Carsten Meiner

Kort præsentation

Jeg er professor i fransk litteratur og leder af forskningsprojektet French Literary history: cultures of topology. Mit personlige forskningsprojekt angår omvendingen og re-funktionaliseringen af en række genkommende steder, topoi, i fransk litteratur. Den planlagte bog vil indeholde seks kapitler om: fransk gastronomi med titlen ”det monstrøse måltid”, om den forældreløse helt i fransk litteratur, om hestevognen og dens sammenbrud, om galanteriets bagsider, om den klart-konfuse følelsestilstand, og om ”den ufokuserede revolution”. Fælles for kapitlerne udover at de spænder over perioden 1530 til i dag, er at de analyserer hvordan et genkommende konventionelt sted i fransk litteratur, fx måltidet eller hestevognsturen, bruges til at indskrive, udforske og tematisere forhold som ikke med umiddelbar nødvendighed hører til ideen om måltid eller revolution, galanteri eller hestevognstur. Dermed er bogens teoretiske mål at formulere en litterær topologi på det formelle plan virker efter genkendelighed og konvention men som på det indholdsmæssige plan opsøger kontingens og tilfældighed.

Aktuel forskning

My research pertains to commonplaces, topoi in modern French literature. If topoi necessarily contain conventional, recognizable features that make them common it also seems that these very conventional frames are used by modern literature to less conventional ends. In fact literature often uses these conventional frames to show the cultural backside or reverse of what we take for granted. The book I am writing contains chapters on the literary topology of gastronomy, orphans, horse-carriages, gallantry, and revolutions, and emotional unclarity. The literary use of these quite different commonplaces have one trait in common: they are re-functionalized in literature. This goes for the use of the meal which is not related to French Haute Cuisine but rather to different kinds of gastronomical and cultural errors of preparation or behavior. The ride in the horse-carriage is ever-present in French literature but its use hereof is not to have the characters go from A to B but rather to make something unforeseen happen in between. The revolution is also a topos but in literature it is very often presented at a distance, out of focus and mediated by other personal and non-political filters. The same goes for gallantry which was for a long time codified as the essence of French social life. In literature gallantry is shown under its coercive, manipulative and fallacious aspects. The theoretical goal of the book is to modernize literary topology and show that topoi do formally come across as recognizable and conventional but that their governing semantic principle is contingency and arbitrariness.