1.1 The Texts

Currently, the following works are available online:

Gottfried August Bürger (Gedichte)
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (Gedichte letzter Hand; West-östlicher Divan)
Friedrich von Schiller (Gedichte)
Friedrich Hölderlin (Gedichte)
Ludwig Uhland (Gedichte)
Joseph von Eichendorff (Gedichte und Epen)
August Graf von Platen (Gedichte)
Annette von Droste-Hülshoff (Gedichte)
Heinrich Heine (Gedichte)
Nikolas Lenau (sämtliche Gedichte)
Eduard Mörike (sämtliche Gedichte)
Friedrich Hebbel (sämtliche Gedichte)
Gottfried Keller (Gedichte)
Conrad Ferdinand Meyer (sämtliche Gedichte)
Hugo von Hofmannsthal (Gedichte)
Rainer Maria Rilke (Gedichte)
Georg Trakl (sämtliche Werke)
Georg Heym (sämtliche Werke)
Alfred Lichtenstein (sämtliche Werke)

Further texts are in preparation and will be available at a later date.

The objective is to compile a representative corpus of modern German literature enabling a wider and more comprehensive analysis of the material.

A fundamental difference to many of the available sources of digitally prepared texts is that the texts presented here have been linguistically developed and prepared: i.e. each corpus or part thereof (contained in separate folders) is accompanied by a lemmatised word list or dictionary. The approach to literary criticism and the posing of relevant questions concerning poetic vocabulary and usage ought to be based on texts subjected to this type of preparation. This would include information on the distribution and frequency of the principal word classes (cf. 1.2), comparisons of the vocabulary used by different authors and detailed examination of the contexts etc. (A simple index of words is of less value for this type of research.)

As the corpus increases in size and variety, the possibilities for more extensive analysis are assured. This may lead to a deeper understanding of aspects of change in theme and subject matter in modern German literature.