Literature and Literary Studies in the Twenty-First Century

Cultural Concerns – Concepts – Case Studies

440 Seiten, Taschenbuch

Kurzbeschreibung des Verlags

In the 21st century, the discipline of literary studies is faced with a considerable number of new challenges and cultural concerns which demand problem-solving strategies different from those envisaged by established approaches and theories. The present volume explores innovative pathways with regard to the question of how literary studies can be reconceptualised and engage with the key challenges of our time – from digitalisation, climate change, terrorism, animal rights and urbanisation to fake news, the financial crisis, global migration flows, resurgent nationalisms, changes in labour, and many more. The volume’s 24 contributions are dedicated to three main tasks: firstly, to rethinking literary studies by mapping out new models and approaches; secondly, to examining new forms and storytelling practices in contemporary literature; thirdly, to exploring literature’s engagement with current cultural concerns in British, US-American and Anglophone contexts.



CONTENTS


Preface & Acknowledgements ............................................................................ ix


ANSGAR NÜNNING, VERA NÜNNING & ALEXANDER SCHERR
Passion, Pleasure, Problem-Solving and Purpose:
Reinvigorating Literary Studies for the Twenty-First Century and Coping
with Challenges, Changing Contexts, Concerns and New Concepts ................... 1


I. NEW ORIENTATIONS AND APPROACHES IN LITERARY STUDIES


JAN ALBER
Towards a Critical Ethical Narratology:
Narrative Strategies and World Views ................................................................51


SIBYLLE BAUMBACH
“Only Connect”: The Aesthetics of Fragmentation and
Mindful Literary Studies .....................................................................................73


VERA NÜNNING
Empathy as a Key Twenty-First-Century Issue:
Disciplinary Challenges and the Value of Literature ..........................................93


ELIZABETH KOVACH & IMKE POLLAND-SCHMANDT
The Cultural Work of Forms:
Methods of New Formalism in the Twenty-First Century ................................117


II. EMERGING TRENDS, FORMS AND GENRES IN CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE


ELIZABETH KOVACH
Absurdly on the Job: A New Spirit of Humour, Work Ethics
and Narrative Aesthetics in Twenty-First-Century Office Fictions ...................137


ALEXANDER SCHERR
Cultural Concerns in Twenty-First-Century Plotless Fiction:
Everyday Experience, Form and ‘Possibilitarianism’ in Ben Lerner’s
Leaving the Atocha Station (2011) ....................................................................151


ALEXANDRA EFFE
Autofiction in the Anthropocene: Ben Lerner’s 10:04 (2014) ..........................167


CHRISTINE SCHWANECKE
Crashing Finances, Clashing Genres: David Hare’s
The Power of Yes (2009) as an Analysis of the 2007/8 Financial Crisis
in ‘Journalist-Academic-Narrative-Dramatic’ Terms .......................................185


III. KEY CULTURAL CONCERNS IN TWENTY-FIRST-CENTURY LITERATURE (I):
POLITICAL AND SOCIAL ISSUES IN TIMES OF CHANGE


IMKE POLLAND-SCHMANDT
Gauging the State of the Nation in ‘BrexLit’:
Literary Negotiations of Resurgent Nationalism and Regionalism ...................203


CLAIRE EARNSHAW
Groups and Group Identities in Contemporary British Fiction .........................221


GESINE BOWEN
Rituals and Ritual Change in the Twenty-First-Century Novel ........................233


CHRISTINA JORDAN
Staging Britain’s (A)Political Leader: Queen Elizabeth II
in Peter Morgan’s Play The Audience (2015) ...................................................245


MARIE-THERES STICKEL
How Publishing Houses Are Defying the Highly Digitalised Twenty-First
Century: Strategies of Branding and Designing Classic Books Series .............261


IV. KEY CULTURAL CONCERNS IN TWENTY-FIRST-CENTURY LITERATURE (II):
IMPERCEPTIBLE CHALLENGES FROM ENVIRONMENTAL RISKS TO MENTAL HEALTH


HANNAH KLAUBERT
Radiotoxic Flows in the World Risk Society:
New Fictions of Nuclear Disaster .....................................................................281


LIZA B. BAUER
Eating Kin or Making Kin?
Farm Animal Representations in Twenty-First-Century Fiction ......................297


RAHEL SIXTA SCHMITZ
The Network Apocalypse in Twenty-First-Century Weird Fiction:
Narratives of Interconnectedness, Cosmic Horror and the End of Mankind ....315


JENNIFER KAPPE
The ‘Monster’ of Depression in Adam Haslett’s Imagine Me Gone (2016) .....329


MARIJA SPIRKOVSKA
(Dis)Embodied Minds: Postmetropolitan Psychasthenia
in Don DeLillo’s Cosmopolis (2003) ................................................................343


V. KEY CULTURAL CONCERNS IN TWENTY-FIRST-CENTURY LITERATURE (III):
TRANSCULTURAL NARRATIVES AND DIASPORIC IDENTITIES IN ANGLOPHONE WRITING


NADIA BUTT
New Approaches to the Concepts of Memory in Twenty-First-Century
Literature: Multiple Modes of Transcultural Memory in
Vikram Seth’s Memoir Two Lives (2005) .........................................................359


SNEŽANA VULETIĆ
Time and Its Potentialities in Twenty-First-Century South African Fiction
in English: A Case Study of Zakes Mda’s The Heart of Redness (2000) .........375


DARIA STEINER
Literary and Cultural Interventions in Twenty-First-Century
Global Migration Crises: The Trope of Famine Walks in
Irish Fiction during and after the Celtic Tiger Period .......................................389


THERESA KRAMPE
Translocal Places in Twenty-First-Century British Migrant Literature:
Elaine Proctor’s Rhumba (2011) .......................................................................403


ELEONORA RAPISARDI
Changing Forms in Twenty-First-Century Caribbean Novels: Representing
Otherness in Junot Díaz’s The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao (2007) ......415

• Reihe: Studies in English Literary and Cultural History (ELCH) /Studien zur Englischen Literatur- und Kulturwissenschaft (ELK)
• ISBN: 9783868219265
• Sprache: Englisch
• Erscheinungsdatum: 26.10.2021
• Genre: Sprachwissenschaft, Literaturwissenschaft/Englische Sprachwissenschaft, Literaturwissenschaft
• Verlag: WVT Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Trier
• Herausgegeben von: Ansgar Nünning, Vera Nünning, Alexander Scherr