Style and morals (conference)

In recent years, literary and aesthetic debates in the German and “Western” public have often been conducted from a moral perspective. Identity politics and activism may be responsible for this; But no one can doubt that the current political and social crises also have a moral and ethical dimension. Nevertheless, a skeptical distance from moral requirements continues to be maintained in the field of literary studies. This is based on the long-held belief that beliefs “packaged” in the medium of literature come at the expense of literary skill.
The focus of such debates is therefore often literary style. He is the representative of an idea of ​​aesthetic autonomy, which essentially includes the right to reject moral claims. According to this concept of autonomy, literature around 1800 not only broke away from rhetoric and religion, but also systematically rejected moral expectations. But of course it was never that easy. There have long been complex but taboo connections between aesthetic evaluations and moral values ​​(even with Kant), which are now coming into focus anew. Our conference takes this as an opportunity to re-measure the relationship between style and morality in exemplary historical constellations. In addition to case studies on individual authors, literary trends and discourses will also be taken into account. Since when and in what contexts have style and morality come into tension? How do they relate to each other in the literature around 1800, in the popular enlightenment, after 1945 and in contemporary culture? Is the modern discourse about evil – from Sade to Baudelaire to Rimbaud or Céline – an emphatic stylistic discourse? Which literary genres and forms are particularly suitable for portraying a tension between style and morality?

Organized by Eva Geulen, Pola Groß, Claude Haas

Program

Wednesday, October 8th, 2025

18.15
• Eva Geulen, Pola Groß, Claude Haas (ZfL): Welcome

6.30 p.m. Keynote
• Inka Mülder-Bach (Ludwig-Maximilians-University Munich): Discretion

Thursday, October 9th, 2025

10.30 a.m.
• Pola Groß (ZfL): “from small spots on a beautiful work” – style and morals in authors 1800

1:00 p.m.
• Elisa Ronzheimer (Bielefeld University): Stylistics and humanism after 1945
• Moritz Baßler (University of Münster): "Worldview inadequate." Pre-war nonchalance in the literary field of the 1950s

15:30
• Gianna Zocco (ZfL): Literature in the field of tension between stylistic-aesthetic and moral-political evaluation: On James Baldwin's rediscovery in Germany
• Eva Blome (University of the Bundeswehr Munich): On the morality of form. I-saying and polyvalence in literature and the literary world of the present

Friday, October 10th, 2025

9.30
• Melanie Möller (FU Berlin): The style is the person? Literature in the focus of the living world (Catull, Casanova, Céline)
• Hinrich Schmidt-Henkel (Berlin): Style and Cruelty – Louis-Ferdinand Céline

11.45
• Karen Feldman (UC Berkeley/American Academy of Berlin): Moralizing Styles: Job and his Readers

13.45
• Eva Eßlinger (University of Konstanz): Unlimited speech. Close writing in fictional autobiographies
• Nathan Taylor (Goethe University Frankfurt a.M.): Styles of Redress: Elmiger Revises Kleist

4 p.m. Panel discussion
Moderation: Claude Haas (ZfL)
• Style and morality in contemporary culture
with Diedrich Diederichsen (Vienna), Hanna Engelmeier (KWI Essen), Johannes Franzen (University of Mannheim)

Fig. above: D.M. Nagu, from the series L'avenir du livre (2023/24)

All information and updates on our website https://www.zfl-berlin.org/veranstaltungen-detail/items/stil-und-moral.html