Convention and Innovation in Literature

Editors

Theo D’haen

| University of Leiden, University of Oldenburg, University of Utrecht

Rainer Grübel

| University of Leiden, University of Oldenburg, University of Utrecht

Helmut Lethen

| University of Leiden, University of Oldenburg, University of Utrecht

Hardbound – Available

ISBN 9789027222091 | EUR 140.00 | USD 210.00

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ISBN 9789027278340 | EUR 140.00 | USD 210.00

This work is a critical evaluation of the concepts of convention and innovation as applied in the study of changing literary values, hierarchies and canons. Two approaches are analyzed: (1) the linking of convention and the subject's awareness of convention, and (2) systems theory. The merits of both approaches are discussed and an attempt is made to combine them and to regard systems of literary communication primarily as systems of conventions. Specific cases of changing conventions and innovation are illustrated with examples from the field of versification (Rimbaud), reception studies (Puskin, Goethe, George Eliot), the dichotomy of forgetting/remembering (Nietzsche, Proust), avant-garde, the American dream, and popular genres assimilated in Postmodernism.

[Utrecht Publications in General and Comparative Literature, 24] 1989. xxii, 434 pp.

Publishing status: Available

https://doi.org/10.1075/upal.24

Table of Contents

Introduction: The decline and rise of convention Theo D’haen, Rainer Grübel and Helmut Lethen	vii
The concept of convention in literary theory and empirical research Douwe W. Fokkema †	1
Genre: A modest proposal Jaap Oversteegen	17
The dynamics of the system: Convention and innovation in literary history André Lefevere	37
Literary convention and translated literature Raymond Van den Broeck	57
Cristal et Clarie: A novel romance? Keith Busby	77
The well-tempered lady and the unruly horse: Convention and submerged metaphor in renaissance literature and art B. Westerweel	105
The shaking walls of convention: Popular sentimentalism and Hemrich von Kleist’s first tale Joachim von der Thüsen	123
Innovation or confirmation of the norm? Goethe’s Werther in Holland 1775–1800 Joost J. Kloek	151
Folk-tale and novel: On the development of Russian prose fiction S. Brouwer	165
Convention and innovation of aesthetic value: The Russian reception of Aleksandr Puškin Rainer Grübel	181
A note on convention and innovation: The “Odes” of John Keats A. Fry	225
Romanticism unmasked: Lexical irony in Aleksandr Puškin’s Evgenij Onegin Melchior de Wolff	235
The tribulations of the Alexandrine in the work of Rimbaud: A contest between innovation and convention Jacques Plessen	253
Rudolf Borchardt: Poetry and tradition J. Enklaar-Langendijk	273
Innovative use of commedia dell’arte-elements in A. Blok’s The Fairground Booth J.M. Stelleman	293
The rhetoric of forgetting: Brecht and the historical avant-garde Helga Geyer-Ryan and Helmut Lethen	305
Literature of displacement: René Harding rejects George Eliot P.J. de Voogd	349
Convention and innovation in British fiction 1981–1984: The contemporaneity of magic realism Richard Todd	361
The convention of the new beginning in Theroux’s The Mosquito Coast Hans Bertens	389
Genre conventions in postmodern fiction Theo D’haen	405
Notes on the contributors	421
Index	425

Cited by

Cited by other publications

Nünning, Ansgar

2013. In Metzler Lexikon Literatur- und Kulturtheorie, ► pp. 317 ff.

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Subjects

Literature & Literary Studies

Theoretical literature & literary studies

BIC Subject: DSB – Literary studies: general

BISAC Subject: LIT000000 – LITERARY CRITICISM / General

U.S. Library of Congress Control Number: 89000355 | Marc record