The year 1905 is generally regarded as the 'birth year' of modern Belarusian national literature and the 1920s are already considered its 'heyday', which was brought to an end by the repressions of the 1930s. The monograph produced as part of this sub-project is the first to take a systematic look at the three decades inscribed in the 'birth - flowering - decline' model from a field-theoretical perspective. Using field-theoretical parameters such as institutionalisation and autonomisation, the development of Belarusian literature can be conceptualised as a highly complex process between 'constitution' and 'perversion into an apparatus'. On the one hand, this approach pursues a certain 'demythologisation' of Belarusian literature, e.g. with regard to its ability to connect to European modernity; at the same time, specific features come into view on an institutional, poetological and aesthetic level that have so far remained unnoticed or unquestioned.

The results of this project contribute both to the systematic exploration of Belarusian literature and to the flexibilisation of the field-theoretical model, especially with regard to its suitability for the heuristic description of 'small' literatures.

Project management: Gun-Britt Kohler