2021
Text Performances and Cultural Transfer/Textperformances und Kulturtransfer
Jasmin Pfeiffer
Pages 359-378
Lektüre und Performativität. Materialitäten fiktionaler Texte zwischen Semantik und Sinnlichkeit
Over the past few years, the humanities has developed a strong interest in the material aspects of all domains of human life. In this context, researchers have started paying attention to the performative dimensions of reading: in order to interact with a text, the readers have to position their bodies in a certain way, they have to touch the cover of the book, turn the pages etc. Furthermore, texts are usually part of larger communicative and cultural contexts which frame our interactions with them. Based on this theoretical background, the present essay examines how those performative elements not only influence our reading experience, but can also take part in the constitution of meaning and thereby alter our interpretation of the text. At issue will firstly be a comparison between the manuscript of Victor Hugo’s Les Travailleurs de la mer and the printed version of the publishing house LGF and the exercise to demonstrate that the paper used for the manuscript possesses a high semantic and symbolic value. Secondly, by using the example of E. T. A. Hoffmann’s Lebens-Ansichten des Kater Murr, what is at stake is how fiction extending beyond the borders of the ‘original’ text, and including other artifacts, can offer new interpretive dimensions