At the invitation of the Institute of German Culture and the Institute of German Studies at Zhejiang University, Prof. Andrea Albrecht from Heidelberg University gave a lecture on “What is Literature, and What is Literary Studies?”(Was ist Literatur? Was ist Literaturwissenschaft?) via ZOOM on the evening of September 27, 2022. Hosted by Associate Prof. LIU Yongqiang, the lecture has appealed to students and teachers from leading universities across the world, such as Zhejiang University, Heidelberg University, and Beihang University.
Prof. Albrecht started her lecture with “definition”. She attempted to define literature in three ways, namely, through exemplification, denotation, and connotation. When exemplifying types of literature, Prof. Albrecht pointed out that some atypical texts—poetry in the form of visual and audio elements for instance—should also be considered as literature. By exploring the denotation and connotation of literature, Prof. Albrecht shed light on both the value and the limitation of common definitions such as “literature and fiction” and “literature and its artistic use of the language”. Besides, Prof. Albrecht elaborated on “literary manifestations of realism and fiction” as an answer to questions raised by students, and discussed the topic “linguistic game of fiction” with Associate Prof. LIU Yongqiang. As a conclusion of the first section, Prof. Albrecht offered her comprehensive semantic explanation of “literature”.
In the second section, Prof. Albrecht moved on to the next question, that is, “what is literary studies?” She distinguished literary studies from everyday reading, and focused on the paradigm shift informed by The Death of the Author (Tod des Autors). In brief, the author is dead as the accomplished work comes to the disposal of the readership, whose reading and comprehension would reconstruct the image of the original author, thus depriving him/her of the power of interpretation. Such an idea generated another round of heated, in-depth discussions between Prof. Albrecht and Associate Prof. LIU, who believed, on the etymological basis, in the relevance of author (Autor) and authority (Autorität). In agreement with LIU, Prof. Albrecht contended for the speaker’s power of interpreting his/her own speech. Furthermore, a consensus was reached that democratization has also facilitated the death of the author.
This lecture marked the first session of a series of public speeches to be given at Zhejiang University by Prof. Andrea Albrecht and her team. In the final section, Prof. Albrecht delivered a chronological review on the major schools and approaches of literary studies since the 19th century, as an index and introduction to the general theme of “theories and methods of textual interpretation”.
The lecture was concluded with huge ovation. Everyone present at the lecture has benefited a lot from the thought-provoking lecture as well as the dialogues ensuing it.
Photos/text: FANG Jun’an, MA Xiyuan, NI keyi
Institute of German Culture, and Institute of German Studies, Zhejiang University
September 30, 2022
Translated by CAI Zhengwu
Proofread by XU Xueying
