Conference: Forms of Good Life in a Global Context: Hegemonic Cultural Models, Literary Form, and Counter-Narrative

Today’s cascading crises the world over are increasingly prompting questions of the good life, of its very possibility and forms – questions that have always been at the heart of literature. Not only is literature a privileged medium of cultural reflection, but it also offers a test ground whereon thought experiments of the good life can be formed, aesthetically realized, and critically interrogated. In this capacity, then, it seems more important than ever to read literary texts – in their formal heterogeneity and conceptual diversity – as a stage for the enactment and critique of the dominant models and good life ‘fantasies’ specific to our current age.

This conference aims to inquire into ideas of the good life in different cultures as well as in various literary genres and text types with a focus on modernity, i.e. starting from the 19th century and its economic orientation. Its focus lies not only on themes, but expressly also on aesthetic and literary forms of representation. It is part of the specific characteristics of poetic and fictional texts that they do not offer normative knowledge and ideas, but rather plural aesthetic representations and perspectives.