Which forms of agency does literature offer to the reader in the twenty-first century? This study investigates migrant lives in contemporary fiction published by young British Asian writers. Examining the protagonists’ ideas of ›success‹ in becoming a full member of their society, Jessica Fischer carves out the naturalised model of homo economicus in these texts and in contemporary fictio…
Bluestocking Feminism and British-German Cultural Transfer, 1750–1837 examines the processes of cultural transfer between Britain and Germany during the Personal Union, the period from 1714 to 1837 when the kings of England were simultaneously Electors of Hanover. While scholars have generally focused on the political and diplomatic implications of the Personal Union, Alessa Johns offers…
In medieval and early modern times, female visionary writers used the mode of prophecy to voice their concerns and ideas, against the backdrop of cultural restrictions and negative stereotypes. In this book, Deborah Frick analyses medieval visionary writings by Julian of Norwich and Margery Kempe in comparison to seventeenth-century visionary writings by authors such as Anna Trapnel, Mary Carey…
In a celebratory moment of the Paradiso, Dante has Thomas go round the circle of sage spirits identifying each in turn in point of proper calling and confirming how it is that self is everywhere present to the other-than-self as a co-efficient of being in the endless and endlessly varied instantiation of that being. The image, at once perfectly Dantean and perfectly resplendent, underlies and i…
Comparisons not only prove fundamental in the epistemological foundation of modernity (Foucault, Luhmann), but they fulfil a central function in social life and the production of art. Taking a cue from the Practice Turn in sociology, the contributors are investigating the role of comparative practices in the formation of eighteenth-century literature and culture. The book conceives of social pr…
The Art of Distances identifies a preoccupation with interpersonal distance in a strand of 20th-century literature that includes the work of Orwell, Morand, Canetti, Murdoch, Benjamin, Ernaux, Grass, and Galgut. Specifically, Stan shows that these authors engage in philosophical meditations on the ethical question of how to live with others and how to find an ideal interpersonal distance at his…
Literary scholars have traditionally understood landscapes, whether natural or manmade, as metaphors for humanity instead of concrete settings for people's actions. This book accepts the natural world as such by investigating how Anglo-Saxons interacted with and conceived of their lived environments. Examining Old English poems, such as Beowulf and Judith, as well as descriptions of natural eve…
Anti-Empire explores how different writers across Lusophone spaces have engaged with imperial and colonial power at its various levels of domination, while imagining alternatives to dominant discourses pertaining to race, ethnicity, culture, gender, sexuality, and class. Guided by a theoretically eclectic approach ranging from Psychoanalysis, Deconstruction, Postcolonial Theory, Queer Theory, a…
Europa kann neu gedacht werden: nicht von den Grenzen und Leitdifferenzen her, sondern von den Übergängen. Die aus vier Kontinenten stammenden Beiträgerinnen und Beiträger befassen sich mit der Frage, inwiefern die Fähigkeit, ästhetische, sprachliche und kulturelle Übergänge angesichts hoher Heterogenität hervorzubringen, Europa am ehesten ausmacht. Von Fatou Diome bis Yoko Tawada, von…
Trauma has become a hotly contested topic in literary studies. But interest in trauma is not new; its roots extend to the Romantic period, when novelists and the first psychiatrists influenced each others' investigations of the 'wounded mind'. This book looks back to these early attempts to understand trauma, reading a selection of Romantic novels in dialogue with Romantic and contemporary psyc…