Introduction

The particular procedure of distant reading that I want to introduce here by the name of “detoured reading” is in some respects so selfevident that it does not really seem to require programmatic advocates. Indeed, my suggestion is fairly simple: research and carefully analyze as many documents of reception as can be found on a particular work of literature in order to get an impression of how the work was understood by its contemporaries before hypothesizing about the literary work's meaning and significance.

As self-evident as this approach may seem, it is rarely actually practiced. Literary historians, so far, have not yet shown themselves to be very interested in just anybody's opinion on a work of art. Rather, we meet the same few quotations over and over again in the secondary literature, which are drawn from only a handful of reception documents, mostly from other authors of the period or other personalities important enough to catch our attention. Since the meritorious early efforts to edit reception documents have been discontinued, we find ourselves in the unpleasant situation that—even for periods from which documents of reception are abundant—we rarely if ever have easy access to them. The series Wirkung der Literatur: Deutsche Autoren im Urteil ihrer Kritiker, edited by Karl Robert Mandelkow from 1969 to 1980, was abandoned after less than a dozen volumes; the series Werk und Wirkung: Dokumentationen zur deutschen Literatur, edited by the “Zentralantiquariat der DDR” from 1976 to 1988, ceased publication after only four volumes.