The Genealogy of a Collection: Working with Manuscript Library Catalogues

In 1773 Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, at that time librarian of the ducal library in Wolfenbüttel, criticised his predecessors of only being interested in the history of the library’s augmentation, of the library’s „genealogy“. According to the famous writer, former librarians were so fixated on the catalogues that they forgot the real purpose of telling a collection’s history: showing how it contributed to scholarship. Of course, Lessing has a point, the history of a collection and its holding institution should not be told simply by enumerating objects, but he might have underestimated the potential of catalogues and book lists as sources for the history of scholarship, indeed the history of knowledge. Library catalogues should not only be seen as valuable sources for the reconstruction of an as-is state of the library at a specific moment of the collection’s life but that a much broader perspective can be taken. Using the example of the Wolfenbüttel manuscript catalogues dating from the mid-17th to the 18th century, the catalogues can be read as behavioural guidelines, as an instrument for representation, as a witness for scholarly practices or as legal papers. Just as for literary documents, they invite to read between the lines, to analyse their specific style as well as to discover the different communicative strategies and hidden messages. Using Lessing’s image, the catalogues help with the composition of an enhanced genealogy, positioning every item into a network of objects, texts, practices, and ideas.

Moving is in Every Direction

Traditionally, art history divided the arts into four genres: painting and sculpture, poetry and music. Hence the art-historical canon was dominated by a strict division into the arts of space and those of time. Movement (both of an internal and externalized kind) did not find a place within this classificatory corset. In 1766, Gotthold Ephraim Lessing framed the classical art-theoretical approach through his famous text ‚Laocoon: An Essay on the Limits of Painting and Poetry‘, in which he splits the arts into those unfolding in time and those unfolding in space. Lessing’s ‚Laocoon‘ is the founding text defining poetry and music as time-based, sculpture and painting as space-orientated. By 1900, this strict system of classification and hierarchization began to dissolve, giving way to cross-border experiments in the arts of the twentieth century up to the present day. This overturning of classical genre divisions between the static and the dynamic arts, between sculpture, installation, and performance enables us to examine artworks as variations of movement in terms of ‚constellations between scene and scenario‘. Furthermore, the development of movement as an artform implies the activation of the audience in participatory arts practice.

“Telling in Time” Extended

Temporality has long been recognized as a defining trait of narrative. This article introduces new concepts, methods, and arguments to analyze the relationships between represented and representational timelines for a transmedia narratology with a strong focus on emotions, rethinking such fundamental concepts as complication, resolution, and illustration. Since Gotthold Ephraim Lessing (1766) distinguished the temporal arts like poetry, where signs are consecutive, from the spatial arts like painting, where signs are juxtaposed, the latter have been considered to be limited when it comes to conveying stories autonomously. Opposing this point of view, this article explains how monochronic pictures can convey timelines by relying on the depiction of traces, as well as an appeal to anthropological and cultural knowledge. It then shows how some monochronic pictures intended as illustrations sometimes convey stories autonomously. The author argues based on a choice of photographs that inducing suspense or curiosity is possible even through a monochronic picture. The article also shows how single pictures induce experiences of duration or instantaneity, concluding that single monochronic pictures can convey essential story events in a predetermined order and reliably convey the timeline of these events. This implies that such single pictures can be narratives even according to narrow definitions of the concept.

Literatura jako poszukiwanie prawdy. Poetyka Gottholda Ephraima Lessinga

The aim of the article is to show the significant change in the reflections of art and literature due to Gotthold Ephraim Lessing (1729–1781). It consists of three essential parts. Firstly, I present the historical and philosophical context which influenced Lessing’s point of view on art and literature. Secondly, according to Lessing’s theoretical writings, I move on to the most important aspects of his poetry, which are inter alia the liberation of the scheme of French classicism and the approach to Greek antiquity. Theory and practice were for Lessing closely connected. Therefore I establish in the third part of the article examples of Lessing’s domestic tragedies in which the author fulfils the scheme he presented in theoretical writings.

Literatura jako poszukiwanie prawdy. Poetyka Gottholda Ephraima Lessinga

The aim of the article is to show the significant change in the reflections of art and literature due to Gotthold Ephraim Lessing (1729–1781). It consists of three essential parts. Firstly, I present the historical and philosophical context which influenced Lessing’s point of view on art and literature. Secondly, according to Lessing’s theoretical writings, I move on to the most important aspects of his poetry, which are inter alia the liberation of the scheme of French classicism and the approach to Greek antiquity. Theory and practice were for Lessing closely connected. Therefore I establish in the third part of the article examples of Lessing’s domestic tragedies in which the author fulfils the scheme he presented in theoretical writings.