Literature and Literary Studies in the Twenty-First Century

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 Morg