RICERCA ITALIANA     

The "klassische Moderne": a Paradigma for the interpretation of the 20. Century

Università degli Studi di Roma "La Sapienza"

Abstract

The research intends to analyse the period of European, mainly German late-nineteenth-century culture paying particular attention to writers and movements placed in "intermediate spaces" which are to understand not only and not so much as end-zones in a territorial sense, but as zones of cultural and disciplinary interchange, as attempts to "overcome" mental and cultural established orders. The historical-cultural and interdisciplinary formulation of the research forces to considerate in the first way German-speaking authors, artists and thinkers, but also those of other linguistic areas.
The "klassische Moderne" (definition also used by the "Musil-Forum" of 2003) is the period of modern literature, particularly European, between 1888 and 1933. During this period, within the artistic and literary procedures, a series of theories and "visions of the world" have been elaborated and tried which involved a productive practice as much as a role of the artist and arts and a more general vision of the changes of past and modern times. These artistic theories and practices of different types and levels constitute a conceptual heritage because a lot of today-questions of extreme actuality have been experienced and sometimes anticipated by them: from the relationship "human being - machine" to the relationship "word - picture", from the definition of urban spaces to the matter of war, from the research of a mono-cultural identity to the acknowledgement of the existence of >>>

Principal Investigator

Mauro PONZI Università degli Studi di ROMA "La Sapienza"

Research Objectives

The research intends to analyse the period of European, mainly German late-nineteenth-century culture paying particular attention to writers and movements placed in "intermediate spaces" which are to understand not only and not so much as end-zones in a territorial sense, but as zones of cultural and disciplinary interchange, as attempts to "overcome" mental and cultural established orders. The historical-cultural and interdisciplinary formulation of the research forces to considerate in the first way German-speaking authors, artists and thinkers, but also those of other linguistic areas.
The "klassische Moderne" (definition also used by the "Musil-Forum" of 2003) is the period of modern literature, particularly European, between 1880 and 1930. The chronological area to be examined by the research team goes from 1888 up to 1933. During this period, within the artistic and literary procedures, a series of theories and "visions of the world" have been elaborated and tried which involved a productive practice as much as a role of the artist and arts and a more general vision of the changes of past and modern times. These artistic theories and practices of different types and levels constitute a conceptual heritage because a lot of today-questions of extreme actuality have been experienced and sometimes anticipated by them: from the relationship "human being - machine" to the relationship "word - picture", from the definition of urban spaces to the matter of war, from the >>>

Timescale

24 months

National and international background

Our point of reference is the new editorial series of "Musil-Forum", that since 2003 are published by de Gruyter and that now have as the significant subtitle "Studien zur Literatur der klassischen Moderne". The editors of the review, Matthias Luserke-Jaqui and Rosemarie Zeller, give a very pragmatic definition of this concept: klassische Moderne is the period of modern literature, particularly European, between 1880 and 1930. During this period, within the artistic and literary procedures, a series of theories and "visions of the world" have been elaborated and tried which involved a productive practice as much as a role of the artist and arts and a more general vision of the changes of past and modern times. These artistic theories and practices of different types and levels constitute a conceptual heritage because a lot of today-questions of extreme actuality have been experienced and sometimes anticipated by them: from the relationship "human being - machine" to the relationship "word - picture", from the definition of urban spaces to the matter of war, from the research of a mono-cultural identity to the acknowledgement of the existence of strangers. These different problems have been expressed with new linguistic matters as the authors have raised – theoretically and practically – the problem of the artistic language and they have modified (sometimes very radically) the codes of expression.
Under the most important aspects of the klassische Moderne Matthias >>>