Forms at Work

New Formalist Approaches in the Study of Literature, Culture, and Media

318 Seiten, Taschenbuch

Kurzbeschreibung des Verlags

Since the beginning of the 20th century, formalism has had a venerable tradition in literary studies. A notable upsweep of interest in, proposed approaches to, and scholarly debates about form and new formalist methods in the study of literature and culture has been evident in recent years. New formalist perspectives offer intriguing analytical possibilities that move beyond focusing solely on the formal features of texts to also consider contextual relations. This volume explores the horizons and heuristic potential opened up by new formalisms of the 21st century that focus on the cultural work of form. It aims to put the conceptual and analytical potentials offered by new formalist approaches on display as well as under scrutiny. Its articles present critical new-formalist examinations of early modern, Victorian, modern and contemporary Anglo-American literature as well as a television series, films, and a graphic novel. With these case-study analyses, the volume demonstrates the wide-ranging applicability of a renewed and growing field in the study of literary and culture.



CONTENTS



Preface and Acknowledgements .................................................................................. vii


ELIZABETH KOVACH, IMKE POLLAND AND ANSGAR NÜNNING
Introduction: Towards a New Formalism?
Conceptual and Theoretical Explorations ..................................................................... 1


I. THE CULTURAL WORK OF FORMS IN ANGLO-AMERICAN LITERATURE
FROM THE EARLY MODERN TO THE VICTORIAN PERIOD


KATHRIN BETHKE
Love’s Accountants: Double-Entry Bookkeeping
and the Sonnet Form in Early Modern England ......................................................... 25


CHRISTINE SCHWANECKE
Worlds of Sighs, Stories, and Music: The Cultural Work
of Alter-Generic and Intermedial Forms in Jacobean Tragedy ................................... 41


SIJIE WANG
Conflictive Forms, Reformative Conflicts:
The Inversion of Hierarchies in Aphra Behn’s Oroonoko .......................................... 55


ALEXANDER SCHERR
The Fragment at Work: Thomas Carlyle’s Novel Sartor Resartus (1834)
as Implicit Theory of Form and Model for Cultural Change ...................................... 71


II. THE CULTURAL WORK OF FORMS
IN MODERN AND CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE


WOLFGANG HALLET
The Cultural and Social Power of Semiotic Forms in the Novel ................................ 87


ALENA HEINRITZ
Forms of Work as Work of Form: The Poetics of Work and Labor
in Texts by Tret’yakov, Platonov, and Shalamov ..................................................... 105


MAREIKE GLIER
The Journals of Jim Elliot (1948–1955):
Affordances and Constraints of the Modern Spiritual Diary .................................... 121


DANIELA HENKE
‘Unreadable’ Texts. An Analysis towards the Ethics of Form
on the Basis of Holocaust Fictions by Thomas Lehr and Thomas Harlan ................ 133


MICHAELA BECK
From Plural to Impersonal: We-Narration
and Neoliberal Paradigms of Feeling in Contemporary U.S. Novels ....................... 151


KATRIN BECKER
Intersections of Class and Narrative Discourse:
Forms at Work in Zadie Smith’s NW ........................................................................ 167


ALEXANDRA EFFE
Forms at Work in Testimony: A Cognitive New Formalist Approach ..................... 185


III. THE CULTURAL WORK OF FORMS IN CONTEMPORARY MEDIA
JULIA VAEßEN
Cultural Models, Character Reception, and the Relevance of Form ......................... 205


REGINA LEONIE SCHMIDT
The Either-Or Decision – Illustrating Binary Forms at Work
by Means of the Patient’s Dilemma in Grey’s Anatomy (2005–) ............................. 223


EWELINA PEPIAK
Why Can’t We All Just Get Along?
Métissage and Whiteness in French Multicultural Comedy ..................................... 239


MAX BERGMANN
From Database Cinema to YouTube Aesthetics:
Digital Network Structures and Filmic Form ........................................................... 257


SARAH J. LINK
“The Camera Never Lies”: Form and Objectivity
in Warren Ellis and Ben Templesmith’s Fell: Feral City ......................................... 273


JULIA CAROLINE BÖCKLING
“Privacy Is Theft”: The Form of the List
in Depicting Social Media Engagement in Dave Eggers’ The Circle ........................ 291


Notes on Contributors ............................................................................................... 305

• Reihe: Studies in English Literary and Cultural History (ELCH) /Studien zur Englischen Literatur- und Kulturwissenschaft (ELK)
• ISBN: 9783868218879
• Sprache: Englisch
• Erscheinungsdatum: 02.02.2021
• Genre: Sprachwissenschaft, Literaturwissenschaft/Englische Sprachwissenschaft, Literaturwissenschaft
• Verlag: WVT Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Trier
• Herausgegeben von: Elizabeth Kovach, Imke Polland, Ansgar Nünning