Trivial Literature Research Articles

Trivialno v luči refleksije o postmodernizmu z nekaterimi primeri slovenske fantastične ter zgodovinske kratke proze

The article offers a brief overview of some prominent theoretical considerations on the transcendence of the traditional dichotomy between serious and trivial literature in light of reflection on postmodernism. In postmodernist literature this is manifested as a new form of intertextuality, which the author corroborates with some examples of fantasy and historical short stories. The intertextual hybrid nature of short prose genres takes shape as a correction of some typical narrative elements. This is why the theoretical starting points presented in the article are supported with the analysis of elements related to time and space in fantasy and historical short stories.

The Heavy Burden of Being Ordinary. Considerations on Robert Schneiderʼs Novel Die Offenbarung

The Austrian writer Robert Schneider had significant success with his first novel Schlafes Bruder/ Brother of Sleep, which sold about one million copies and was translated into over 36 languages. The following novels were not nearly as successful, although they had a favourable reception from the reading public. This paper explores how Schneider describes the destructive dimensions of ideals in his sixth and so far latest novel, Die Offenbarung/ The Revelation. Whereas most of Schneider’s characters are usually geniuses and thus outsiders or misfits, Jakob Kemper, the protagonist of the novel Die Offenbarung, is characterized precisely by the lack of any feature that could take him out of anonymity. Kemperʼs fear of being ordinary generates an endless number of failures. His whole existence is described as a long chain of humiliating personal and professional situations, defeats, and rejections. At the same time, this novel represents Robert Schneider’s attempt to reply with self-irony and disarming humour to his vocal critics, who often placed his works at the edge of trivial literature.

Lexical-semantic peculiarities of Andrii Kokotiukha’s detective novels

The article touches upon various lexical-semantic peculiarities of Andrii Kokotiukha’s detective novels, specifically the nomination of people – characters of the novel. Such research are presented mostly from the point of view of literary studies. Scientists studied peculiar features of composition, genre, and plot of detective novels. The question of language and style of detective novels would uncommonly become a subject of research as they are regarded to as so-called mass literature, that is one that is focused on literature preferences of a wide circle of readers, in other words – it is a popular, entertaining, trivial literature.
 Linguistic research of detective works were mostly done on the material of literary texts of English and French languages, Ukrainian detectives were not a subject of such analysis. Questions of influence of genre peculiarities on the choice of linguistic units was also left beyond attention of researchers, which predetermines the relevance of the research. The source basis of the research consists of detective novels by Andrii Kokotiukha – one of the most notable Ukrainian detective authors. That is a series of retronovels, where the action takes place at the beginning of XX century in Lviv, and three novels about the modern period as well.
 The aim of the work is to explore lexical units that denote a person in Andrii Kokotiukha’s detective novels in terms of their expressive functions depending on the aim and genre features. Vocabulary of denomination of people is widespread in Kokotiukha’s works. Specifics of detective novels involves agile, dynamic nature of vocabulary and their text.
 Semantics of people’s names is diverse: its affiliation to the biological genus of humans; gender; age; family status; profession and occupation; status from the point of view of law; class and social structure of Ukrainian society; social status; financial situation; nationality or confession; affiliation to political parties; names of dead people, external signs; temporary sign. The author frequently uses descriptive compounds, metaphors, jargon, and colloquial language. A distinctive method of nominating a person which, according to genre requirements, creates mystery and enigma of presentation, is descriptive compounds with pronouns. Quantitative ratio of lexical groups mentioned depends on the peculiarities of the plot of specific novel.
 Nomination of people in A. Kokotiukha’s detective novels are components of dynamic and static descriptions, help convey the cultural-historical background, create the appropriate emotional tint. That is one of the elements which ensures that the text corresponds to the canons of detective genre.

EXPLORING THE AESTHETICS OF AWON MASS WEDDING FESTIVAL AS POPULAR CULTURE

Popular culture or popular literature is often being referred to as trivial literature or para literature as it possesses virtually similar characteristics of writing. Among its other genres, abound in popular culture are the festival aesthetics which constitutes its dramatic genre. “Awon” Mass wedding festival is one of such festivals celebrated annually in Shao, Moro Local Government, Kwara State. The festival has its many features which are rich in oral tradition and tourist events deployable for modern cultural entertainment. This paper considers the aesthetics of Awon Festival as an exemplary popular culture with a view to explore the richness and impact of the mass wedding festival on the cultural landscape of Nigeria and global setting. The objectives of this essay are: to project the aesthetics as popular culture; to explore the role and tourist potentials of the festival towards the development of Kwara State; to promote the festival for global audience. The researcher participated in the annual two editions (2017 and 2019) of the festival to enable him obtain firsthand information for the analysis. Interviews and recordings were also carried out. The findings of the paper are that Awon festival is both entertaining and didactic as a popular culture in terms of events, oral texture and significance. It is capable of boosting the economy/IGR of the host state and the nation at large. The festival is recommended for global tourism and that the Kwara State Government and the Federal Ministry of Information and Culture should adopt the festival for invigoration interms of packaging for international audience.

Jens Walther’s Abstieg vom Zauberberg (1997): A Literary Reflection on the World of Publishing in the Postmodern World

The world of book publishing is currently undergoing a major paradigm shift, but this was already fully under way in the 1990s. In the German novel Abstieg vom Zauberberg, published in 1997 by an anonymous author under the pseudonym Jens Walther, we are given an excellent insider view of the concrete situation within literary publishing houses and how they operate behind the scene and in public to secure the best possible titles and to fend off manuscripts that appear to be trivial literature. The author proves to be highly educated in the history of German and western literature at large and also demonstrates great expertise regarding book fairs, book reviews, and book prizes, framing all this by a somewhat twisted love story involving a young author, Anna Becker, and two men, first the young Johannes Rieger, then his father Helmut Rieger, both representing the fictional publishing house Engsfeld.

Stilometrijska analiza slovenske pripovjedne književnosti do prve izvorne slovenske priče

STYLOMETRIC ANALYSIS OF SLOVENIAN NARRATIVE LITERATURE UP TO THE FIRST ORIGINAL SLOVENIAN NARRATIVE Quantitative approaches in studying literature already have a long tradition, reac-hing back to the period before digital humanities became an established field in the humanities. An important impetus for the establishment of quantitative methods in the humanities was provided by increasing computer power and increasingly extensive corpuses of machine-readable words. Theoretical concepts refer to the new methodological paradigms as distant reading. Even though it is supposed to replace close reading, it has repeatedly been shown that traditional research forms the necessary basis for relevant quantitative research and new relevant findings. Stylometry, or quantitative analysis of style, applies statistical methods to literary texts. The analysis entails text comparison in terms of similarities and differences in measurable text characteristics, such as the most frequent words. This is a well-pro-ven method, which, however, has certain limitations. Stylometry is a text-immanent method that does not provide absolutely valid answers or general findings about style. In addition, the definition of measurable characteristics and the comparison method used remain in the domain of the researchers and their familiarity with the material. However, it allows a simultaneous overview of a large collection of texts and hence reaches beyond the established canon incorporating trivial literature and translated literature as an important segment of national literature, especially in its early periods. Stylometric analysis identifies text patterns, which can either be confirmed by qualitative research or can indicate the necessity for a new approach to traditional research. The visualization of results of the stylometric analysis of Slovenian narrative literature from the first half of the seventeenth century to the first original Slovenian narrative in 1836 shows the development of Slovenian narra-tive literature by period, with identifiable hallmarks of certain authors, and within individual periods and genres. Certain links indicate a need for further research.

Dürrenmatt'ın “Şüphe” Adlı Polisiye Romanında Kurgu ve Üslup

İlk örnekleri 19. yüzyılda görülen polisiye romanların ortaya çıkışıyla birlikte günlük hayattan gerçeklerin ve toplumsal olayların polisiye romanlarda işlendiği görülmektedir. Polisiye romanlar hızlı tüketilmeleri ve genelde yazarlarının edebî kaygı gütmeyişi gibi sebeplerle yığın edebiyatı altında değerlendirilmiştir. Böyle olsa da okurun polisiye romandaki aktif katılımı, başından sonuna içinde yer aldığı kovalamaca ve sonunda suçlunun adalete teslim edilmesi, okura belki de diğer romanlarda bulamadığı bir okuma zevki verdiğinden, polisiye romanların popülerliği 21. Yüzyılda bile devam etmektedir. Önemli bir edebiyatçı ve oyun yazarı olan Friedrich Dürrenmatt da maddi kaygılar nedeniyle polisiye roman yazmıştır. Dürrenmatt, yazdığı polisiyelerle türün şablon özelliklerinin sınırlarını aşmış ve türe yeni bir soluk getirmiştir. Polisiyelerinde kullandığı üslup da eserlerinin yığın edebiyatı altında yer alan polisiye romanlardan farklılaşmasını sağlamıştır. Bu çalışmada, Dürrenmatt'ın “Şüphe” (1951) adlı polisiye romanı iki aşamada incelenmiştir. Birinci inceleme aşamasında söz konusu roman, klâsik polisiye anlatıların kurgusal özelliklerine göre incelenmiş ve bu özelliklerle örtüşen ya da onlardan ayrılan yerleri gösterilmiştir. İkinci aşamada ise roman edebî metinlerde üslubu belirleyen unsurlara göre ele alınmıştır. Sonuçta Dürrenmatt'ın “Şüphe” adlı polisiye romanının klâsik polisiye anlatıların kurgusal özelliklerinden farklılaştığı ve taşıdığı üslup özellikleriyle yığın edebiyatı altında değerlendirilemeyeceği gösterilmeye çalışılmıştır.

Re-actualizing a cultural exclusion zone

The rise of modernity in the 19th century can, among other things, be vividly illustrated by the phenomenal advance of medical profession and, in particular, surgery as its most radical form. In the 20th century, the doctor has already been steadily associated with the phenomenon of power. Medical experiments on human subjects are generally recognized as one of the most extreme manifestations of this discursive nexus. Despite considerable amount of historical research, predominantly dealing with the experiences of Nazi medicine and its patients in concentration camps and some other disciplinary institutions, as well as somewhat gloomy attraction providing for unabated fascination on the part of trivial literature, such experiments have not yet become an established literary topos. The elusive nature of this phenomenon which belongs to the kern of post-war anxiety, but is rarely addressed to, allows me to attest to the fact that human experiments, especially those conducted in Nazi concentration camps, have become a cultural «exclusion zone». Nonetheless, there is a whole range of texts in which attempts has been made to overcome the cultural taboo and to give voice to the victims of human vivisection. Two of them – Friedrich Durrenmatt’s Suspicion and Marcel Beyers The Flying Foxes – are analyzed in this paper against the backdrop of the so called «intellectual witness» – a concept proposed by Geoffrey Hartman and meaning a distanced witnessing, mostly on behalf of younger generations or, as in case with Durrenmatt, of those who stayed aside of the World War II. In both novels, the narrative structures of intellectual witnessing serve to surmount the metaphorizing tendency which turns the reality of human experiments into tropes corroborating the author’s idea or concept. Combining documentary elements with the elements of trivial fiction, Durrenmatt and Beyer make significant strides in deconstructing the naive «over-identifying» with the victims, as well as their overt fictionalization. As a result, they manage to open the possibility of witness beyond the perspective of eyewitnesses, and at the same time subjugate this rearticulation of the past to the demands of the present situation that facilitates it. This perilous duality reveals the ethical double bind which seems to be inherent to the most reactualizations of utterly traumatic historical experiences, such as human experimentation, transformed into «exclusion zones» and then voiced through intellectual witness and other forms of «secondary witness». In order to become an object of witnessing, those traumatic experiences must correspond to the anxieties of the present originating from them. While triggering the reactualization process, such anxieties, however, also subject the experience of concrete victims to the desiderata of a traumatized «(intellectual) witness» and, in such a way, misuse the tragedy as a means of the witness’s coming to terms with his or her own trauma.

Eva Parra-Membrives/Albrecht Classen (Hrsg. / Eds.): Literatur am Rand: Perspektiven der Trivialliteratur vom Mittelalter bis zum 21. Jahrhundert // Literature on the Margin: Perspectives on Trivial Literature from the Middle Ages to the 21st Century. Tübingen. Narr-Verlag, 2013.

Abstract The three scholarly works of recent years illuminate the versatility of their main editor Albrecht Classen in the interdisciplinary world of comparative studies, in literature and language studies. Together with his colleague Eva Parra-Membrives he offers insights on trivial literature also in view of bestsellers concerning the first two works under discussion here. The third work on multilingualism in the middle ages he edited alone. For all the works he found an impressive number of contributors who fill the chalice of offerings in a most versatile canon of topics.

Imaginative Didacticism: Emotion, Individuality, and the Function of Trivialliteratur around 1800

AbstractThis article explores the history of autonomy aesthetics together with approaches that recuperate ethical and emotional functions of literature to suggest that the dismissal of these functions in the late 18After briefly reviewing sociological histories of the shift between reception aesthetics and autonomy aesthetics, this article discusses two studies by Berys Gaut and Jenefer Robinson. Gaut’s work argues for the importance of ethics in the function of art (which instructs by way of, among other things, exciting the imagination); Robinson’s study uses cognitive science to establish that emotional responses to artworks are neither unreal nor irrational but rather make up a crucial part of what literature has to offer readers. With Gaut and Robinson, we can conclude that reading literature is an emotional, imaginative process, which has as at least one of its functions the cultivation of processes of understanding and ethical development in its readers – what I choose to call ›imaginative didacticism‹. Neither one of them, however, deals with the history of autonomy aesthetics (beyond brief references to Kant) or with the problem ofIn particular, Lafontaine’s novel offers readers a way of exploring new paradigms of individuality and love relationships that arose in the late eighteenth century and that present significant challenges to existing systems of social order, which Lafontaine represents against the backdrop of the French Revolution. Readers wanted and indeedThe article thus concludes by suggesting that we can also see the relation­ship between trivial and canonical literature not as a dichotomy, but as a progression: Lafontaine’s depictions of emotions are explicit and sometimes exaggerated, but they can train readers to be on the lookout for other, more complicated descriptions of emotional states. It therefore argues that literature itself can help to dismantle unproductive dichotomies between critical/cognitive and imaginative/emotional modes of reading and between canonical and supposedly trivial art. This, too, is a function of literature: we can gradually become more sensitive to subtleties of emotion and cognition, we can use previous encounters with easier literature to reflect on more difficult texts, and we can develop both as emotional creatures and as critical readers.

Narrating (Im)Maturity: The Progressive Popularization of Enlightenment Principles in Wielands Geschichte des Agathon and Engels Herr Lorenz Stark

This article argues for scholarly attention to so-called ‘trivial literature’ as a site of the development of Enlightenment ideals of self-reflection and critical thinking. After establishing the bifurcation of the ‘canonical’ and the ‘trivial’ in literary scholarship, it traces 18 th -century philosophical concern with spreading enlightenment in essays by Kant and Herder. It then turns to analyses of a canonical work of literature—Christoph Martin Wieland’s History of Agathon —and an exemplar of trivial literature—Johann Jakob Engel’s Herr Lorenz Stark —to assert that these novels, their significant differences in difficulty or accessibility notwithstanding, both depict processes of enlightenment and induce these processes in their readers via distinctive thematic and formal means. Trivial literature becomes a first step toward processes of individual maturity—and more difficult reading. I thus argue that it makes sense to move beyond the trivial/canonical bifurcation and investigate the literary world of the late eighteenth century as a malleable continuum.

Hitherto anonymous writer Hristina Petkovic

?The Belgrade Paper?, the organ of the Military General Government for Serbia, was issued from December 1915 to October 1918 and was the only periodical in occupied Serbia. After an initial hesitation, even some Serbian authors eventually accepted the cooperation with the journal, publishing their poetry and prose in it. Certain renowned names include Isidora Sekulic, Bora Stankovic, Milica Jankovic and Milorad Petrovic Seljancica. However, for the most part, its contributors came from the ranks of the so-called minor writers, and to some of them, the poems and short stories published in ?The Belgrade Paper? were the only works that they printed. Among them is also Hristina Petkovic, author of three short stories - Nina, Poverty and The Confession. An analysis of these stories can reveal that they essentially belong to the poetics of the so-called trivial literature, with pronouncedly amatory and partly social topics, especially focusing on the fate of the woman in collision with the patriarchal mentality. Owing to the archival materials from the Archive of Serbia and the Austrian State Archive, the paper demonstrates that the author is in fact the wife of Serbian poet Vladislav Petkovic Dis.

Die zerstreute Erbschaft

Abstract How can narrative come to terms with the past in a world hit by trauma was one of the questions most consistently investigated in the work of Walter Benjamin. Pursuing it in various past and present contexts, he gradually reassessed the marginalized literary tradition of narrative strolling along the scene of the crime, rummaging through and collecting of the putative indices. The chaotic execution site, calling its observers and investigators to responsibility toward its heap of ruins, resists sovereign narrative reconstruction of its emergence. The latter is therefore replaced by various conjectures, repeated preparations and hesitating roundabouts which ultimately turn the plot into a kind of a bewildering rebus, neither a story nor a picture. I read Dubravka Ugrešić’s posttraumatic novel The Museum of Unconditional Surrender (1997) within this tradition of narratives that strategically couple the incompatible registers of discursive and visual presentation, trivial and high literature, the beautiful and the sublime, materiality and immateriality with one another. Its discourse is haunted by a multitude of exiled or absolved voices and gazes who do not permit a homogeneous and transparent story. Ugrešić’s narrator is, like Benjamin’s flaneur, obsessed by their summoning resonance stored in the myriad of dissipated fragments of today’s posttraumatic world.

Bralni okus slovencev in njegove posledice

Članek najprej navaja pomene in pozitivne učinke branja: boljše razumevanje lastne izkušnje, razvoj jezikovnih zmožnosti itd. Nadalje se osredotoča na trivialno literaturo: najprej jo definira, nato povzame statistične podatke o izposoji lete v slovenskih knjižnicah v poletnih mesecih v letu 2010. Opiše tudi kvarne učinke branja tovrstnega leposlovja, še posebej na otroke, ki jih avtorica opaža tudi pri svojih dijakih: lažne (stereotipne) predstave o svetu, manjše zmožnosti kritičnega mišljenja in slabše poznavanje jezikovnih sredstev, vpliv na podzavest in zgledovanje po neprimernih literarnih junakih. Nadalje avtorica špekulira o možnih vzrokih za tovrstno izbiro branja.

Of Political Intentions and Trivial Conventions: Erika Pluhar's Die Wahl (2003) and Marlene Streeuwitz's Jessica, 30. (2004)

This essay examines common ground between two recent novels: Die Wahl (2003) by Erika Pluhar and Jessica, 30. (2004) by Marlene Streeruwitz.Both writers’ women protagonists have lovers who are politicians, and both texts engage with Austrian politics, set as they are against the backdrop of the growing acceptability of populist, right-wing politics in contemporary Austria. These modern ‘Entwicklungsromane’ show the development of a sense of resolve in their respective protagonists. Where Pluhar's novel makes playful reference to trivial literature conventions at a diegetic level only, Streeruwitz uses and manipulates the format of a popular literary form – the woman's novel, or ‘chick-lit’ novel – to assist her in interrogating political events in Austria at the time of the novel's setting. Despite their outward appearance as trivial romance stories, both novels have strong political agendas.

Harry Potter book series - trivial or not?

The article explores the extcnt to which the features of trivial literature appear in the Harry Potter series by J. K. Rowling.This is done in comparison with another popular children's series, The Famous Five by Enid Blyton, which was analysed by Igor Saksida. The main focus of the analysis is on the schematic representation of plot, characters and the exotic nature of the setting and time of the stories.

Texts and Paratexts in Media

To determine the significance andpotential of the conceptof theparatext for literature and cultural and media studies, it makes sense to start at a more basic level, namely, with the concept of the text, towhichparatext acts as a supplement. Adorno thought it an “abominable expression” to refer to phenomena of “literature” as “texts.” He detected in it an abandonment of the category of the work. Dolf Sternberger, his antipodean intellectual colleague in Frankfurt, offered a similar opinion that differed only in tone: “‘Texts’—this has become the universal generic term for the products of writers, or at any rate, the term now considered ‘progressive’. . . . They do not write poems, novels, essays or even stories—they ‘produce texts.’” These arguments and idiosyncratic reactions are now history. In themeantime text has gained wide acceptance—and why shouldn’t this be the case? But in view of how the meaning of this term has developed over the years, the old objections would seem to warrant some thought. In the course of things, text has come to be used synonymously with the older term work (opus). In many respects the current definition with all its implications of aesthetics and values has simply been inherited. However, text originally had another meaning; it is not just a coincidence that it was introduced at a time when the concept of literature was being expanded to include trivial literature, essays, and general nonfiction and when there was a growing interest in the phenomena of popular culture. Since then, literary and cul-

Arten und Funktionen intertextueller Bezüge in den Dramen Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewiczs

A main characteristic of St. I. Witkiewicz's dramatics is the extensive use of all kinds of intertextual references. The essay provides a systematization and description of this feature and ascertains some of its principal functions. The intertextual references in Witkiewicz's plays concern, firstly, conventional dramatic forms (genre designations, dramatis personae, speaking names, figure types, compositional techniques), secondly, group style features (Young Poland and European modernism, traditional Polish romantic and post romantic motifs, psychological drama devices, trivial literature routines), and, thirdly, individual style features and concrete patterns (Shakespeare, Strindberg, Wyspianski etc.). The essential functions of the intertextual abundance in Witkiewicz's plays are not only the customary ones (semantic enrichment, joy in playing with literature); they also are a means to make ideological statements and, most important, they fulfil a poetological function as a crucial device for the realization of what can be called a poetics of stylistic macaronic.

Wer hat Angst vor »Trivialliteratur«? Eugenie Marlitts ruhige Revolution

Abstract Following Susanne Clark’s idea of restoring the sentimental to the history of literary modernity, my article investigates the work of the German writer Eugenie Marlitt as part of the modern tradition. Under the cover of the conventional discourse of so-called »trivial literature« (Trivialliteratur) Marlitt turns her female characters into representations of a new feminine ethic and aesthetic. Thus she combines the revolutionary and the reactionary in order to overcome gendered role models, bridging the gap between the »popular« and the »elite«, between emotional culture and rational self-confidence.

Women Dramatists in Late Eighteenth-Century Germany: The Hazards of Marriage as Love Match

Love that ideally leads to marriage occupies much of the literature in the second half of the eighteenth century. Even the most prestigious genre, drama, and in particular the bourgeois tragedy, revolves around this core of bourgeois intimacy. Gotthold Ephraim Lessing's Mis Sara Sampson and Emilia Galotti, Heinrich Leopold Wagner's Die Kindsmorderin, Jakob Michael Reinhold Lenz's Der Hofmeister, Johann Wolfgang Goethe's Clav , and Friedrich Schille 's Kabal und Liebe, to name only the most famous examples, help to construct and present various aspects of the new bourgeois conception of love. Whether regarded as a system of communication or as an idea that provides norms for grasping the emotions of individuals, love is a culturally produced – not a natural – concept and therefore changes historically even though its terminology may remain unchanged (Wulf 8). Modern criticism recognizes the centrality of the discourse of love in literature in the creation of bourgeois identity in the eighteenth century (Borchmeyer; Greis; Sase; Luhmann; Gallas; Clauss). Recent analyses consider primarily the canonized texts, while casting only generalizing glances at other traditions – in particular at so-called trivial literature. Gunther Sase contends that the trivial tradition – under which he subsumes women's literature – confirms the dominant concept of love with facile solutions (Sase 71-72). In his study on eighteenth-century drama, he briefly comments on the novels Elisa oder das Weib wie es seyn sollte (1795) by Wilhelmine Caroline von Wobeser (56) and Das Fraulein von Sternheim (1771) by Sophie von La Roche (19). Yet he ignores the more appropriate comparison with women's dramatic production. As feminist criticism has shown, it is a simplification to assume that women writers produced in the trivial tradition and that their texts affirmed the given value system. Instead, their literary production stands in a complex socially, aesthetically, and culturally determined tension with canonized literature (Becker-Cantarino; Runge; Lange; Kord, Ein Blick hinter die Kulissen and Sich einen Namen machen; Wurst, Negotiations of Containment and