The Collector Journal for Swedish Literature Science Research

Paula Henrikson, Klassiskt och modernt. Hermeneutik, filologi och Altertumswissenschaft omkring år 1800. (Classical and Modern. Hermeneutics, Philology and Altertumswissenschaft around 1800.)The term Altertumswissenschaft designates the attempt around 1800 to fashion a classical discipline combining the views on Antiquity as an historical epoch, on the one hand, and the conveyor of eternal aesthetic and moral values, on the other. The subject of this article is the period in history when classical philology in the shape of Altertumswissenschaft developed a detailed theory of the affinity between philology and hermeneutics, while at the same time a new discipline, devoted to vernacular literature and philology, arose and laid the foundations for the scholarly investigation of modern literature. The primary objective of the article is historical, namely to demonstrate in what way the idea of a national classicity was theorised against the background of classical philology. Another objective is to let this historical perspective reinforce the critique in the last three decades of, on the one hand, a textual criticism which has ridded itself of hermeneutical methods, and a literary scholarship which has become detached from the consciousness of matter and medium upheld by textual criticism, on the other.The first part of the article treats the development of classical philology and its theory, as expressed by the leading figures Christian Gottlob Heyne, Friedrich August Wolf and Friedrich Ast. Friedrich Schlegel’s ideas of a ‘philosophy of philology’ are also discussed. In this way the historical shape of hermeneutics as fully integrated in, and even fundamental for, philology is outlined. The second part is an outlook on the Swedish situation during the decades around 1800, examining the notion of a national classicity and the establishment of national professorships in belles lettres and aesthetics. The two parts illustrate the transposition and expansion of the notion of classicity, from classical philology, as it mainly resided in Germany, to vernacular philology, in which the term ‘classical’ begins to denote a national normativity. Two issues recur in the discussion: (1) the idea of the importance of historical distance, and (2) the notion of Antiquity as unique, unsurpassed and eternally normative. The article demonstrates how the changing views on these issues paved the way for the development of modern philology and how the integration of hermeneutics and philology was fundamental in this process.