Životo(puto)pisi stvari u njemačkoj i svjetskoj književnosti
Life Histories/itineraries of Things in German and World Literature

Summary/Abstract: Throughout the history of literature, and German literature in particular, there are repeatedly accounts of “life cycles” or “life histories” of things: efforts to narrate the trajectories of artefacts in socioeconomic cycles, which in toto elude observation and remain imperceptible. In some cases accounts are written in first person singular simulating an autobiographical perspective of things. The article proposes to call this formation autocyclography of things. Historically, the literary tradition of this autocyclography of things reaches back at least as far as the Antiquity. The paper outlines the theoretical framework and contextualises examples from German literature in a broader framework of wold literature (British it-narratives and Soviet literatura fakta). In the focus of analytic interest stands Hans Jakob Christoffel von Grimmelshausens autocyclography of a toilet paper. Furthermore, the article presents examples for autocyclography of things from German Literature of the 18th and 19th century, which still wait further scolary attention: autocyclographies of a coin, a wig, a fly, a book, a coach, a toothpick, a joke and a stomach.

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