Periodic Reporting for period 1 - MYTH (Making national identity. The construction of Germanic Mythology in 19th century.)
Période du rapport: 2020-09-01 au 2022-08-31
My project investigated the role of myth in the cultural and political shaping process of modern Europe, with a focus on Germany between XIX and XX centuries. From anthropology to linguistics, from literature to history, to philosophical and political reflection, myth became the key to interpreting the cultural metamorphoses of the century. Far from attributing to this 'revival' of myth and myths the regressive character of a return to irrationalism, I have investigated the myth as an epistemological tool that can account for European cultural development, particularly for those ferments of construction of ideologies, cultural identities, and collective imaginaries that still cannot be said to be fully exhausted nowadays. My research was essentially carried out along three axes of research: the centrality of ancient myth in XIX-century German culture and the recourse to ancient models for the elaboration of modern cultural categories; the comparison and confrontation, often marked by an intrinsic ethnocentric resistance, with other cultures; the study of the dynamics of cultural formation and transmission, the emergence of cultural ideas capable of providing a model for national cultures.
A first group of publications was aimed at analysing the corpus of writings on Greece by one of the architects of the rediscovery of the Greek world in the late XIX century, F.Nietzsche. I have focused on the analysis of classical patterns, on Greek religion and mythical figures (Ariadne, Danae, Dionysos, Apollon), revitalized and reformulated in Nietzsche's philosophy. I worked on the Lectures Nietzsche held in Basel as a professor of Greek literature, which are capital writings for understanding the scope of the cultural operation carried out by this philosopher. Some of my works have taken a path rather in opposition to the Vulgata, which wants to see Nietzsche as a philosopher of Greek irrationalism, highlighting his search for normativity and his interest for the classical. Among the philological sources I considered in my study, I became interested in a Danish author, F.Nutzhorn who was one of the most original voices in the critic to the Homeric question, bringing the focus back to orality and the mnemonic modes of learning and transmission of the poems. I also studied the figure of J.Bernays a German philologist of Jewish descent, who made a reevaluation of the pseudoepigraphic materials neglected by historiography, which are in fact essential for knowing the sensibility of an age toward its own culture and to produce unprecedented avenues in the transmission of culture itself.
A second group of publications presents some of the most innovative results of my most actual research interests. I wanted to mapp the landscape of approaches to myth between the XIX and XX centuries, to reflect on the concept from a historical and methodological perspective, and to assess its transdisciplinary impact. I worked on three key figures in the myth debate, T.Mann K.Kerényi and F.Jesi in view of the participation to the conference "The Force of Myth: Authority, Illusion and Critique in Modern Imaginaries" (Van Leer Institute Jerusalem). To the contaminations between classical philology and anthropology and the adoption of the categories of myth in the context of ethnographic studies is devoted a number of studies on F.Ratzel and L.Frobenius. I analyzed in particular an ethnographic account reported by L.Frobenius on a West African epics, in order to highlight the cultural patterns (Greek, Nordic and Biblical patterns) Frobenius applied to understand this tradition. A particularly advanced volet of my work on the articulations of myth in the landscape of German studies is that devoted to early applications of myth in biblical exegesis. Through authors such as Eichhorn, Michaelis, Bauer, Carus and Herder, I have been observed how the prejudice against the mythological approach remains strongly present, and how the recognition of the mythical dimension of biblical narratives is often negotiated through complex arguments in order to escape the risk of secularization. I also conducted a case study on the mythologem of the "struggle with the angel", to show the different methodological and hermeneutical approaches to a biblical episode with a complex and layered compositional texture (presented at the International Conference of the Society of Myth-criticism in Madrid).
The research I have devoted myself to over the past two years has allowed me to develop a great interest in culture as an object of study: the birth of cultural ideas, the development and transmission of culture, migration, and the transformations of cultural objects (ideas, myths, concepts, traditions). I worked on A.Warburg J.Burckhardt L.Frobenius and F. Schleiermacher, studying Warburg's Pathosformel and Frobenius paideumatic images as precise epistemic forms by which to read cultural history. But Perhaps the most important achievement of these past two years is that of having open a new study field, working on the cultural idea of the Secret Germany, its antecedents in XIX-century political and religious literature, and its reception to the present day. For the time being I was able to expand the project considerably through the organization of a large international conference at the University of Copenhagen.
A second group of publications presents some of the most innovative results of my most actual research interests. I wanted to mapp the landscape of approaches to myth between the XIX and XX centuries, to reflect on the concept from a historical and methodological perspective, and to assess its transdisciplinary impact. I worked on three key figures in the myth debate, T.Mann K.Kerényi and F.Jesi in view of the participation to the conference "The Force of Myth: Authority, Illusion and Critique in Modern Imaginaries" (Van Leer Institute Jerusalem). To the contaminations between classical philology and anthropology and the adoption of the categories of myth in the context of ethnographic studies is devoted a number of studies on F.Ratzel and L.Frobenius. I analyzed in particular an ethnographic account reported by L.Frobenius on a West African epics, in order to highlight the cultural patterns (Greek, Nordic and Biblical patterns) Frobenius applied to understand this tradition. A particularly advanced volet of my work on the articulations of myth in the landscape of German studies is that devoted to early applications of myth in biblical exegesis. Through authors such as Eichhorn, Michaelis, Bauer, Carus and Herder, I have been observed how the prejudice against the mythological approach remains strongly present, and how the recognition of the mythical dimension of biblical narratives is often negotiated through complex arguments in order to escape the risk of secularization. I also conducted a case study on the mythologem of the "struggle with the angel", to show the different methodological and hermeneutical approaches to a biblical episode with a complex and layered compositional texture (presented at the International Conference of the Society of Myth-criticism in Madrid).
The research I have devoted myself to over the past two years has allowed me to develop a great interest in culture as an object of study: the birth of cultural ideas, the development and transmission of culture, migration, and the transformations of cultural objects (ideas, myths, concepts, traditions). I worked on A.Warburg J.Burckhardt L.Frobenius and F. Schleiermacher, studying Warburg's Pathosformel and Frobenius paideumatic images as precise epistemic forms by which to read cultural history. But Perhaps the most important achievement of these past two years is that of having open a new study field, working on the cultural idea of the Secret Germany, its antecedents in XIX-century political and religious literature, and its reception to the present day. For the time being I was able to expand the project considerably through the organization of a large international conference at the University of Copenhagen.
Working on the terrain of German scholarly tradition between the XIX and XX centuries I was able to ascertain, that Myth is not an object of study, rather an object of negotiation, around which broader interests are played out. Through the study of myth, non only ancient cultures are reconstructed, and non-European cultures are judged, but also new political, religious and cultural identities are established. Despite this multiplicity of interests at play, the critical use of myth as a cognitive tool, as the privileged gateway to the study of human knowledge and modes of thought, remains foundational in all the authors and approaches that I have been able to investigate. In the coming years, I will focus my attention on some problematic chapters in the history of myth and cultural ideas in the XIX and XX centuries. I am convinced that the work of the historian can usefully be applied to the study of ideas, the conditions of their birth and development, their metamorphoses and contaminations. A case study such as that of the Secret Germany convinced me of the urgence to study how culture develops in connection with but also somehow indipendently from the great historical movements, and survives beyond them. A cultural morphology of the myths and founding ideas of the XIX century will contribute to understanding the dynamics of the development of cultural objects and their survival and transformation far beyond the epochs and conditions that gave rise to them.