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Widerspruch als Erzählprinzip in der Vormoderne? Eine Projektskizze

Contribution

Elisabeth Lienert

2017

In premodern narratives contradictions are omnipresent – conflicting concepts, logical inconsistencies, acts of objection. In a narratological perspective ›contradiction‹ – conflicts of incompatible knowledges and narrative patterns; inconsistencies in or between speech (by narrator or characters) and action; contradictory or inconsistent information and motivation – is apt to subvert, complicate, or enrich the textual production of meaning. The project ›Contradiction as a Narrative Principle in Premodern Narrative‹ (University of Bremen) explores different types of contradictions in medieval epic and romance.

Beiträge zur Geschichte der deutschen Sprache und Literatur 139: 69–90.

DOI: 10.1515/bgsl-2017-0003

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name contradiction

“Contradiction becomes real where someone names contradiction.”

Ingo H. Warnke
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“Is contradiction a eurocentric concept, operational phenomenon, and instrument of power?”

Kerstin Knopf
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“Science has long been animated by the ideal of a contradiction-free world in which logical orders could merge with society, politics, culture and language. In the GRC Contradiction Studies we are working on ways of describing the multiplicity and complexity, the danger and beauty of our worlds that clearly go beyond concepts of freedom from contradiction.”

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“Michel Foucault says: “Where there is power, there is resistance, and […] this resistance is never in a position of exteriority in relation to power” (History of Sexuality I, The Will to Knowledge, 1976, p. 95)”

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limits

“Resistance is a democratic right, sometimes a duty. With literature we can find models for this right and think about its limits.”

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