Australasian Society for Continental Philosophy Annual Conference 2019
This research explores Benjamin’s reflections on the Novel, and the evolution of his perspective through the years. The analysis begins from the concept of the Novel as Benjamin defined it in The Concept of Art Criticism in German Romanticism. Then it compares that perspective to its new developments in one of Benjamin’s literary turning point, The Crisis of the Novel (1930). The romantic concept of the Novel as a form that can contain other forms – as a medium – becomes necessary for the realization of the literary Montage. Therefore, in his essay ‘The Crisis of the Novel’, instead of an actual debunking of the “traditional” structure of the Novel – exemplified by Gide’s The Counterfeiters -, it is possible to recognise an evolution of Benjamin’s perspective that still has in the romantic concept its essential precondition. The “new form” of a Novel that aims at reflecting reality’s autenticity should be the literary montage. In The Storyteller (1936), overturning Lukács’ theory, Benjamin seems to consider the Novel the only literary form in the modernity still able to connect – allegorically – the individual to its sense of life.
Caterina Diotto 