| Dr. Charlton Payne Doktorarbeit: 'The Politics of Epic Poetics: Ideology, Nation, and Citizenship in Eighteenth-Century German Literature'. Downpad Short CV Anhand der deutschen Literatur des achtzehnten Jahrhunderts beurteilt die Dissertation das Vermächtnis der bürgerlich-humanistischen Ideologie als ein politisches und zugleich poetologisches Projekt neu. Sie geht davon aus, dass die Wiederbelebung des Epos Diskussionen in poetischen und ästhetischen Diskursen erzeugte, die unentwirrbar mit Fragen nach Nation und Staatszugehörigkeit verknüpft waren. Denn auch innerhalb des poetologischen Diskurses artikulierten die Aufrufe zum Schreiben eines deutschsprachigen Nationalepos den Wunsch nach einer deutschen Identität. Die damit verbundenen Diskussionen waren jedoch nicht nur chauvinistische Behauptungen einer solchen nationalen Identität, sondern stets Verhandlungen der Spannung zwischen humanistischen Ansprüchen auf Universalität und partikularistischen Versuchen, spezifisch deutsche Mythen eines gemeinsamen Ursprungs zu erzählen. Indem die Dissertation den Konturen der paradoxen Figurationen einer imaginären Zugerhörigkeit nachspürt, zeigt sie den intern umstrittenen Status von Begriffen wie “Humanität”, “Nation”, “Universalität,” “Republik”, “Weltbürgertum”, und “Bürgerrecht”. Dabei wird das politische Potenzial der Figuration solcher Begriffe in den rhetorischen und narrativen Strukturen bedeutender Epen von Klopstock, Goethe, Wieland und später Brentano betont.
Triadic
Figurations within Epic Narratives of Nationality and Citizenship in 18th-century
Literature My dissertation, “The Politics of Epic Poetics: Ideology, Nation, and Citizenship in Eighteenth-Century German Literature,” reassesses the legacy of bourgeois humanist ideology as a political and poetic project in eighteenth-century German literature. It argues that a focus on the revival of the epic genre generated discussions within eighteenth-century poetics and aesthetics that were inextricably bound up with the questions of nationality and citizenship as products of bourgeois humanist ideology. Within eighteenth-century German poetic discourse, calls for the creation of a German-language epic involved articulations of the meanings of German nationality. Yet these discussions were not merely jingoistic assertions of national identity, but rather paradoxical explorations of the tensions between humanist claims to universality and particularist efforts to narrate specifically German national myths of communal origin. In tracing the contours of these paradoxical formulations of imagined citizenship within literature and poetic discourse, the dissertation shows the internally contested status of the categories “humanity,” “nation,” “universality,” “republicanism,” “cosmopolitanism,” and “citizenship” in the eighteenth century—and emphasizes throughout the political stakes of their figurations within rhetorical and narrative structures of major epics by Klopstock, Goethe, Wieland and, in the Romantic period, Brentano.
Publikationen “Narrative Souveränität. Wielands parodistischer Erzähler als ‘Übersetzer’ der Französischen National-Versammlung.” Wieland/Übersetzungen (forthcoming 2009). “Epic World Citizenship in Goethe’s Hermann und Dorothea.” Goethe Yearbook 16 (2009). Kant and the Concept of Community, ed. Charlton Payne and Lucas Thorpe (under review). “Kant’s Parergonal Politics” in Kant and the Concept of Community. The Politics of Epic Poetics: Ideology, Nation, and Citizenship in Eighteenth-Century German Literature. Ann Arbor: University Microfilms, 2007 “Voicing the ‘Many’: The Figuration of the Undead in Goethe’s Hermann und Dorothea. American Comparative Literature Association Annual Conference in Princeton, N.J.. March 2006.
“Klopstock’s Christian Humanism.” Presented at the Modern Language Association Annual Conference in Washington D.C.. December 2005.
“The Laws of Epic Poetry and the Imaginary Epic Community in the Poetics of Goethe and Schiller.” The German Studies Association Annual Conference in Milwaukee. October 2005.
“The Epic Prosody of the Sublime Nation: Klopstock’s Messias.” Presented at Albrecht Koschorke’s Forschungskolloquium, University of Konstanz. February 2005.
“Democracy and Action: The Rhetoric of Schiller’s Wilhelm Tell.” Presented at the American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies Annual Conference in Boston. March 2004.
“Spectatorship and Action: Politics and Kant’s Sensus Communis.” Presented at the Western Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies Annual Conference at the University of San Francisco. February 2004.
“From the Theater of Identity to the Arcane Production of Nationality: Goethe’s Wilhelm Meister.” Presented at the Seventh Annual UC Colloquium on Early Modern Central Europe at the UCLA William Andrews Clark Memorial Library. March 2003.
“Gesturing Toward National Identity: Body Language and the 2002 Wahlkampf.” Presented at the Stanford University German Studies Conference: “Tropes of Unification: Community and Conflict in German Culture, 1848-Present.” February 2003.
“Student Perception and Performance: Understanding the Pedagogical Paradox in SLA.” Paper co-written with Claire Whitner, Austin Payne, and Jonathan Jones. Presented at the UC Language Consortium Conference on Language Learning and Teaching at UC Irvine. Spring 2002.
“Modernism, Masculinity, Logocentrism.” Presented at the Modernist Studies Association Annual Conference at Rice University. Fall 2001.
Lehre Teaching Assistant, Department of Germanic Languages, UCLA.
Research
Assistant for David Sabean, Department of History, UCLA. 1999-2000.
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