Forms at Work

New Formalist Approaches in the Study of Literature, Culture, and Media
Erscheinungsjahr 2021
ISBN: 978-3-86821-887-9
Verlag: WVT Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Trier

Buch, Englisch, Band 81, 318 Seiten, Format (B × H): 155 mm x 225 mm, Gewicht: 576 g

Reihe: Studies in English Literary and Cultural History (ELCH) /Studien zur Englischen Literatur- und Kulturwissenschaft (ELK)

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

Autoren/Hrsg.

Kovach, Elizabeth

Polland, Imke

Nünning, Ansgar

Nünnings, Ansgar