Litteraturstudier: fra 2000

Anglophone Verse Novels as Gutter Texts draws on the notion of the 'gutter' in graphic narratives - the gap between panels that a reader has to imaginatively fill to generate narrative sequence - to analyse the largely overlooked literary form of the verse novel. Marked at all levels by the tense constellation of segment and sequence, and a conspicuously 'gappy' texture, verse novels offer productive alternatives to the dominant prose novel in contemporary fiction, where a similar 'gappiness' has become a hallmark, as illustrated by the loosely interlaced multi-strand plot structures of influential 'world novels' (Bolaño, Mitchell, Powers).The verse novel is a form particularly prolific in the postcolonial world and among diasporic or minoritarian writers in the Global North. This study concentrates on two of the most prominent areas in which verse novels distinguish themselves from the prose novel to read texts by Derek Walcott, Anne Carson, Bernardine Evaristo, Patience Agbabi and others: In 'planetary' verse novels from the Caribbean, Canada, Samoa and Hawai'i, the central trope of the volcano evokes a world in constant un/making; while post-national verse novels, particularly in Britain, modify the established paradigms of imagined communities. Dirk Wiemann's study speculates whether the resurgence of verse novels correlates with the apprehension of inhabiting a world that has become unpredictable and dangerous but also promising: a 'post-prosaic' world.

Focusing on Alice Munro's last three collections, this book examines the differences between these volumes and the rest of her work to analyse the emergence and the difference of her 'late style'.Alice Munro has effectively reshaped the short story as a form. This book focuses on Munro's art of recursion - an approach that has been evident throughout her career but came to the fore in her last three books, The View from Castle Rock (2006), Too Much Happiness (2009) and, especially, Dear Life (2012). This recursion and return manifest themselves not only in Munro's return to previously published pieces, but also to her discovery and meditations on her Scottish heritage, which can be read as entrance to her own understanding of herself and her life. Its provenance, displayed through archival evidence, is complex yet reveals a writer intent on a precise late style.Munro's final works serve as a coda to both her late style and to her entire career as arguably one of the finest short story writers ever to put pen to paper.

Across more than 30 chapters spanning migration, queerness, and climate change, this handbook captures how the interdisciplinary and intersectional endeavor of Age(ing) studies has shaped contemporary literary and film studies. In the early 21st century, the literary study of age and ageing in its cultural context has 'come of age': it has come to supplement and challenge a public discourse on ageing seen mainly as a political and demographic 'problem' in many countries of the world. Following a tripartite structure, it looks first at literary and film genres and how they have been shaped by knowledge about age and ageing, incorporating both narrative genres as well as poetry, drama and imagery. The second section includes chapters on key themes and concepts in Age(ing) Studies with examples from film and literature. The third section brings together case studies focussing on individual artists, national traditions and global ageing. Containing original contributions by pioneers in the field as well as new scholars from across the globe, it brings together current scholarship on ageing in literary and film studies, and offers new directions and perspectives.

A survey, within one volume, of the history of critical responses to LGBTQ literature from the beginning to the present day, this book explores changes in attitudes, literature and criticism over a period of two and a half thousand years. For various reasons it focuses on literature of 'the West', trying to give readers a clear sense, within a relatively short compass, not only of the development of 'queer' literature (perhaps the most encompassing of all terms) but especially of critical responses to that literature, notably during the past century and particularly the past fifty years.All in all, this book offers a roadmap to much of the excellent scholarship concerning LGBTQ literature that has arisen in the last half-century - an era of unparalleled interest in the topic and an era that has moved the topic from the distant sidelines of literary study to a place ever closer to the center of things.

Exploring the potential of poetry and poetic language as a means of conveying perspectives on later life, this book examines questions such as 'how can we understand ageing and later life?' and 'how can we capture the ambiguities and complexities that the experiences of growing old in time and place entail?' As poetic language illuminates, transfigures and enchants our being in the world, it also offers insights into the existential questions that are amplified as we age, including the vulnerabilities and losses that humble us and connect us. This volume suggests a path towards the poetics of ageing by means of presenting analyses of published poetry on ageing ranging from William Shakespeare to George Oppen; the use of reading and writing poetry among lay people in old age, including persons living with dementia; and the poetic nuances that emerge from other literary practices and contexts in relation to ageing - counting personal poetic reflections from many of the contributing authors

Bryan Giemza challenges the myth of the solitary genius, both in scientific and humanistic endeavors, and demonstrates how Cormac McCarthy is the exceptional figure whose work allows and encourages us to interrogate the marriage of the sciences and humanities. Drawing from previously unsurfaced archival connections as well as a range of primary sources and interview subjects, including those close to McCarthy, Giemza places McCarthy's work within contemporary scientific discourse and literary criticism. Timely and innovative in both content and structure, the volume includes a biographical examination of the writer's love of science and the path that led him to the Santa Fe Institute and offers a rare look behind its closed doors.The book probes the STEM subjects - with chapters focused on technology, engineering, and math - within and throughout McCarthy's fictional universe and biography. The final chapter explores McCarthy's friendship with Guy Davenport and their shared interest in creating a unified aesthetic theory alongside McCarthy's essays and most recent literary projects, The Passenger and Stella Maris. In arguing that science and art are connected by aesthetics, Giemza confirms the profound truth of McCarthy's unwavering belief that "There's a beauty to science" and a language of human understanding that transcends words.

Exploring what can be learnt when literary critics in the field of animal studies temporarily direct attention away from representations of nonhuman animals in literature and towards liminal figures like androids, aliens and ghosts, this book examines the boundaries of humanness. Simultaneously, it encourages the reader both to see nonhuman animals afresh and to reimagine the terms of our relationships with them.Examining imaginative texts by writers such as Octavia Butler, Philip K. Dick, Kazuo Ishiguro, Jeanette Winterson and J. M. Coetzee, this book looks at depictions of androids that redefine traditional humanist qualities such as hope and uniqueness. It examines alien visions that unmask the racist and heteronormative roots of speciesism. And it unpacks examples of ghosts and spirits who offer posthumous visions of having-been-human that decenter anthropocentrism. In doing so, it leaves open the potential for better relationships and futures with nonhuman animals.

By turns reflective, entertaining and moving, this book reveals how some of the most influential and best loved writers of our time were shaped by their inspirational teachers. Nobel laureate J. M. Coetzee, Margaret Drabble, Stephen Greenblatt, Ngugi wa Thiong'o, Andrew Motion, Gretchen Holbrook Gerzina and Paul Theroux are among the twenty contributors of original essays to this landmark volume celebrating masters of the teaching profession.What makes a good teacher? What lights the writer's creative fire? How can the teacher shape the writer? This book answers these questions and more, describing the powerful influence of mentors at an impressionable time of life, portraying the heart-warming transition from pupil to friend, and exploring the lasting impact that truly great teachers can have on their students.To have teachers who care, and to have such notable writers capture their spirit, is ample reason to read Dale Salwak's elegant celebration of the 'noble profession' and the world-renowned writers that it helped to hone.

Bringing together a diverse array of new and established scholars and creative writers in the rapidly expanding field of memory studies, this collection creatively delves into the multiple aspects of this wide-ranging field. Contributors explore race-ing memory; environmental studies and memory; digital memory; monuments, memorials, and museums; and memory and trauma. Organised around 7 sections, this book examines memory in a global context, from Kashmir and Chile to the US and UK. Featuring contributions on topics such as the Black Lives Matter movement; the AIDS crisis; and memory and the anthropocene, this book traces and consolidates the field while analysing and charting some of the most current and cutting-edge work, as well as new directions that could be taken.

Arguing that contemporary celebrity authors like Zadie Smith, Ian McEwan, Martin Amis, Kazuo Ishiguro, Salman Rushdie, Eimear McBride and Anna Burns position their work and public personae within a received modernist canon to claim and monetize its cultural capital in the lucrative market for literary fiction, this book also shows how the corporate conditions of marketing and branding have redefined older models of literary influence and innovation. It contributes to a growing body of criticism focused on contemporary literature as a field in which the formal and stylistic experimentation that came to define a canon of early 20th-century modernism has been renewed, contested, and revised. Other critics have celebrated these renewals, variously arguing that contemporary literature picks up on modernism's unfinished aesthetic revolutions in ways that have expanded the imaginative possibilities for fiction and revived questions of literary autonomy in the wake of postmodern nihilism. While this is a compelling thesis, and one that rightly questions an artificial and problematic periodization that still lingers in academic criticism, those approaches generally fail to address the material conditions that structure literary production and the generation of cultural capital, whether in the historical development of modernism or its contemporary permutations. This book addresses this absence by proposing a materialist history of modernism's afterlives.

Bringing together insights from masculinity studies and age studies, this open access book focuses on the gendered and relational perspectives in cultural representations of Alzheimer's disease.Combining a comparative and interdisciplinary approach, the authors analyse the interrelations between masculinities and representations of dementia from a wide range of cultural contexts to explore it as an intensely gendered and cultural disease.They examine memoir, film, poetry and prose fiction, and look at work from a wide range of authors, including Anne Carson, Jonathan Franzen and Philip Roth, to provide new insights into established narratives of dementia and explore the complex ways that the disease resists representation and narration and questions traditional views of selfhood and human development.The ebook editions of this book are available open access under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 licence on bloomsburycollections.com. Open access was funded by the ERA Gender-Net+ Project MASCAGE, the University of Graz (Center for Inter-American Studies) and the Government of Styria, Austria.

'Writing during the Disasters' is devoted to conceptualizing the relation between suffering and poetic writing. This monograph investigates contemporary experimental American poetry which addresses forms of suffering that are largely entwined with structural dynamics. The book elaborates how particular poetic practices "materialize" and "write through" ongoing conditions of suffering which shape the present. In its interaction with works by seven poets and one artist collective, this study mobilizes and interlaces a variety of critical theoretical approaches - from affect theory, queer theory, Afropessimism, Black feminism, and new materialisms to psychoanalysis, dialectical materialism, and deconstruction. Moreover, this study develops novel terminological renditions of the nexus between suffering and literary representation. Ultimately, 'Writing during the Disasters' argues for "suffering" to be considered a valid and more prominent category of analysis in cultural and literary studies.

Günter Grass wird in der Forschung und Öffentlichkeit primär als Schriftsteller wahrgenommen. Er war aber auch ein einflussreicher politischer Akteur. Sein politisches Engagement beschränkte sich nicht auf die Ära Brandt, sondern bestimmte auch die Berliner Republik. Mit seiner kommunikativen Macht prägte er als Intellektueller öffentliche Diskurse und beriet Spitzenpolitiker, wie unveröffentlichte Quellen und Hintergrundgespräche belegen.

Working at the intersection of psychoanalytic, queer, and transgender theories, this book argues for the need to read Lacanian psychoanalysis through a queer and trans-positive framework. In so doing, it challenges the dimensions of fantasy at play in efforts to insist on the continued validity of the binary gender system. Targeting the Lacanian concept of "sexual difference" - that desire is structured through the difference between masculine and feminine - it argues that this idea is not transhistorical, as orthodox Lacanians claim, but rather a historically contingent fantasy. As such, it argues that psychoanalytic queer theorists need to go beyond this fantasy to register truly the full range of sexualities and modes of embodiment. Examining texts as diverse as films such as Hedwig and the Angry Inch and literary texts such as Paul takes the Form of a Mortal Girl, the book enables a queer and trans- inclusive model of theorizing subjectivity in psychoanalysis, psychosocial studies and cultural studies.

Moral Complexities in Turn of the Millennium British Literature offers a critical analysis of moral complexity and social responsibility in works by Kazuo Ishiguro, Patrick McGrath, Graham Swift, Andrea Levy, and Jeanette Winterson. Mara Reisman argues that through their writing, these authors reveal and upset literary, cultural, and political fictions and encourage readers to think carefully about language, power, community, and social justice. The book examines moral issues in two different ways: how books by these authors address morally complex social, political, and cultural issues and how their books serve a moral function by challenging readers to be socially engaged. Reisman provides an in-depth analysis of The Remains of the Day, Asylum, The Light of Day, Small Island, and The Daylight Gate and uses these books to discuss twentieth- and twenty-first-century British politics and culture. These books address a wide variety of issues often associated with moral judgments: war, racism, adultery, maternal neglect, murder, professional misconduct, witchcraft, and religion. Despite this diversity and settings that range from the seventeenth century to the late twentieth century, these books include similar arguments about how empathy, personal responsibility, and civic engagement can create more productive social relations and a less divided world.

An important resource not only for scholars and students of Japanese literature, comparative literature, and world literature but also for readers who would like to gain a deeper appreciation of Haruki Murakami's literary world.

Explores and interrogates the many and diverse perspectives of the new frontiers of African literary studies.

Edwidge Danticat's prolific body of work has established her as one of the most important voices in 21st-century literary culture. Across such novels as Breath, Eyes, Memory, Farming the Bones and short story collections such as Krik? Krak! and most recently Everything Inside, essays, and writing for children, the Haitian-American writer has throughout her oeuvre tackled important contemporary themes including racism, imperialism, anti-immigrant politics, and sexual violence. With chapters written by leading and emerging international scholars, this is the most up-to-date and in-depth reference guide to 21st-century scholarship on Edwidge Danticat's work. The Bloomsbury Handbook to Edwidge Danticat covers such topics as: · The full range of Danticat's writing from her novels and short stories to essays, life writing and writing for children and young adults. · Major interdisciplinary scholarly perspectives including from establishing fields fields of literary studies, Caribbean Studies Political Science, Latin American Studies, feminist and gender studies, African Diaspora Studies, , and emerging fields such as Environmental Studies. · Danticat's literary sources and influences from Haitian authors such as Marie Chauvet, Jacques Roumain and Jacques-Stéphen Alexis to African American authors like Zora Neale Hurston, Toni Morrison, and Caribbean American writers Audre Lorde to Paule Marshall. · Known and unknown Historical moments in experiences of slavery and imperialism, the consequence of internal and external migration, and the formation of diasporic communities The book also includes a comprehensive bibliography of Danticat's work and key works of secondary criticism, and an interview with the author, as well as and essays by Danticat herself.