This study furnishes literary anthropological research with a number of fruitful routes for approaching the issue of "literature and knowledge." It elaborates the ways that knowledge is represented in contemporary German narrative texts (1996-2007), and how it functions as a tool for constructing life concepts.
The creation of life has always spurred literary and cinematic productivity. Due to scientific progress in the fields of microbiology and genetics, countless novels and films today reflect the idea of human cloning more than other ideas. While the clone is often seen as the epitome of the posthuman, contemporary texts and films tend to modify the concept and (re)humanize the clone. It can be said that fictional literature and films play a pivotal role in the construction, modification, and circulation of concepts. Based on a cognitive linguistic concept of concept, the clone will be analyzed as an epistemic object. Focusing on conceptual processes of the configuration of knowledge, this article will show how the process of conceptualization works in literary texts and films and describe the techniques by which categories and concepts are constantly modified. Thus, it will be argued that literature and film play an active part in shaping a society's stock of knowledge.
