Pens at Work.
Phenomenology, Epistemology and Poetology of Reading Traces using the Example of Thomas Mann's Legacy Library

Dissertation project by Manuel Bamert

Thomas Mann's textual legacy includes not only what he wrote himself, but also what he read himself. Thus, in addition to manuscripts, the Thomas Mann Archive at ETH Zurich also houses his private library, a collection of around 4300 books and other text documents that Thomas Mann once called his own.
The processing of knowledge through reading techniques such as underlining or annotating are at the same time historically and culturally conditioned as well as individually carried out practices. A research project at ETH Zurich is currently dedicated to these practices and their traces. For the first time, the entire collection of Thomas Mann's private library is being systematically examined for traces of reading, after which all units with traces of reading will be completely digitised. The aim of this research project is to create a digital research tool that can be used to search specifically for these reading traces.
With these technological possibilities, however, unresolved theoretical and methodological questions return with new urgency. It is true that private libraries have long been attributed considerable value by authors - among other things because of the reading traces they contain. But no consensus has yet emerged on the fundamental question of what scholarly knowledge these reading traces actually permit.
This finding is the starting point of my dissertation project with the central question: What is the literary-scientific knowledge potential of the reading traces in Thomas Mann's private library? I have planned the following structure: First, I will give a source-critical overview of the history of Thomas Mann's private library. This is followed by the core of the work with the three parts on the phenomenology, epistemology and poetology of the reading traces. In the first part on phenomenology, I subject the terms and definitions of previous research on reading traces to critical scrutiny and contrast them with my own terminology and typology, whereupon a formal description and classification of the phenomena found can be undertaken. In the second part on epistemology, I then work out how and on the basis of which reading processes such reading traces arise. And in the third part on poetology, I finally ask about the significance of these phenomena for the study of writing processes as well as about the status of reading traces within the oeuvre as a whole - not least against the background of Thomas Mann's estate consciousness.