Habermann, Ina

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“Anglia 2009-3” — 2010/6/29 — 10:47 — page 533 — #129BESPRECHUNGEN 533Rudolf B e c k, Hildegard Ku e s t e r &Martin Ku e s t e r,Basislexikon anglistischeLiteraturwissenschaft. Mu¨nchen: Fink, 2007, 402 S., e 17.90.This dictionary is the revised edition of a handbook which first appeared in 1998under the title Terminologie der Literaturwissenschaft in Hueber’s series ForumSprache. The authors’ rationale for revising their “Lernwo¨rterbuch” is that “unterden zahlreichen a¨lteren und neueren deutschsprachigen Literaturlexika nach wievor keines zu finden ist, das speziell auf die Bedu¨rfnisse von Studierenden derAnglistik, insbesondere von Studienanfa¨ngern, zugeschnitten ist.” (7) The blurbalso recommends the handbook especially for the new BA programmes. Such pro-grammes being increasingly based on immersion in the English language, the needfor a German dictionary for students of English might well be questioned. Whynot use one of the many English and American dictionaries and encyclopedias, likeAbrams’ classic Glossary of Literary Terms?The first two chapters of the Basislexikon (“Gattungsu¨bergreifende Begriffe”and “Sprache”) deal with literary terms not restricted to a particular genre. It issometimes unclear why certain terms appear in a particular chapter, for example“nonsense” and “allegory” in chapter one, “ambiguity” and “metonymy” in chap-ter two, but the most important terms are covered here in brief and well-structuredentries. The next four chapters deal in turn with poetry, prose, drama and literarytheory. There is a bibliography and an extensive index which allows students tofind quickly what they are looking for, even if there is no specific entry for the termin question. Each entry consists of a brief definition, a mostly quite helpful ex-planation with examples and suggested literature. This last item, however, createsmore problems than it solves. Usually, the entry consists of only one or two names,selected on the basis that they refer to “grundlegende oder einfu¨hrende Werke”(8), as the authors explain. The only entry for “Plot” is thus Forster’s Aspects ofthe Novel of 1927 – a classic indeed, but especially if students are supposed touse this handbook for independent study, it should not be suggested to them thatthis is the one book to read for information on plot. For “Hermeneutics”, the onlyentry is Hubert Zapf’s Kurze Geschichte der anglo-amerikanischen Literaturkritik(1991). These are fairly typical examples, and if there is no space to give moreconsistent and up-to-date recommendations, they should be omitted altogether. Inaddition, the bibliography is quite eclectic and often out of date. For example, thereis no mention of Ansgar Nu¨nning’s work on metafiction or Monika Fludernik’swork on narratology, which must surely be included in a German handbook forstudents of English. Nor is there any reference to Jan and Aleida Assmann’s workon canonization and memory. Examples could be multiplied.Comparing the new edition with the old, very few changes, except for the lay-out, were actually made. The entries on “American Renaissance” and “GraveyardPoetry”, for example, were cut. In the first case, I can see that this helps consistencysince periods of literary history are generally omitted, but in the second case thereason is less obvious because the term is quite specific and students might wellwant a gloss on it. An entry for “Author” was included, but none for “Reader”.The modernization is generally eclectic; an entry for “Fantasy Fiction” was added,but none for “Ecocriticism” or “Cognitive Rhetoric”. For “Gender Studies”, onesentence was added to the entry on “Feminist Criticism” to the effect that thereDOI 10.1515/angl.2009.077Brought to you by | Universitaetsbibliothek BaselAuthenticatedDownload Date | 10/23/17 12:35 PM“Anglia 2009-3” — 2010/6/29 — 10:47 — page 534 — #130534 BESPRECHUNGENis now a new approach called gender studies which no longer focuses exclusivelyon images of women (344). Given that Judith Butler’s Gender Trouble, not listedin the bibliography, caused quite a stir in the early 1990s, the word “new” mighthave been used with some justice in the first edition, but hardly in the current one.There is no mention at all of queer studies. Obviously, it is always easy to chas-tise a one-volume dictionary for omitting items the reviewer happens to considerimportant, but in this case, there is a quite consistent time lag of at least ten years.Consequently, the handbook is strongest when it deals with technical terms andformal aspects less susceptible to change and controversy. The entry on “Sonnet”with the related one on “Petrarchism” is fine, for instance, and the latter now evenincludes a sentence about Mary Wroth (74). Entries such as “Allusion”, “Ellipsis”,“Hyperbole”, “Onomatopoeia” or “Pun” are very helpful. As soon as the conceptsbecome more complex, however, the brevity of entries often has a misleading effect.The gothic novel, for example, is seen as a literary reaction to enlightenment dis-courses – a kind of return of the repressed. While this aspect is part of the receivedwisdom about the genre, it is hardly a fair description. It is customary now, al-though there is no mention of this, to distinguish between female and male gothic,since these two segments of the genre have very different concerns. The trajectoryof Radcliffe’s Mysteries of Udolpho is precisely the move from superstitious terrorto enlightened reason and emotional control, while Lewis’s TheMonk amplifies thesado-masochistic subtext of Radcliffe’s fiction, though framed by a strongly moral-istic discourse. If there is no space to say this, why write about the genre at all?The question of value judgements in a dictionary like the one under reviewis another knotty issue. The tone of the entry on Derrida’s term “Diffe´rance” israther guarded, the last paragraph stating that because meaning cannot be fixed,the possibilities of textual play are almost unlimited. “Nach Meinung mancher tra-ditioneller Literaturwissenschaftler [sic] kann dies zu einer gewissen Beliebigkeit imUmgang mit Texten fu¨hren und poststrukturalistische Interpretationen kaum nochals nachvollziehbar erscheinen lassen.” (337) I am not sure that this is really fairas a concluding remark to the entry, because it makes Derrida’s ideas sound moreoutlandish than they are generally taken to be by most literary critics, and studentsare likely to become prejudiced. In practice, many critics treat deconstruction asa theoretically informed continuation of close reading. Related to this, there is aslight inconsistency in terminology. It is sometimes hard in introductory coursesto make students really understand the difference between theory and method.The Basislexikon often uses the word “Ansatz”, circumventing the need to dis-tinguish between theory and method, but opts in its definition of “Structuralism”for “Methode der Literaturkritik” (368). So structuralism is a method while “De-construction” is an “Ansatz” (333) and “Close Reading” is a “Verfahren” and a“Technik” (331). The use of these terms should be more consistent to help studentsdevelop a precise critical language. It would also be good to include a brief gloss onetymology in certain cases. For example, it would be helpful in the very short entryon “Text” (90) to point to the Latin origin in textura and the related connotations.Coming back to the issue of value judgements and ideology, I would also quarrelwith the sentence “Kulturwissenschaft ist ein wichtiger Teil der fremdsprachlichenPhilologien” (332). There are those who believe that the study of language andBrought to you by | Universitaetsbibliothek BaselAuthenticatedDownload Date | 10/23/17 12:35 PM“Anglia 2009-3” — 2010/6/29 — 10:47 — page 535 — #131BESPRECHUNGEN 535literature is an important part of the study of culture, and this should at least beacknowledged.Some further omissions or infelicities which should be addressed in a futureedition are the following: Milton’s “justify the ways of God to men” is quoted asan example of how deconstruction permits a reading of this passage against thegrain, making it mean that God would have to justify himself. In my opinion, thisreading underestimates the complexities and (implied) heresies of the old theodicydebate, which should at least be mentioned at this point. While a short passage onGenette was added to the entry on “Narrator” (220–21), the entry on “Point-of-View” is dated since the sentence “In letzter Zeit werden im Englischen stattdessenauch die Begriffe perspective, vision oder focalization (Fokalisierung) verwendet”(232) was just kept in without change. The entry on “Pastoral” (69) contains noreference to Sidney’s Arcadia and the one on “Absurd, Literature of the” restrictsreferences to Beckett to drama, in contrast to Abrams’ Glossary of Literary Termswhich appears otherwise to have served as a model, although it is not listed in thebibliography. The entry on “Myth” omits any reference to the influential theoriesof Le´vi-Strauss, Ernst Cassirer and Roland Barthes, although it is asserted that “inder heutigen Umgangssprache”, myth is used in a wider sense, as in the “Mythosvon Elvis Presley” (58). A reference to Barthes should be inserted at this point.In the entry on “Rhetoric”, the three classic types of speech are given in Germanas “Gerichtsrede”, “deliberative Rede” und “epideiktische Rede” (139) when theusual names for the latter two are “politische Rede” und “Lobrede” (with itsshadow “Schma¨hrede”).While these may be details, the treatment of such central concepts of literarycriticism as allegory, symbol, metaphor and metonymy is more problematic. Al-though it is conceded that in the English usage, the main meaning of allegory is thatof a story from which abstract meanings or morals can be inferred, the text startsout explaining allegory through the figure of Justice – a personification, which isa special case of allegory. It is further stated that the relationship between what isexpressed and what is to be inferred is almost as arbitrary (“a¨hnlich arbitra¨r”, 12)as the relationship between the signifier and the signified in a linguistic sign, a claimwhich I would dispute. In the entry on “Symbol”, literary characters, like Joan inShaw’s Saint Joan, are seen as symbols (88), although it would be more helpful forbeginners, in order to make the distinction clear, to choose an object like the peartree in Mansfield’s short story “Bliss”. It is even stated that while Hester Prynneand her daughter from Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter had been seen as allegoriesin the entry on allegory, they might also be interpreted as symbols (89).This might well confuse the target audience of this dictionary, and the confu-sion is continued in the entry on “Metaphor”, which states: “Das Wort Metapherkann manchmal selbst im u¨bertragenen Sinn, also metaphorisch, gebraucht wer-den; es bedeutet dann oft etwa dasselbe wie Symbol” (122). Gerhard Kurz wrotean excellent, brief introduction on such matters entitled Metapher, Allegorie, Sym-bol. While this book is mentioned, it does not appear to be thoroughly digested.The same goes for Lakoff and Turner’s More Than Cool Reason. A Field Guideto Poetic Metaphor, which argues powerfully for the intellectual necessity of im-agery, thus making it clear that it would be reductive to see figurative speech asmerely ornamental. Theory has moved beyond the traditional trinity of tenor,Brought to you by | Universitaetsbibliothek BaselAuthenticatedDownload Date | 10/23/17 12:35 PM“Anglia 2009-3” — 2010/6/29 — 10:47 — page 536 — #132536 BESPRECHUNGENvehicle and ground which is duly rehearsed in the present dictionary without alert-ing readers to the current terminologies of mental spaces, source and target do-mains and blending. The entry on “Metonymy” omits the usual German keyword“Na¨hebeziehung” and relies instead on a number of examples: “Am besten la¨sstsich die Art der Bedeutungsu¨bertragung bei der Metonymie an typischen Fa¨llenerla¨utern.” (123) Abrams, who has excellent entries on “Allegory”, “FigurativeLanguage” and “Symbol”, explains clearly, before giving examples, that “the lit-eral term for one thing is applied to another with which is is closely associated,because of contiguity in common experience.”1Despite these critical remarks, the Basislexikon is certainly good value and offersmuch useful information in a very restricted space. In future editions, more of aneffort should be made, in a German handbook for students of English, to representthe state of the art of ‘Deutsche Anglistik’, because this would be a genuine additionto what the dictionaries from the anglophone world could supply.Basel Ina Habermann1 M.H. Abrams,AGlossary of LiteraryTerms, 6th ed. (ForthWorth et al.: HarcourtBrace, 1993) 68–9.Brought to you by | Universitaetsbibliothek BaselAuthenticatedDownload Date | 10/23/17 12:35 PM

[Rezension von] Beck, Rudolf, Kuester, Hildegard und Kuester, Martin: Basislexikon anglistische Literaturwissenschaft : München 2007

Ina Habermann

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Rudolf Beck, Hildegard Kuester &amp; Martin Kuester, Basislexikon anglistische Literaturwissenschaft

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[Rezension von] Beck, Rudolf, Kuester, Hildegard und Kuester, Martin: Basislexikon anglistische Literaturwissenschaft : München 2007

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