Margit Gaffal

This volume sets out from the assumption that emergent forms of life find some of their most complex and challenging expressions in literature. Arguably, literary forms have always played an important role in giving form to life; they raise important questions about which forms of life are desirable or valuable, they imagine alternative life-forms, and they aesthetically embody the tensions between various conflicting forms of life. As understood here, then, the concept 'forms of life' refers at once to cultural life-forms and to the literary forms and styles that incorporate and interrogate them. Covering a wide range of Anglophone literary texts, the essays in this volume strive towards a critical analysis of the links between stylistic devices, formal procedures, and narrative techniques, on the one hand, and emergent forms of life, on the other. By reframing and theorizing the Wittgensteinian concept of 'forms of life' from a literary-critical perspective, the volume aims to enlarge the conceptual and interpretative repertoire of literary and cultural studies and to furnish the study of narrative fiction as well as of other genres with new descriptive and analytical resources.

Ludwig Wittgenstein’s writings inspired contemporary philosophical thinking and advanced many issues that had been addressed by traditional philosophy. The questions raised by the Viennese philosopher initiated debates on a reconsideration of philosophical terminology. This is especially true for a term that has generated at least three significant controversies since its creation and will probably generate more disputes in the following years. It is the expression “form(s) of life” which translates into German as “Lebensform(en)” and “Form des Lebens”. The present volume contains contributions on forms of life, language games and the influence of Wittgenstein’s philosophy on other scholars.

Wilhelm Dilthey defines the specific nature of understanding utilizing two aspects: on the one hand, understanding is a comprehension of connections, typically regarding the relation between a whole and its parts. Understanding captures the meaning of something according to this relation: We understand an episode from its function within a story, a text from its words and sentences. On the other hand, understanding consists of understanding something as an expression. We understand cultural and historical facts as objectifications of individual and social life. The triad life-expression-understanding forms the structural framework of hermeneutics. Eventually, understanding implies self-understanding. Therefore autobiography, for Dilthey, is the paradigm of understanding.