Writing Literary History: Selected Perspectives from Central Europe

Postmodernism has cast radical doubts on the objectivity of history, while demanding historicization from all modes of knowledge. Reflection on historicity has thus become a crux of the humanities in general. Writing Literary History joins the emerging field of literary metahistory. Scholars from Central Europe critically apply the perspectives of hermeneutics, reception esthetics, poststructuralism, new historicism, cognitivism, systems approaches, dialogical comparatistics, Slavic studies, critical narratology, and cultural and gender studies in order to answer how, on what epistemological bases, with what goals, and for which audiences it is still possible to write literary history that meets contemporary scholarly standards without sacrificing the specificity of its research object and methods.