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The Processualities of Literature
Herbert Grabes
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DOI:10.17265/2159-5836/2013.01.001
Justus-Liebig University, Giessen, Germany
The objective of this paper is to demonstrate that the processual aspect of literary works of art deserves much more attention than it normally receives by readers, critics, and theorists. The most important reason for this is seen in the fact that texts since the advent of print culture have been disseminated and passed on in written form and that in the medium of writing the processual character of language is only insufficiently taken care of by a cultural convention of arranging and approaching the presented signs in an particular sequence. Whereas in an oral culture the dynamic processuality of a speech or recitation was directly experienced by the listeners, the spatial arrangement of signs in writing enables and even entices readers and critics to read this or that part of a written text in a sequence of their own making. What remains out of focus is that in doing so they miss the particular semantic profile and aesthetic character of the work as created by the author—a procedure particularly hurtful in the case of literary works of art. There is hope, however, that this will somewhat change by our moving towards a performance culture.
processuality, processual experience of reading, sequentiality, textual sequence, narrative sequence, linearity of writing
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