What do we want to discover about our subject ‘poetics’ in terms of literature? – Some of these questions:

• Which basic (literary) terms/concepts are addressed in the poetics? These can be divided into three categories considering literature in combination with its production and reception as well as the context in which this consideration is embedded

  • production (part of the author)

  • text (the subject itself: literature)

  • reception (part of the reader)

  • context (which (non-literary) contexts are used by the poetics)

• How are these term used? – Are some definitions changing? Or are some categories omitted? Is there a minimal vocabulary of a poetic? How is it limited by other artistic and literature theoretical genres (aesthetic, rhetoric, stylistic etc.)? The central question resulting is: What is the essence of a poetic and what is addressed by it?

• Which works of literary authors are named and cited? – In which contexts are they named and cited? Does the citation simply serve as illustration or is it used to confirm a previously written statement? Is dealt with their content? If so, is this done on scientific level? The latter remains interesting especially with respect to scientific works of literary authors.

• Are the poetics citing resp. referring to each other? Are they based on each other or contradicting each other? Are there several ‘schools’ to be identified accordingly?

• How are the references changing during the 200 years span of the examined corpus? Is the ‘canon’ of the cited (both literary and literature theoretical) works changing? Are the contexts in which the works are cited changing?