Die Clauren-Marlitt

Abstract

The article presents a detailed analysis of a literary debate concerning the author E. Marlitt that took place in 1885. Using previously unconsidered source documents as well as book-market statistics, the debate is interpreted as symptomatic of a twofold differentiation process in the literary communication system of the bourgeois era: the dissociation of an autonomous market for entertainment fiction on the one hand, and the self-stabilisation of a new, now pronouncedly ‚fine artsʻ literature on the other. The opposing sides in the debate mark a crucial generational shift in the literary communication from the representatives of an integrative concept of literary realism to early naturalist positions, the latter of which were first articulated with the help of a gendered concept of literature that emanated from this debate.