Szondi Concept Of Literature

Understanding (of literature), according to Szondi, should be defined as the dynamic, self-reflexive process or attempt at obtaining and consequent renewing of said knowledge. But has this been accomplished as of late? In his essay, Szondi questions whether or not literary scholars have been generating a comprehensive understanding of their objects of study. (Szondi 4) He poses this question in light of the advent of the natural sciences and their influence on literary scholarship by arguing that, in an attempt to legitimize its endeavors by calling itself a "science", literary “science” not only began emulating and imitating positivist methodologies that are not particularly suitable for the study of literature, but also generated endless
Then, we will take into consideration the status of literary studies in the twenty-first century.
Natural science has undeniably influenced the process of creating understanding, or perhaps supplanted it; by allowing or positivist methods to dictate how scholars in the humanities were to engage with their objects of study, the goal of understanding was exchanged for one of mindless gathering of facts, (Szondi 4) the fostering of a “spiritless empiricism,” as Wilhem Danzel puts it. While hollow, “at least [it] always [furnishes] genuine material, which can then be animated, whereas ingenious talk of things that are entirely non-existent [is] of no use whatsoever: ex nihilo nihil fit.”
This is a problem that Szondi points to as the source, the cause of literary scholarship’s neglect of the hermeneutical problems, or rather, the absence of hermeneutical awareness. (Szondi 6) In distancing him/herself from its object in order to adhere to objective purposes and processes that are privileged by the natural sciences, the subject and its cognitive perceptions become excluded, resulting in an inability detect his/her own subjectivity and complicity in defining the object. (Szondi