Zwischen Imagination, Projektion und Erfahrung: Topoi des Dörflichen und ihre Funktionen in der Gegenwart

Going back to pre-ancient histories of settling and production, villages provide a historical reservoir of cultural experience and imagination. This can also be experienced and traced back – especially from a European perspective – by looking at literature. Today, villages and village-tales appear to be contested in three different modes: At first, historically and socially in the course of the development of late-modern societies, villages are dissolved as unities, structures and life-models. Secondly, within the self-description of modernity, villages appear mostly as residual spaces or areas of cultural criticism. Ultimately, the number of people living in villages is steadily decreasing. Despite these three modes of contestation, it seems quite surprising that in contemporary media the representation and discussion of villages is increasing again once more. However, the revival of the village cannot be solely interpreted as a form of escape or regression from the challenges of modernity. Instead, it seems to be another contribution to the discussion of life-modalities under the conditions of a further developing modernity. Moreover, within these discourses the aesthetics and functions of village-settings appear to obtain a key role. Literary village stories absorb sociocultural transformations and work on a (self-) reflexive rewriting of rural living environments.