodology in the Soviet Union, SSR, Poland and Yugoslavia . Kronberg / Taunus: Librarian 1974.
  • Žmegač, Viktor (ed. And co-author): History of German literature from the 18th century to the present . 3 vol., Königstein / Frankfurt a. M .: Athenaeum 1978–1984.
  • Škreb, Zdenko; Sekulić, Ljerka; Žmegač, Viktor (ed.), A Brief History of German Literature from the Beginnings to the Present . Frankfurt am Main: Athenaeum 1981.
  • Žmegač, Viktor: The European novel. History of his poetics . Tübingen: Niemeyer 1990.
  • Borchmeyer , Dieter; Žmegač, Viktor: Modern literature in basic terms . Tübingen: Niemeyer 1991.
  • Žmegač, Viktor: Tradition and Innovation. Studies on German-language literature since the turn of the century , Vienna: Böhlau 1993.

Literature on the Zagreb School

  • Dukić, Davor: Culture - A neglected concept at the beginning of modern Croatian literary studies . In: Culture in reflection. Contributions to the history of Central European literary studies. Ed. Ernö Kulcsár Szabó, Dubravka Oraić Tolić, Vienna: Braumüller 2008, pp. 47–57.
  • Magerski , Christine: make school. On the history and topicality of the sociology of literature , in: Zagreb Germanist contributions, issue 24/2015, pp. 193–220. 
  • Oraić Tolić, Dubravka: Viktor Žmegač and the Zagreb School: From Immanentism to Cultural Studies . In: Culture in reflection. Ed. Ernö Kulcsar-Szabo, Dubravka Oraić Tolić. Vienna: Braumüller 2008, pp. 75–91.
  • Wedel, Erwin: Contributions of the "Zagreb School" to literary studies . In: Language and Literatures of Yugoslavia (1985), pp. 191–198. 

Individual evidence

  1. ^ The Art of Words - Journal of Literary, Theater and Film Studies
  2. ↑ Dukić, Before: Culture - A neglected term at the beginning of modern Croatian literary studies. In: Culture in reflection. Contributions to the history of Central European literary studies . Ed. Ernö Kulcsár Szabó, Dubravka Oraić Tolić, Vienna: Braumüller 2008, p. 47–57, here p. 47 f.
  3. ↑ Dukić, Before: Culture - A neglected term at the beginning of modern Croatian literary studies. In: Culture in reflection. Contributions to the history of Central European literary studies . Ed. Ernö Kulcsár Szabó, Dubravka Oraić Tolić, Vienna: Braumüller 2008, pp. 47–57, here p. 40
  4. ↑ Flaker , Aleksander; Žmegac, Viktor (ed.): Formalism, Structuralism and History. On literary theory and methodology in the Soviet Union, SSR, Poland and Yugoslavia . Kronberg / Taunus: Scriptor 1974, p. 21.
  5. ↑ Oraić Tolić, Dubravka: Viktor Žmegač and the Zagreb School: From Immanentism to Kulturologie . In: Kulcsar-Szabo / Oraić Tolić: Culture in Reflection, pp. 75–91. Ibid., P. 82. 
  6. ↑ Lukács, Georg: On the '' Theory of the History of Literature '' (1910). In: Georg Lukács. Edited by Heinz Ludwig Arnold. Text and Critique 39/40, 1973, pp. 24–51.
  7. ↑ Žmegač: The European Novel , p. XI
  8. ↑ Borchmeyer, Dieter; Žmegač, Viktor (ed.): '' Modern literature in basic terms '', Tübingen: Niemeyer 1991, p. 24f.
  9. ↑ Žmegač: '' The European novel '', p. 284 u. Žmegač: '' Tradition and Innovation '', p. 28.
  10. ↑ Žmegač, Viktor: Problems of the sociology of literature. In: On the critique of literary methodology. Ed. Zdenko Skreb, Viktor Žmegač, Frankfurt a. M .: Fischer Arthenäum 1973, pp. 253–282, here p. 264
  11. ↑ Žmegač, Viktor: Problems of the sociology of literature. In: On the critique of literary methodology. Ed. Zdenko Skreb, Viktor Žmegač, Frankfurt a. M .: Fischer Arthenäum 1973, pp. 253–282, here p. 373