Fuhrer, Therese
Senior Fellow: April–September 2019
Research Project: Literary Scepticism: Strategies of Unsettling and Disconcertment. On the Process of Sending and Receiving Information in Roman Historiography
The “Literary Scepticism” project, comprised of two complementary parts, addresses the extent to which pre-modern authors had the knowledge and means at their disposal to produce disconcertment, uncertainty, doubt, and confusion in their texts. Disconcertment, or the intention to cause it, can, in the production of literature and art, be considered the signatory feature of the modern era. The project is based on the premise that such an approach in ancient literature presupposes a distinct rhetorical and poetic practice and can be brought to light by a textual analysis focussed specifically on these features. Its objects are the processes or moments (moventia or triggers) that produce scepticism or sceptical reserve as understood in philosophically reflected scepticism.
At the centre of the first part stands the examination of literary techniques and strategies to which the potential to disconcert the reader is already ascribed in the text, or which can be recognised and defined as potentially disconcerting. The second part concentrates on a further focal point of the project, namely Roman historiographical texts (Sallust and Tacitus). These are examined with respect to what degree the process of “sending and receiving information” itself offers possibilities for structuring the facts and contents in such a way that the reliable knowledge expected is at once cast into doubt or fundamentally called into question, i.e. to what degree the process of conveying factual knowledge can produce uncertainty and disconcertment.
Therese Fuhrer has held chairs in Latin at the Universität Trier, the Universität Zürich, Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg, the Freie Universität Berlin, and, since 2013, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München.