Suchergebnisse

Verlagsinfo: In this trenchant and lively study Brian McHale undertakes to construct a version of postmodernist fiction which encompasses forms as wide-ranging as North American metafiction, Latin American magic realism, the French New New Novel, concrete prose and science fiction. Considering a variety of theoretical approaches including those of Ingarden, Eco, Dolezel, Pavel, and Hrushovski, McHale shows that the common denominator is postmodernist fiction's ability to thrust its own ontological status into the foreground and to raise questions about the world (or worlds) in which we live. Exploiting various theoretical approaches to literary ontology - those of Ingarden, Eco, Dolezel, Pavel, Hrushovski and others - and ranging widely over contemporary world literature, McHale assembles a comprehensive repertoire of postmodernist fiction's strategies of world-making and -unmaking.

Directions in Empirical Literary Studies is on the cutting edge of empirical studies and is a much needed volume. It both widens the scope of empirical studies and looks at them from an intercultural perspective by bringing together renowned scholars from the fields of philosophy, sociology, psychology, linguistics and literature, all focusing on how empirical studies have impacted these different areas. Theoretical issues are discussed and solid methods are presented. Some chapters also show the relation between empirical studies and new technology, examining developments in computer science.

Abstract
This essay uses constructions of avowed fiction from modern Western literature and criticism (Erich Auerbach, Virginia Woolf, William Faulkner) to question the sense of reality constructed by dominant social discourses that claim to be the mere expression of reality. Avowed fiction has in fact an "epistemological" privilege: it is not obliged to deny its fictional character. It must build and make visible these modes of presentation of situations and the connection of events that appear elsewhere to be imposed by the very obviousness of the real. In such a way it can better teach us the multiple ways of creating a sense of reality and their links with the forms of the social order.

Introduction : new directions, new approaches / Ana Cristina Mendes, Lucinda Newns, and Sarah Ilott -- Transcultural performance in diasporic contexts : spectating otherness at home and abroad / Miki Flockemann -- Performing street art : CityLeaks, affiliation, and transcultural diaspora / Cathy Covell Waegner -- Mythology of the space frontier : diaspora, liminality, and the practices of remembrance in Nalo Hopkinson's midnight robber / Agnieszka Podruczna -- Speculative diasporas : Hari Kunzru's historical consciousness, the rhetoric of interplanetary colonization, and the locus-colonial novel / Rachel Rochester -- Diasporic ways of knowing : Teju Cole's open city / Christiane Steckenbiller -- Emotional geographies of London : Doris Lessing's diasporic vision / Ágnes Györke -- Everyday emotions and migration : affect in Monica Ali's Brick Lane / Sibyl Adam -- British new slaveries in Chris Cleave's The other hand and Caryl Phillips's In the falling snow : diachronic and synchronic reflections / Pietro Deandrea -- Gendered silence in transnational narratives / Karen D'Souza

This paper seeks to introduce the oeuvre of the Polish science fiction author, Stanislaw Lem, whose work is argued to carry significance for students of organizational conduct. Singling out his most famous novel, Solaris, for particular attention, a critical interpretation is offered that selectively highlights Lem's epistemological and ontological pre-occupations concerning scientific inquiry and the human condition. These concerns are seen to resonate with contemporary issues in the field of organization studies. In particular, the rhetorical role of mimesis, viewed as a synthesis of rational and non-rational human motives, within Solaris is taken to inform a wide range of human conduct. The paper concludes by calling for a realist mode of organizational discourse that explores the dialectical relationship between what it characterizes as `solar' and `lunar' dimensions of human behaviour. A new challenge to organization studies will be not simply to learn from the substantive concerns of literary genres such as science fiction, but also to aspire after the narrative skills of their leading exponents.

The concept of friendship has long been central to the field of eighteenth-century literary studies, not least because it was presented by the era's own authors as an essential aspect of their literary identities. For writers like Alexander Pope and Jonathan Swift, being known as a good friend was just as important as gaining literary reputation. Friendship and Allegiance builds on recent scholarly interest both in friendship itself and more broadly in the relationship between privacy and publicity in the eighteenth century. It investigates how the idea of personal friendship could be distorted by its role in public discourse and whether friendship's value or meaning can ever be securely established in the midst of wider political, social and cultural debates. The book offers new ways of thinking about eighteenth-century friendship and about the prominent authors of the time who attempted to make sense of it.