Organised by Research Area 5, "Building Digital Communities".

Of the three major modes of literature – prose, poetry and drama – it is clear that prose has become dominant in literary cultures. Even more so, the novel dominates publishing and translation at the expense of shorter prose forms. However, short prose forms have a great potential for playing a more significant role in world literature, not least in the educational system, where reading unabridged and shorter works is in demand. This project surveys the scarcity of canonical short stories and will use digital resources to qualify the thesis that, despite notable exceptions, e.g., Hans Christian Andersen and Jorge Luis Borges, longer forms tends to dominate literary cultures’ presence in world literature. The project will also consider how the notion of short prose fiction could be expanded by taking into account how certain works, e.g., Arabian Nights and philosophical narrative prose, lend themselves to be read in excerpts and that canonical processes support this use of the works.

The presentation will be digitally streamed.
Webex link: https://fu-berlin.webex.com/fu-berlin/j.php?MTID=m5418018abb654a4e53a58d2443badbec