Die Bedeutung der Literaturkritik für die Durchsetzung des Ästhetisierungsparadigmas in Deutschland seit dem 18. Jahrhundert

This dissertation explores the significance of literary criticism for the aestheticization paradigm in Germany from the 18th century onwards, relying on the thesis of the German sociologist Andreas Recwitz on an aestheticization of the society. By presenting three key periods for the breakthrough of the aestheticization paradigm (romanticism, modernism and counterculture movements in 1968) and analysing the life and work of three representative critics from the aforementioned periods (Friedrich Schlegel, Georg Brandes and Marcel Reich-Ranicki), the dissertation looks into the question of how literary criticism and the literary critic as a social figure contributed to the breakthrough and expansion of the aestheticization paradigm. The methodological background is based on a combination of field theory and system theory (relying on the works of Pierre Bourdieu and Siegfried J. Schmidt) with a comparative analysis of both discourses of literary criticism and medial, literary discourses as well as discourses of literary theory on the topic in question. The aim of the paper was to show the ways in which literary criticism can be understood as an active part of the process of aestheticization and to observe its role beyond the mere intermediary of literary discourses in a way that illuminates the background processes in which literary criticism actively participates, such as valorisation within the literary system, aestheticization and singularisation of society, as well as individualization of the subject. As a result, the paper presents a recontextualization of literary criticism in the light of the aestheticization paradigm and enables the problematization of its position as a subsystem of literature, thereby leading to new insights on literary criticism in the context of the broader social system. The conclusion reached by the paper is that literary criticism in certain periods promoted the aestheticization paradigm through the dispositive of creativity, expanding not only the values, discourses, and practices of the creative imperative, but also forming its own field of action as well as its own subjects in accordance with this imperative.