Ruhestörung in den Literaturwissenschaften

Abstract

This article focuses on the interrelation between theory in literary studies and the objects of study themselves. Some examples drawn from the genre of audio stories for children in German-speaking countries serve as the basis for the analysis. I address questions like what might be gained or lost if the source material is approached through a critical matrix like transnationalism, which offers economic considerations as well as considerations relating to reception, creativity, and aesthetics. The question of aesthetics leads to the field of transmediality, since not only narrative structures cross borders, but media do so as well. The most popular series of audio stories in German-speaking countries, Die drei ???, well illustrates the potentiality for expansion, modification, transposition, quotation, or adaption. The article then moves from discussing audio stories as objects of study to examining questions posed by the objects themselves. Such questions include narrative features such as serial storytelling, or the position of the narrator in electroacoustic media, and generic hybridity, if the source material lies between the factual and the fictional. Even apart from didactic perspectives there is much potential for both literary theory and object analysis in the encounter between philology and audio plays for children.