Der Sammelband "Literatur intermedial" konzentriert sich auf eine Epoche, die in besonderer Weise von medienasthetischen Paradigmenwechseln gepragt worden ist: die Phase vom Ende des Ersten Weltkriegs bis zum Ausbruch der Studentenunruhen in den westlichen Demokratien. Bereits in den Anfangsjahren der Weimarer Republik kommt es in Deutschland zu einem kulturellen Modernisierungsschub, der den Film zu einem neuen Leitmedium aufsteigen lasst und die Literatur zu einer programmatischen Neuorientierung zwingt. Zugleich bleiben im Kontext konservativer Stroemungen uberkommene Medienpraferenzen virulent, wobei man auch hier unverkennbar auf die veranderten Rahmenbedingungen reagiert. Die Jahrzehnte zwischen der Machtubernahme durch die Nationalsozialisten und den westeuropaischen Studentenunruhen werden zumeist als Phasen ohne medienasthetische Innovationen angesehen - eine Fehleinschatzung, wie mehrere Beitrage des vorliegenden Bandes zeigen koennen, indem sie vor Augen fuhren, wie intermediale Schreibweisen und medienasthetische Reflexionen auch zwischen 1933 und 1968 konsequent weiterentwickelt werden. Zwanzig Beitrage zu Werken von Franz Kafka, Thomas Mann, Alfred Doeblin, Robert Musil, Gottfried Benn, Paul Celan, Heiner Muller und anderen Autoren erweisen Intermedialitat als zentrales Phanomen im Kunstdiskurs des 20. Jahrhunderts und fuhren zu einer Neubewertung etablierter Werk-, Gattungs- und Epochenmodelle.

In his literary works Goethe engages profoundly with various manifestations of melancholy. Highly remarkable is the subtlety with which he takes up ancient, medieval, and contemporary concepts of melancholy, the accuracy with which he models the protagonists of his works on these patterns, and the range of his reflections on the possibilities of an existence free of melancholy. The present study is the first to examine Goethe's literary works in the context of a culture-historical problematic of major significance for the late 18th and early 19th century.

Friedrich Nietzsche had a formative influence on numerous classical modern writers. It was in particular the visionary calls for a new dawn in his late philosophical writings which were taken up with enthusiasm by many artists. Whereas the early reception of Nietzsche's work was marked by expressions of enthusiastic homage, in which however were also mixed acerbic attacks, the years after 1900 see more conciliatory positions. The papers in this collected volume examine Nietzsche's influence on writers such as Stefan George, Franz Kafka, Thomas Mann, Robert Musil, Gerhart Hauptmann and Gottfried Benn. In addition, light is cast on Nietzsche's reception in France.

The archeological and source-critical research of ancient history in the 19th century confronted its aesthetic realization with a general problem: literary and visual art imaginations cannot ignore the scientific findings yet the fragmentary evidence of the past can only be given a voice by means of aesthetic forms of organization. Whereas it is not unusual for poetic and visual art works to become storage media for archeological knowledge, the historiographical conveyance of Antiquity often feeds on the strategies of representation specific to literature and painting.

Around 1800 the modern tragedy manifested itself in constant dispute with a philosophical tragedy discourse, making the traditional genre criteria which were still mainly oriented on Aristotle's drama aesthetics fade into the background and bringing to the fore definition attempts which were grounded in cultural theory. The tension between the philosophical discourse and concrete theatre practice led in the 19th and 20th centuries to initiatives of drama-aesthetic innovation which lastingly changed the physiognomy of modern tragedy.

Goethe s lyrical works had a major impact upon the emergence of the modern discourse of love. Along with the texts of his creative period in Weimar, the poems of his Leipzig, Strasbourg, and Frankfurt years represent an ever-changing poetics of love that competed with contemporary perspectives from the Enlightenment to Late Romanticism. Goethe s formal innovations over the course of his love poetry, often accompanied by intercultural references, have proven to be singular."