Prof. Dr. Andreas Kablitz

University of Cologne
Romance Studies

External Senior Fellow (FRIAS School of Language & Literature)
April 2011 – March 2012

Last Update: 31.08.2012

Curriculum Vitae

Andreas Kablitz, born in 1957, studied Romance Languages at the University of Cologne with a scholarship of the renowned Studienstiftung des Deutschen Volkes. In 1981 he began to work as an Assistant at the University of (West-)Berlin, where he got his Ph. D. with a thesis on Lamartine in 1983. Within three years (supported by a scholarship of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft), he finished his ‘Habilitation’, qualifying him to lecture in Romance Languages and Literatures. In 1989 he started to lecture in Tübingen, and in 1990 he received and accepted a call to the University of Munich as a full professor and head of the department of Italian Literature. In 1994 he returned to Cologne, where – in addition to his professorial lecturing activities – he is now also the director of the Petrarca-Institute, member of the editorial board of the Romanistisches Jahrbuch and of the academic comittee of the Fritz-Thyssen-Stiftung. In 1997 he was awarded the Leibniz-Preis of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft. In 2006 Andreas Kablitz became member of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences and of the North Rhine-Westphalian Academy of Sciences. In 2007 he became member of the German National Academy of Sciences (Leopoldina). In 2010 he was appointed Commendatore of the Ordine della Stella della Solidarietà Italiana by the President of the Italian Republic. Although his special research interest of late centers on Dante, his essays cover a wide range of topics from French, Italian and English Literature, featuring e. g. Petrarch, Tasso and other authors from the Italian and French Renaissance as well as Shakespeare, Thomas Mann or Oscar Wilde. He has also been working on philosophers as Aristotle, Kant and Wittgenstein.

Selected Publications

„Lyrik des Selbstverlusts. Zur Kanzone Nr. 360 (mit einem Exkurs zur Geschichte christlicher Semantik des Eros)”, in: Geschichte und Vorgeschichte der modernen Subjektivität, hg. v. R. L. Fetz, R. Hagenbüchle und P. Schulz, Berlin/New York 1998, S. 567-611.
„Literatur, Fiktion und Erzähler nebst einem Nachruf auf den Erzähler“, in: Im Zeichen der Fiktion. Aspekte fiktionaler Rede aus historischer und systematischer Sicht. Festschrift für Klaus W. Hempfer zum 65. Geburtstag, hg. v. Irina Rajewski und Ulrike Schneider, Stuttgart 2008, S. 13-44.
„Bella menzogna. Mittelalterliche allegorische Dichtung und die Struktur der Fiktion (Dante, Convivio – Thomas Mann, Der Zauberberg – Aristoteles, Poetik), in: Literarische und religiöse Kommunikation in Mittelalter und früher Neuzeit, hg. v. P. Strohschneider, Berlin/New York 2009, S. 222-271.
„Theorie der Literatur und Kunst der Interpretation. Zu einigen Blindstellen literaturwissenschaftlicher Theoriebildung“, in: Poetica 41 (2009), S. 219-231.

FRIAS Project

Dante als Denker.

Dante’s Divine Comedy is predominantly, and for good reasons, considered to be a literary work. Yet, from a modern point of view, its literary status seems to exclude its claim for theory. On the contrary, in the eye’s of medieval authors and readers, both forms of discourse stand not at all necessarily in opposition to one another. In Dante’s dedication letter to Can Grande della Scala he defines poesia as a modus tractandi: as a specific mood of expression. Therefore, the project here presented aims at a demonstration of the doctrinal stratum of Dante’s epos. Already in his Convivio, he had used vernacular language for theoretical purposes. In the Commedia again, Dante uses the Tuscan volgare for a literary text which presents itself as an imitation of the Aeneid, competing with Vergil’s literary prestige. The Divine Comedy, thus, enlarges considerably the domain of Italian volgare. Yet, the very use of vernacular language allows for an elaboration of ontological as well as ethical and historical concepts which overtly contradict the theoretical positions of the official orthodox doctrine. This investigation into Dante’s elementary theological and philosophical concepts tries to develop a new approach to Dante’s chief work which overcomes an historically inappropriate separation between poetry and theory.