Research Luc Herman

Abstract

This project explores recent cultural-philosophical approaches to ethics and ontology in reflecting on contemporary debates on moral realism. In metaethics, cultural contexts have been largely neglected on methodological grounds. Metaethics is said to involve a step back from culturalhistorical backgrounds and social-political contexts, and to offer a crucial neutral background against which normative issues need to be understood. However, philosophers outside metaethics have been defending views that explicitly invoke cultural-historical contexts in developing novel approaches to moral realism. This project will study how authors such as Jane Bennett, Akeel Bilgrami, Charles Taylor, and Stephen White explicitly combine cultural-philosophical analysis with metaphysical inquiry in the debate on disenchantment as a world-making narrative. The project starts by investigating philosophical views which explicitly connect cultural diagnoses to issues of moral realism in developing such diverse concepts as "metaphysical imaginary," "ontostories" (Bennet 2001), "secular enchantment" (Bilgrami 2010, 2016, 2020), "moral ontology," "social imaginary" (Taylor 1989, 2007) and "weak ontology" (White 2000). Using these different concepts as heuristic devices for widening the current realist debate, the project continues to examine how the cultural-philosophical debate on disenchantment displays a highly original approach to the metaphysics of value, namely one that acknowledges the key role of narrative for metaphysical inquiry. Understanding moral metaphysics narratively is to understand it not as a mere "theory," that is, as a set of descriptive claims about certain states of affairs, but as a way of interpreting the world in seeking moral orientation. One major advantage of such "narrative ontologies" as compared with mainstream realisms is that they allow for cultural difference and historical development while still sustaining the realist claim that value is part of the world by understanding narrativity as a worldmaking practice. The upshot of developing this approach in full would be a deeply normative account of ethics duly informed by the philosophy of culture, yet without sacrificing a metaphysical understanding of moral truth, objectivity, and knowledge.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Cools Arthur
• Promoter: Herman Luc
• Fellow: Meijer Michiel

Research team(s)

• Center for European Philosophy
• Antwerp Centre for Digital humanities and literary Criticism (ACDC)

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

This project represents a research contract awarded by the University of Antwerp. The supervisor provides the Antwerp University research mentioned in the title of the project under the conditions stipulated by the university.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Herman Luc

Research team(s)

• Antwerp Centre for Digital humanities and literary Criticism (ACDC)

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

How does a novelist create and enhance suspense? How is suspense fine-tuned across multiple drafts and proofs, and what is the role of editors and proofreaders in such an undertaking? In this project proposal, the University of Antwerp has the unique opportunity to look over the shoulder of one of the masters of suspense, Stephen King, and to study the material evidence of the writing and publication process of his 1986 masterpiece IT. In doing so, the project will extend the range of genetic narratology by zooming in on the changes made across versions to the text's narrative pace, characterization and focalization so as to maximize suspense. Both the author's solitary work on his drafts and the subsequent collaboration with editors will be examined. The research group "Antwerp Centre for Digital humanities and literary Criticism" (ACDC) has recently established contact with Stephen King about his personal archive, and has obtained digital facsimiles of all prepublication documents relating to IT. This corpus of about 10.000 images forms the primary research material; the documents consist of King's 3 drafts, his copy-edited submission typescript, proofs and galleys, and correspondence with his editor. In On Writing King stated that "to write is human, to edit is divine", and that "the editor is always right". The project has the opportunity to analyze this author/editor relationship and ascertain if, in the case of IT, the editor was indeed "always right".

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Herman Luc

Research team(s)

• Antwerp Centre for Digital humanities and literary Criticism (ACDC)

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

Stories we live by: Collective narrative between memory and hope In this lecture series, Francqui professor Ann Rigney (University of Utrecht), will reflect on the narratives we share to make our lives meaningful.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Herman Luc

Research team(s)

• Antwerp Centre for Digital humanities and literary Criticism (ACDC)

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

How to describe and analyse engagement with narrative? This project combines cognitive narratology, cognitive linguistics and social psychology for seminal research on this process. A 'storyworld' is a mental model constructed by the reader, which provides answers to the essential questions for the comprehension of a narrative: who did what to and with whom, when, where, why, and in what manner (D. Herman). 'Possible selves' are the selves we would like to become or want to avoid becoming (Markus and Nurius). 'Storyworld possible selves' are "imagings of the self in storyworlds" (Martinez) that may enhance the reader's involvement and that are activated by various narrative cues. This project investigates whether perceived fictionality and perceived non-fictionality will have a different bearing on the nature, construction and relevance of 'storyworld possible selves'. To answer the research question, the project will carry out a mixed-method empirical investigation in two stages. First a small group of experts will select relevant sections from _A Million Little Pieces_ (2003) by James Frey, which was published as non-fiction but eventually 'became' fiction after revelations about its lack of verisimilitude. In the second stage of the investigation, members of three small groups of readers will provide their reactions in relation to these sections. Group 1 will be told they are reading a memoir, group 2 they are reading a novel, and group 3 won't get any extra information.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Herman Luc

Research team(s)

• Antwerp Centre for Digital humanities and literary Criticism (ACDC)

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

This was the Van Dyck chair 2016, which is less concerned with research than it is with teaching. I taught two courses in the Comparative Literature department at UCLA, an introductory course on narratology to juniors and seniors, and a seminar on narrative and space to PhD students.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Herman Luc

Research team(s)

• Antwerp Centre for Digital humanities and literary Criticism (ACDC)

Project website

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

The project has a two-fold objective. First, it wants to come up with a hermeneutic tool to interpret lists found in modern novels, i.e. is novels written from the second half of the nineteenth century up till now. Second, it wants to use this tool to trace the development of literary listing from the first modern Dutch novel (Multatuli's Max Havelaar 1860) to the present day (Grunberg 2010).

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Herman Luc

Research team(s)

• Antwerp Centre for Digital humanities and literary Criticism (ACDC)

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

This project will attempt to apply post-classical narrative theories about narrative interest to contemporary U.S. fiction that evokes the diverse cultural dialogue about belief. As a means of investigating the ways in which narrative interest is affected by the transmission of cultural material during the reading process, the literary corpus of this dissertation will consist of popular and critically-acclaimed American writers who choose to thematize their religious beliefs - Marilynne Robinson, Allegra Goodman, Louise Erdrich, and Fae Myenne Ng.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Herman Luc
• Fellow: Milota Megan

Research team(s)

• Antwerp Centre for Digital humanities and literary Criticism (ACDC)

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

This project applies the notion of the 'extended mind' to Modernist literature, by combining cognitive narratology with genetic criticism. A writer's interaction with his or her manuscripts is regarded as part and parcel of the 'extended mind'. This interaction during the writing process can have direct results for the evocation of a character's thought process. Modernism's interest in characters' cognitive processes has often been presented in terms of an 'inward turn'. The project reassesses this view on Modernism.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Van Hulle Dirk
• Co-promoter: Herman Luc
• Co-promoter: Lernout Geert

Research team(s)

• Antwerp Centre for Digital humanities and literary Criticism (ACDC)

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

This project will attempt to apply post-classical narrative theories about narrative interest to contemporary U.S. fiction that evokes the diverse cultural dialogue about belief. As a means of investigating the ways in which narrative interest is affected by the transmission of cultural material during the reading process, the literary corpus of this dissertation will consist of popular and critically-acclaimed American writers who choose to thematize their religious beliefs - Marilynne Robinson, Allegra Goodman, Louise Erdrich, and Fae Myenne Ng.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Herman Luc
• Fellow: Milota Megan

Research team(s)

• Antwerp Centre for Digital humanities and literary Criticism (ACDC)

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

This project investigates a pivotal response in contemporary American fiction to the representational aporias of canonical postmodernism. In answer to their literary forebears-self-conscious writers such as John Barth or Thomas Pynchon, who turned toward irony, metafiction and fragmentation¿Richard Powers and David Foster Wallace revalorize narrative as the ideal vehicle for the creation of meaning. They envision the "novel of information" (Powers 2008) as a text that combines diverse fields of knowledge so as to enable the reader to develop a personal and yet integrated perspective on the world. The central question that consequently needs to be addressed is: how can their novels create the illusion of totality without being totalitarian? This question will be answered on the levels of form and content. Drawing on recent instances of reader-oriented narratology, the project first intends to show how various formal aspects of The Gold Bug Variations (Powers 1991) and Infinite Jest (Wallace 1996) can entice the reader to continuously reconstruct his or her mental representation of the narrative. This cognitive approach will be further developed in a thematic analysis, which will focus on the novels' many passages about mental mapping as potential beacons in the reader's search for coherence.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Herman Luc
• Fellow: Staes Toon

Research team(s)

• Antwerp Centre for Digital humanities and literary Criticism (ACDC)

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

This is a fundamental research project financed by the Research Foundation - Flanders (FWO). The project was subsidized after selection by the FWO-expert panel.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Herman Luc

Research team(s)

• Antwerp Centre for Digital humanities and literary Criticism (ACDC)

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

This project investigates a pivotal response in contemporary American fiction to the representational aporias of canonical postmodernism. In answer to their literary forebears-self-conscious writers such as John Barth or Thomas Pynchon, who turned toward irony, metafiction and fragmentation¿Richard Powers and David Foster Wallace revalorize narrative as the ideal vehicle for the creation of meaning. They envision the "novel of information" (Powers 2008) as a text that combines diverse fields of knowledge so as to enable the reader to develop a personal and yet integrated perspective on the world. The central question that consequently needs to be addressed is: how can their novels create the illusion of totality without being totalitarian? This question will be answered on the levels of form and content. Drawing on recent instances of reader-oriented narratology, the project first intends to show how various formal aspects of The Gold Bug Variations (Powers 1991) and Infinite Jest (Wallace 1996) can entice the reader to continuously reconstruct his or her mental representation of the narrative. This cognitive approach will be further developed in a thematic analysis, which will focus on the novels' many passages about mental mapping as potential beacons in the reader's search for coherence.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Herman Luc
• Fellow: Staes Toon

Research team(s)

• Antwerp Centre for Digital humanities and literary Criticism (ACDC)

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

William Gaddis's The Recognitions and Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow are often referred to as the two most important examples of the post-war "Encyclopedic Novel" in The United States. They succeed in creating an encyclopedic illusion of totality, but simultaneously undermine this totality. As such, they can be connected to Denis Diderot's definition of the encyclopedia as a dynamic delineation of knowledge. Is it, therefore, useful to try and classify both novels within the confines of a generic definition? Since both novels focus on the dynamic between the constant construction and deconstruction of totality, they rather make us reconsider the validity of all totalizing systems.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Herman Luc
• Fellow: Van Ewijk Petrus

Research team(s)

• Antwerp Centre for Digital humanities and literary Criticism (ACDC)

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

In an effort to analyze the "post-postmodern" tendency in contemporary American fiction, this research project focuses on the writings of Richard Powers and David Foster Wallace. Convinced that irony is not the only adequate response to the loss of all Grand Narratives (Lyotard), both authors posit the novel form as a way to confront the postmodern solipsism of their literary predecessors. Contrary to the fragmentary and overly self-referential texts of such canonical authors as Donald Barthelme or John Barth, Powers and Wallace want to narrativize information in such a way that local knowledge can still be represented in a tentative global model. A theoretical and (post-classical) narratological approach to their work is required to investigate how such a model can find its origin.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Herman Luc
• Fellow: Staes Toon

Research team(s)

• Antwerp Centre for Digital humanities and literary Criticism (ACDC)

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

This project amounts to a collaboration between S. Weisenburger and L. Herman, which will result in a monograph on Thomas Pynchon's novel _Gravity's Rainbow_ (1973). Weisenburger and Herman form part of a Royal Flemish Academy cluster on trauma in English and American literature. In their book, Weisenburger and Herman will deal with Pynchon's narrativization of the oppression of the non-white individual in the twentieth century.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Herman Luc

Research team(s)

• Antwerp Centre for Digital humanities and literary Criticism (ACDC)

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

The investigation seeks to provide answers to the following four main research questions: (1) The literary-historical question about specific shifts that allow us to situate the phenomenon of the contemporary historic novel on New York City within (American) literary history overall. (2) The genre-typological question about the role of quest and search plots in the corpus. (3) The documentary question about the ways in which writers use historic sources. (4) The political-ideological question about the possibly subversive or critical potential of the fictional worlds developed by writers.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Eeckhout Bart
• Co-promoter: Herman Luc
• Co-promoter: Stabel Peter

Research team(s)

• Antwerp Centre for Digital humanities and literary Criticism (ACDC)

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

William Gaddis's The Recognitions and Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow are often referred to as the two most important examples of the post-war "Encyclopedic Novel" in The United States. They succeed in creating an encyclopedic illusion of totality, but simultaneously undermine this totality. As such, they can be connected to Denis Diderot's definition of the encyclopedia as a dynamic delineation of knowledge. Is it, therefore, useful to try and classify both novels within the confines of a generic definition? Since both novels focus on the dynamic between the constant construction and deconstruction of totality, they rather make us reconsider the validity of all totalizing systems.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Herman Luc
• Fellow: Van Ewijk Petrus

Research team(s)

• Antwerp Centre for Digital humanities and literary Criticism (ACDC)

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Herman Luc

Research team(s)

• Antwerp Centre for Digital humanities and literary Criticism (ACDC)

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

The concept of the Sublime in the philosophical tradition of Edmund Burke and as elaborated by Immanuel Kant in the 18th century first developed into a central paradigm in the Romantic era when the demand for strong passions in literature and literary criticism was running high. Yet adaptations to and variants on the original idea,which underwent an evolution of its own, became just as important in many postmodern writers¹ practice and a dominant feature of many critics' discussions of these authors' work. The purpose of this dissertation is to provide a definition of the Sublime as it functions in the novels of the postmodern American writer Don DeLillo on the basis of existing theories of the concept. Our central aim is to use this definition as the cornerstone of a new framework or model for an analysis of central recurrent themes in DeLillo¹s oeuvre and to add in that way to a better understanding of the author¹s work. To make sure we have provided the necessary background to keep this discussion clear, we shall first survey the Sublime from its origin to its present-day appearances and focus on Don DeLillo's most important themes with reference to different critical analyses of his books.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Herman Luc
• Fellow: Vervenne Jasmine

Research team(s)

• Antwerp Centre for Digital humanities and literary Criticism (ACDC)

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

The concept of the Sublime in the philosophical tradition of Edmund Burke and as elaborated by Immanuel Kant in the 18th century first developed into a central paradigm in the Romantic era when the demand for strong passions in literature and literary criticism was running high. Yet adaptations to and variants on the original idea,which underwent an evolution of its own, became just as important in many postmodern writers¹ practice and a dominant feature of many critics' discussions of these authors' work. The purpose of this dissertation is to provide a definition of the Sublime as it functions in the novels of the postmodern American writer Don DeLillo on the basis of existing theories of the concept. Our central aim is to use this definition as the cornerstone of a new framework or model for an analysis of central recurrent themes in DeLillo¹s oeuvre and to add in that way to a better understanding of the author¹s work. To make sure we have provided the necessary background to keep this discussion clear, we shall first survey the Sublime from its origin to its present-day appearances and focus on Don DeLillo's most important themes with reference to different critical analyses of his books.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Herman Luc
• Fellow: Vervenne Jasmine

Research team(s)

• Antwerp Centre for Digital humanities and literary Criticism (ACDC)

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

Music features prominently in the contemporary American encyclopedic novel, which tries to evoke the whole of American reality. This research project is focused on the function of music (both as a theme and as an aspect of form) in major examples of this genre, specifically in Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow (1973) - the matrix for the younger generation of encyclopedists - and David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest (1996), the most visible recent instance of the genre.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Herman Luc

Research team(s)

• Antwerp Centre for Digital humanities and literary Criticism (ACDC)

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

While The Great American Novel only lives on as a cliche, some American authors nevertheless attempt totalizing novels'but not without calling the concept of totalization into question. Using The Recognitions by William Gaddis en especially Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon as a matrix, recent American encyclopedic novels are analysed with reference to their historical context, their techniques of representation, and their manipulation of the reader.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Herman Luc
• Fellow: Herman Luc

Research team(s)

• Antwerp Centre for Digital humanities and literary Criticism (ACDC)

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

The concept of hypertext presents each text in relation to other texts. Therefore it is an adequate tool to investigate the transtextuality of literary texts: the aim of this project is to study the limits of the text on three levels (1. The transition zone between text and `avant-texte'; 2. The intertextual relationship between the text and external sources; 3. The changes the text underwent after publication), in order to investigate how the author has given surplus value to the original material and how this process can be rendered by means of hypertext editing.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Herman Luc

Research team(s)

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

While The Great American Novel only lives on as a cliche, some American authors nevertheless attempt totalizing novels'but not without calling the concept of totalization into question. Using The Recognitions by William Gaddis en especially Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon as a matrix, recent American encyclopedic novels are analysed with reference to their historical context, their techniques of representation, and their manipulation of the reader.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Herman Luc
• Fellow: Herman Luc

Research team(s)

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Herman Luc

Research team(s)

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

The aim of this project is to study the compatibility of the encyclopedie novel and the notion of hypertext. Thc encyclopedie novel, i.e. a novel that gives the reader the impression of an overall picture of human knowledge and experience, is hardly legible without the aid of several reference works. On the one hand, therefore, this project wants to work out a strategy for the hypertextual edition of twentieth-century encyclopedic novels.On the other hand, these hypertext applications should also be studied theoretically. No matter how encyclopedic a novel may be, the overall picture of human knowledge and experience is just an impression. lf a more sophisticated medium manages to make the impression more 'real', this only proves the increased refinement of the illusion.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Herman Luc
• Co-promoter: Lernout Geert

Research team(s)

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

The encyclopedic novel is a mostly long prose narrative which gives the reader the impression that it offers a panorama of a society at a certain moment in its historical development. The goal of the project is not only to analyse individual encyclopedic novels, but also to develop a theory of their origin, structure and effect.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Herman Luc

Research team(s)

Project type(s)

• Research Project