Emil Staiger (1908-1987),
a native of Switzerland, was one of the foremost scholars in the
field of literary studies. Grundbegriffe der Poetik is a
monument in the history of literary criticism that has been unavailable
to the English reader until now. Of Staiger's works, Poetics is probably the most radical, the most disruptive, for it constructs
a revolutionary new poetics and erects it alongside the old traditional
Aristotelian one. Here Staiger challenges the usefulness of the
most distinguished of Western literary critical paradigms, the genre
theory, that since the eighteenth century has been part of critics'
indispensable theoretical equipment-- a sort of literary sine
qua non. In its stead, Staiger proposes to explain literary
genres on the basis of fundamental patterns of literary creativity.
He selects his examples from various European literary traditions,
thus engaging the scholar as well as the comparatist in national
literatures. By choosing an inductive method, he speaks to all concerned
with literary values.
In
her introduction, Luanne Frank establishes how the Poetics mediates between those modes of criticism current in the 1940s and
those of the 1980s, as well as between those held by European scholars
and those embraced by American scholars. Frank places Staiger's
work within the history of genre criticism from an American perspective,
defines its goals and merits, and formulates a critical response
long overdue in Europe and most welcome in the United States.
Janette
C. Hudson is a lecturer in the German department at the
University of Virginia. Luanne Frank is Associate Professor of English
at the University of Texas, Arlington.
Marianne
Burkhard has published widely in the fields of German and
Swiss literature and women in literature.
|
|
|
