Theorizing Literature

Erik Schilling teaches German and Comparative Literature at the University of Munich, Germany. He was a postdoctoral scholar at Harvard and Oxford and, in 2020, he was awarded the Heinz Maier-Leibnitz prize of the German Research Foundation. He is the author of Authenticity: The Career of a Longing (2020) and The Historical Novel since Postmodernism: Umberto Eco and German Literature (2012).

• 1) Introduction.- 2) Second-order literary theory.- 3) Narrating literary theory.- 4) The fragile relationship of author, reader, and Text.- 5) Topics in/of theory.- 6) Creating and interpreting fictional worlds.- 7)  Beyond novels – beyond theory?.- 8) Extrapolating theory from literature.- 9) Bibliography.