CALL FOR PAPERS: Phenomenology of Literature (1/2027)

Issue 1/2027: Phenomenology of Literature

• Editors: Iwona Misiak (Institute of Literary Research of the Polish Academy of Sciences), Monika Murawska (Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw), Daniel R. Sobota (Institute of Philosophy and Sociology of the Polish Academy of Sciences)

• Submissions: 2027, February 15

Details:

In the first issue of 2027, the Editorial Board invites reflection on the relations between phenomenology and literature. The analogy between the phenomenological attitude and aesthetic experience has been addressed, among others, in contemporary French phenomenology; however, phenomenological interest in literature dates back to the beginnings of the phenomenological movement. One need only recall the early Munich seminars of 1907–1908, conducted by Alexander Pfänder and Johannes Daubert and devoted to one of Henrik Johan Ibsen’s dramas, or Edmund Husserl’s famous letter to Hugo von Hofmannsthal of 1907, in which Husserl juxtaposed the work of the artist and that of the phenomenologist, observing that, despite certain differences, both share a similar relation to the world: for both, the world is a phenomenon whose meaning they intuitively apprehend and creatively transform.

In later decades, phenomenological research on literature became visible in the writings of Martin Heidegger, Jean-Paul Sartre, Emmanuel Levinas, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Roman Ingarden, Paul Ricoeur, Henri Maldiney, Éliane Escoubas, Jean-Louis Chrétien, Renaud Barbaras, Jacques Derrida, Claude Romano, François-David Sebbah, and other philosophers. Among literary forms, poetry has usually occupied a privileged position in these descriptions and analyses. In the 1930s, within the Geneva School – including, among others, Gaston Bachelard, Georges Poulet, Jean-Pierre Richard, and Jean Rousset – phenomenological criticism and literary scholarship developed in the direction of immanent readings of texts. In Poland, the phenomenology of literature was dominated by Roman Ingarden; nevertheless, significant research in the field of phenomenological theory and aesthetics, or in approaches inspired by phenomenology, was also conducted by Zygmunt Łempicki, Leopold Blaustein, Stefania Skwarczyńska, Konstanty Troczyński, Maria Gołaszewska, and the lesser-known Ada Werner-Silberstein.

In the planned thematic issue, we are interested in the following questions and areas of inquiry: phenomenological literature as such – understood as literature focused on the direct description of phenomena and subjective experiences, as well as on the analysis of intentionality; phenomenological readings of literary texts; accounts of convergences and differences between earlier and contemporary phenomenological research and literary studies; and attempts to theorize the phenomenology of literature. We welcome contributions that discuss both modern and earlier literature in the context of phenomenology. We are particularly interested in articles analysing the mutual permeation and intermingling of phenomenological and literary texts, as well as in explorations of themes and concepts that circulate within both literature and phenomenology.

We invite reflection on the interrelations between literature, literary history and theory, and phenomenology in the following dimensions:

• From the perspective of phenomenology, what is the general relation between philosophy and literature? Is philosophy literature?
• From the perspective of literary studies, how should the relation between literature and philosophy be understood? Is an interdisciplinary philosophy of literature capable of effectively examining the philosophical content that appears in literature?
• How do literary studies and phenomenology describe and evaluate the fluidity of the boundaries between artistic creation and theoretical discourse?
• What similarities and differences emerge between literary texts and phenomenological texts?
• How do literature and phenomenology explore questions of world, life, perception, corporeality, experience, language, and subjectivity?
• Does phenomenology need literature? Do literary studies need phenomenology?
• How does phenomenology respond to the old metaphor of the world as a book?
• Is the ancient topos of liber mundi, derived from philosophy and theology, useful in literary studies?
• In what ways does phenomenology use literature for its own research purposes? How do literary studies draw on phenomenological concepts and methods?
• What is phenomenological description from the perspective of literary studies?
• Which literary forms and genres are best suited to phenomenological description, and why?
• Can poetry be regarded as a phenomenon akin to phenomenology, and why does poetry appear to be privileged within phenomenology?
• What forms of critique has phenomenological description encountered from representatives of other currents of contemporary philosophy and from literary scholars? Is such criticism justified?
• Must phenomenology, in any sense, be a form of “literature,” or does it offer possibilities for moving beyond the understanding of philosophy solely as written philosophy?
• How do representatives of the global phenomenological movement understand literature as such and its particular works?
• In the Polish phenomenological and literary-theoretical tradition, apart from the works
  of Roman Ingarden, are there other significant studies devoted to the phenomenology of literature?