Abstract

In 1769, Johann Gottfried Herder describes a private reading experience of a remarkably paradoxical nature. He tells us that he can only read ‘his’ Homer properly when he hears Homer singing Greek, while silently reading and translating by means of his German thoughts and mother tongue. Herder’s performative reading is anchored in what I call aural philology, a method innovative in its emphasis on the aural dimension in reconstructively imagining historical epochs. It is one which demarcates cultural difference through practices of listening and their remediation into reading. The problem, for Herder, is how to constitute the particularity of the German people even in affective acts of reading that, however momentarily, suspend cultural differentiation through effects of presence. I distinguish Herder’s philology from Vico and others who emphasized the oral origins of the Homeric epic, along with recent theories of philology as an affective, aurally mediated process. The article is an alternative view on the role of media in enlightenment theories of literature and culture separate from Friedrich Kittler’s Discourse Networks 1800/1900. Herder’s aural philology identifies a moment in the history of aurality and cultural difference, one that does not move fixedly towards modernity.

中文翻译：

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听觉语言学：牧民听到荷马唱歌

摘要

1769年，约翰·戈特弗里德·赫德（Johann Gottfried Herder）描述了一种非常悖论的私人阅读经历。他告诉我们，只有听到荷马演唱希腊语时，他才能正确地阅读“他的”荷马，同时用他的德语思想和母语默默地阅读和翻译。牧民的表演性阅读以我所说的听觉语言学为基础，一种创新的方法，强调重建历史时期的听觉维度。它是通过聆听和将其矫正为阅读的实践来界定文化差异的一种方法。对于赫德来说，问题在于，即使在情感的阅读行为中如何构成德国人民的特殊性，然而这种情感的行为暂时却通过存在的影响而中止了文化差异。我将赫德的语言学与维科（Vico）和其他强调荷马史诗的口头起源的人，以及最近的语言学理论（作为情感的，以听觉为媒介的过程）理论区分开来。本文是关于媒体在文学和文化启蒙理论中的作用的另一种观点，与弗里德里希·基特勒的“话语网络” 1800/1900分开。赫德的听觉语言学确定了听觉和文化差异史上的一个时刻，这一时刻并没有固定地走向现代性。