D05

How do we compare when we read, and how do we read when we compare? The project “Comparative Reading. Constitution and Critique of Stylistics as a Method of Literary Studies” conceives of ‘reading’ as a practice of comparing and explores how such comparative reading practices in literary studies have evolved over the course of the 20^th and 21^st centuries. The pivotal question in this project turns on the notion of style: while style can be considered a comparatum and an object of comparison in the process of knowledge production in literary studies, it can also function as a tertium comparationis in the comparison of literary texts, authors, genres and epochs.

Whereas comparative parameters in early 20^th-century stylistics, such as the notions of ‘author’ or ‘work’, were rendered less stable by structuralist and post-structuralist theories of literature, in recent years we observe a critical reaffirmation of such reference categories in comparing of style in literary studies. The project takes the latent continuities in the history of stylistics as a starting point for an investigation, within the framework of two sub-studies, of the stylistic critique of post-structuralism and the modifications of practices of comparing in the field of digital humanities. Here, central questions are: Does post-structuralist stylistic criticism prompt a critical revision of contemporary stylistics? In what ways does digitalisation shape comparative reading?