Der Dialog im Spannungsfeld von Schriftlichkeit und Mündlichkeit

Towards the end of the 18th century there was a veritable boom in the production of novels in dialogue form. Whereas, however, the comparable genre of the epistolary novel centres around the letter and thus remains anchored in the medium of writing, dialogue stands at the interface between the written and the oral. The upshot of this is that 'dialogue novels' have not been regarded as a genre in their own right but discussed rather in terms of changing communicative parameters in the context of the evolution of writing, printing, literacy and reading. On the basis of a poetological discussion of the central idea of Vergegenwärtigung ('actualization'), the present study begins by outlining the theory and programmatic conception of dialogue as 'invented orality', proceeding from there to examine its relevance for the educational tenets of the period and then engaging in analyses of dialogue novels by Wezel and popular authors of the late Enlightenment, Klinger, Wieland, de Sade, Diderot, and Rousseau, pointing up in each instance the specific use made of dialogue as a literary technique.