Lectures by Joachim Küpper (Freie Universität Berlin)

November 17^th, 17.00. «Flaubert,  L’Education sentimentale — Balzac,  Le Père Goriot. On the French Realists’ Transformation of the  Bildungsroman»  
November 19^th, 18.00. «Network theory of cultural production».

Both lectures will be in English.

Joachim Küpper is the director of the Dahlem Humanities Center, Dean of the Humanities (since 2009) Member of Leopoldina/ German National Academy of Sciences Member of the Scientific Committee for the German Academies’ Research Programme; Member of the Standing Committee on Research of the German University Presidents’ Conference (HRK).

Brief abstracts of the lectures:

November, 17^th.  «Flaubert,  L’Education sentimentale — Balzac,  Le Père Goriot. On the French Realists’ Transformation of the  Bildungsroman »

The genre of  Bildungsroman  was an ‘invention’ of 19^th century German literature, based on specific concepts of ‘aesthetic education’ (ästhetische Erziehung) and on Hegelian dialectics. For reasons to be scrutinized, the pattern was received in cultural contexts with a very different philosophical tradition, as in France. Its two main manifestations are world-famous novels by Balzac and Flaubert. This paper will briefly discuss the relation of the French texts to the German prototype, and then proceed to elaborating on the radically different answers to the question of making sense of life they convey.   

November, 19^th.  « Towards a Network Theory of Cultural Production»

In this paper, I will present some hypotheses regarding a theory of cultural production that is based on the metaphor of culture as a network. The aim of such a new approach is to problematize the concept of “national literatures” as developed, starting with Herder, in the age of Romanticism. I will demonstrate the viability of my ideas by exemplifying them with respect to the early modern European drama.

Guests from outside the HSE should contact Pavel Uspenskiy (puspenskiy@hse.ru) to attend the lectures.