Literature in the Cultures of the World

The Friedrich Schlegel Graduate School of Literary Studies supervises dissertations from the field of literary studies that deal with texts from the European, American, Arabic and Asian cultural area. The idea is for the doctoral students, inter alia, to combine comparative text, media and cultural approaches with theoretical questions and to identify connections between literary texts and cultural processes. Fields of research include the relations between literary texts, the interconnections between literary texts and processes of text reflection, rhetoric and poetics, correlations between literature and other aesthetic media, as well as the mutual dependence on literature and discourses of knowledge. With his work, the cultural philosopher, literary historian and translator Friedrich Schlegel (1772–1829) created the prerequisites for the development of theoretically demanding and sophisticated, methodologically innovative literary studies as have been successfully represented at the Freie Universität Berlin for many years. Literary studies that are internationally focused and that reflect questions of comparative culture and media are associated with the name of Friedrich Schlegel.