Daemonic and negativity: an analysis of a concept in the intersection between Philosophy and Literature

• Grant number: 19/27014-8
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Post-Doctorate
• Effective date (Start): November 01, 2020
• Effective date (End): June 30, 2022
• Field of knowledge: Linguistics, Literature and Arts - Literature - Literature Theory
• Principal Investigator: Antonio Alcir Bernardez Pecora
• Grantee: Lucas Piccinin Lazzaretti
• Host Institution: Instituto de Estudos da Linguagem (IEL). Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP). Campinas , SP, Brazil

Abstract

This research aims to analyze the concept of "demonic" at the intersection between philosophy and literature, with special attention to its formation and development in the passage between the Eighteenth and Nineteenth century in the German tradition. Certain problems faced by contemporary literary theory point to the obstacle caused by the "modern subject," especially because this subject would tend to be grounded in an attempt to constitute itself and the world through a self-determining rational core. The constitution of a theory of the "modern subject" occurs concurrently with important theoretical dispositions about the act of making literature, as well as about the structure and functions of literary genres, and the limits and scope of textual effects. German romanticism was a moment when the intersection of philosophy and literature seems to have reached a certain summit, deepening existing concepts and creating new conditions for thinking about this intersection. Many of the concepts inherited by the romantic tradition went beyond their original context and eventually established a relationship between the analysis of literature/literature making and the constitution and affirmation of this "modern subject". The "demonic", a concept evidenced by Goethe and which has a peculiar history, presents another way for the constitution of this "modern subject", that is, the path of a "negativity". Developing a historical-conceptual analysis and taking Søren Kierkegaard's singular work as an important reading key, the present research aims to critically reconsider how the concept of "demonic" can be taken to reevaluate this modern influence on literary theory. (AU)

Scientific publications

(References retrieved automatically from Web of Science and SciELO through information on FAPESP grants and their corresponding numbers as mentioned in the publications by the authors)

LUCAS LAZZARETTI. O demoníaco no romance Eduard Allwills Briefsammlung de Friedrich Jacobi. Pandaemonium Germanicum, v. 26, n. 48, p. 104-126, 2022-11-25. (19/27014-8)