In his radio lecture ‘Commitment’ Theodor W. Adorno showed that the question of commitment versus artistic autonomy is not a rigid antithesis. Literary texts that are intended to be purely partisan and (politically) committed fail to recognise the autonomous status of every artistic utterance. Conversely, a literature that claims to be autonomous is blind to its own relation to society and to the counterfactual objection that has always suggested itself by virtue of the mere existence of literary texts as literature.The volume examines, from a historic and systematic perspective, the antagonistic tension that emerges through the concept of commitment and the present-day relevance of literature. The topics range from concepts of ‘Zeitdichtung’ in the 19thcentury to 20th-century literary models and aesthetic positioning of the present day.

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