Literature and Literary Studies in the Twenty-First Century

Cultural Concerns – Concepts – Case Studies
Erscheinungsjahr 2021
ISBN: 978-3-86821-926-5
Verlag: WVT Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Trier

Buch, Englisch, 440 Seiten, Format (B × H): 155 mm x 225 mm, Gewicht: 795 g

Reihe: ELCH

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 VULETIC 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

Autoren/Hrsg.

Nünning, Ansgar

Nünning, Vera

Scherr, Alexander