Dr. Anna Karina Sennefelder
First funding period: Suspended Time and Narrational Spaces of Seclusion. Leisure and Authorship in Autobiographically Structured Narrative |
Dissertation project
Retreats of Narration. Otium as a Mode of Autobiographical Self-Reflection
Otium is regarded as the ideal condition for an examination of the self in European cultural history. One aim of my research therefore was to validate this supposition by analyzing French autobiographical texts from the ninteenth century and thereby explain which aspects of otium facilitated self-reflection. Analysis showed that otium and autobiographical reflection share three structural traits in terms of spatial, temporal and subjective disposition. Based on this observation, I established otium as a narratological analytical category that offers a new focus on the function of spaces of narration. The underlying assumption is that these spaces of narration constitute self-reflection whenever the narrating subject claims a particular space by rememberance and confrontation with the past.
The dissertation was submitted in August 2016 and published in 2018 (Rückzugsorte des Erzählens. Muße als Modus autobiographischer Selbstreflexion [Otium 7], Tübingen).
Publications relevant to the project
Search for Anna Sennefelder's publications in the CRC's bibliography.