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Professor Fludernik | Projects

You can find an overview of all of Prof. Fludernik's DFG-funded projects (in German) here.

Current Projects

Diachronic Narratology / Narratologie Diachron

Reinhart-Koselleck-Projekt
[Beginn: 1. Oktober 2019]

The project Diachronic Narratology initiates a major innovative reorientation in narratological study by tracing functional shifts and new narrative strategies in the history of English narrative. It is concerned with establishing continuities and discontinuities in the narrative discourse of texts from the late medieval period onwards. Like diachronic linguistics, diachronic narratology seeks to compare synchronic systems of narrative structure at various points on a historical scale in order to discuss to what extent the affordances of narrative remain the same or eliminate certain features and acquire new ones, thereby reshaping the system on the next temporal level. Thus, similar to the way in which sound shifts reorganize phonemic systems, key changes in the construction of narratives on the plot and discourse levels can be documented to result in new narrative systems. It is the main aim of the current project to document such paradigm shifts in the course of English narrative from the thirteenth century onwards and to then re-pose the question of narratology's universalist claims. Do the stages of the developments which the research has identified warrant the diagnosis of distinct narratological paradigms for each historical period, or can the categories of narratological analysis familiar from classical narratology be historically inflected so that the current postclassical narratological paradigm is able to accommodate narratives across historical periods? The challenge of the project is to find how functional parameters can be integrated into what are traditionally static and descriptive categories in the narratological paradigm.

Articles on the project:

Reorientation in Narratology: Monika Fludernik Elucidates Her Research in the Reinhart Koselleck Project "Diachronic Narratology" (March 2023)

Changing Narrative Forms: English Scholar Monika Fludernik Wants to Open up New Horizons in Literary Studies with a Prestigious Reinhart Koselleck Project (Aug. 2019)

Press Release University of Freiburg (July 2019)

 

Project Outline

TOPIC | Narratology, in its structuralist manifestation, was a predominantly synchronic enterprise that aimed at providing an analysis of narratives by means of universally valid descriptive categories. Its main objective was to demonstrate how narratives 'work', proposing a narrative semantics and grammar based on the model of synchronic linguistics.

The project Diachronic Narratology initiates a major innovative reorientation in narratological study by tracing functional shifts and new narrative strategies in the history of English narrative. It is concerned with establishing continuities and discontinuities in the narrative discourse of texts from the late medieval period onwards. Like diachronic linguistics, diachronic narratology seeks to compare synchronic systems of narrative structure at various points on a historical scale in order to discuss to what extent the affordances of narrative remain the same or eliminate certain features and acquire new ones, thereby reshaping the system on the next temporal level. Thus, similar to the way in which sound shifts reorganize phonemic systems, key changes in the construction of narratives on the plot and discourse levels can be documented to result in new narrative systems. It is the main aim of the current project to document such paradigm shifts in the course of English narrative from the thirteenth century onwards and to then re-pose the question of narratology's universalist claims. Do the stages of the developments which the research has identified warrant the diagnosis of distinct narratological paradigms for each historical period, or can the categories of narratological analysis familiar from classical narratology be historically inflected so that the current postclassical narratological paradigm is able to accommodate narratives across historical periods? The challenge of the project is to find how functional parameters can be integrated into what are traditionally static and descriptive categories in the narratological paradigm.


RELATION TO FLUDERNIK'S RESEARCH CAREER |
Basing her research on the work of Franz Karl Stanzel, Monika Fludernik has over many years significantly contributed to the reorientation of narratology towards a discipline that considers narrative before the eighteenth century (classical narratology having focused primarily on the eighteenth to twentieth-century novel). Fludernik began to focus on the history of narrative as early as her habilitation book, The Fictions of Language and the Languages of Fiction: The Linguistic Representation of Speech and Consciousness (1993), in which she followed the development of the techniques of speech and thought representation from Middle English to the present, concentrating on free indirect discourse (FID). Thanks to her wide chronological range, she was able to document the existence of FID in (oral) conversational narratives and, to some extent, also in pre-eighteenth-century texts, and to document the technique's rise to prominence in the eighteenth century even before Jane Austen's oeuvre. In her second monograph, Towards a 'Natural' Narratology (1996), Fludernik specifically proposed a thesis about the rise of the novel from a discourse-oriented perspective. According to this thesis, the episodic pattern of oral storytelling, which demonstrably appears as a substrate in English in early vernacular narratives from the thirteenth century onwards, can be shown to phase out during the Renaissance period and to evolve into the narrative structures common in novelistic discourse (see also 2007). In addition, Fludernik has concerned herself with the historical present tense, with narrative discourse markers and collective narration from a diachronic perspective (1991, 2011; 1995, 2000; 2014). This research can be seen as a series of preliminary steps towards the project for which funding is here requested. In 2003, she programmatically called for the diachronization of narratology in an essay in the leading narratological journal, Narrative (see 2003a).


CURRENT STATE OF RESEARCH |
These calls for a historical analysis in the decade between 1993 and 2003 have been taken up by a number of researchers since the millennium. Ansgar Nünning (2000), Irene de Jong (2014; de Jong et al. 2004) and David Herman (2011) in their turn have seconded a diachronic perspective on narrative. At the same time, and independently from English-language narratological criticism, medieval German scholars have focused on narratological questions in medieval narrative and other classical scholars besides Irene de Jong have done the same for Latin and Greek texts. However, as Susan Lanser (2017) remarks, the bulk of narratological work continues to discuss nineteenth and twentieth-century narratives, paying little attention to earlier texts or the historical dimension. Where there has been extensive research, this has concentrated on what Eva von Contzen calls historical narratology (2014, 2016). This field of narratological study is to be found mostly in Germany's German, English and Classics departments. Its main objective is the description of Greek, Latin, medieval German or medieval English narratives with a view towards relativizing the categories of classical narratology (Genette, Chatman, Stanzel).

By applying the familiar narratological toolbox to their material, these researchers have been analyzing their respectively classical, medieval and early modern texts. Frequently, this research has resulted in disappointment and dissatisfaction with the standard narratological categories, and there have been suggestions that an entirely different terminology or new concepts may be required to adequately deal with narrative in these periods. For instance, the distinction between author and narrator, one of the key tenets of classical narratology, has received extensive criticism from medieval scholars, who see the author as the main textual authenticator (Chaucer's "I" is taken to refer to the author and not to a narrator figure).[1] These scholars also point out that medieval texts tend to display a performative frame since narratives are often re-enactments of a traditional story (for a similar proposal see Fludernik 2008). Similarly, there has been a definite burgeoning of historical narratology for classics (de Jong et al. 2004; de Jong/Nünlist 2007; Tilg 2011a,b; Grethlein 2012, 2013, 2017), and the same can be observed for early modern narrative (Dobranski 2005; Wood 2009; Das 2011; Bayer 2016; Bayer/Klitgård 2011; Orgis 2017).

However, scholars working in these historical contexts have had their own textual corpora in mind rather than narratology as a theoretical enterprise. Though there is now a quite substantial body of narratologically oriented scholarship on classical, medieval, and early modern narrative, what is missing is the cooperation with narratologists from the modern period, which would allow the results from these studies to become fruitful in the theory of narrative as a whole. Few narratologists working on nineteenth or twentieth-century texts have any idea of the challenges to their theoretical framework posed by historical narratologists.


AIMS OF THE PROJECT AND RISKS |
The project for which I am here applying is meant to remedy this lack of contact and to move towards a really diachronic study of English narrative from the thirteenth century to the early twentieth century. The three key objectives of the project are (a) to collect the important insights into classical, medieval and early modern narrative produced by historical narratologists and to analyze these results from a theoretical angle – do they require a modification of (post)classical narratology?; (b) to discuss major shifts in narrative forms and functions in English narratives from the medieval period onwards with a view towards determining to what extent and in what way the familiar model has to be updated and modified; and (c) to develop a new model of narratology which can accommodate historical change and is oriented towards function rather than typology or formal description. It is this third aim which constitutes the most risk-involving aspect of the project. The challenge and the most innovative aspect of the planned research will be to determine whether the very static paradigm of classical narratology whose categories are largely descriptive, structural and systematic can be transformed to take account of functional shifts, historical variation and flexible, perhaps even fuzzy conceptual categories. The project aims at developing narratological theorizing beyond the typological framework in which it has so frequently become mired (Walsh 2016). The research will not only focus on individual narrative elements and their diachronic development, for instance the development of narratorial comment, but especially on the dynamics of interaction between different categories and techniques in order to consider extensive restructurings and refunctionalizations between periods. The model for these dynamic shifts are the case studies undertaken in Fludernik (2003a, b), in which it was argued that an element that served to shift from one plot strand to the other came to serve as a chapter-opening device in the eighteenth century (2003a) and that metalepsis served as a means of shifting between plot strands and only later acquired metafictional qualities (2003b).


CORPUS AND METHODOLOGY |
The texts to be analyzed will be taken from literature in English/the British Isles. Only written narratives will be analyzed. Due to the gap in the vernacular record before the late twelfth century, the period from around 1200 will be the starting point of the analysis. For the early period, the choice of texts from the Helsinki Corpus will be used as an initial framework. For the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the corpus will be extended from canonical texts to less well-known works, utilizing the now available databases (see Bayer 2016 and Orgis in progress). From the eighteenth century onwards, a selection of canonical and non-canonical texts is aimed at. The selections will also attempt to include examples from different genres such as the romance, the Gothic novel, the bildungsroman, the criminal (auto-)biography and the epistolary novel. Factual narratives (though only very selectively) will be analyzed as a control corpus which will help to elucidate whether observed developments are peculiar to literary narratives or historically generalizable aspects. Postmodernist texts and narratives in different media will have to be left for subsequent research, but the fraught issue of whether or not one needs an 'unnatural' narratology for experimental fiction will form part of the theoretical reflections of the research group.

Although the final choice of narrative features and aspects that are to be analysed will be negotiated on the basis of the results of historical narratologies on the one hand and, on the other hand, those cases for which significant diachronic developments can be observed, the (preliminary) list of features that will figure in the project should definitely include the following points:

(A) Features linked to plot structure and the story vs. discourse relationship:

  • the modes of story openings
  • how is suspense generated diachronically?
  • the management of different plot strands
  • the management of orientation and delayed orientation as well as the pre-history (e.g. by means of dialogue, flashback, etc.)
  • the signalling of key moments in the narrative by means of discourse markers


(B) Features linked to the narrative discourse:

  • the use of tenses (tense shifts)
  • modes of reference to characters (e.g. when does one find the first periphrastic descriptors like 'the man in the red waistcoat'; the range of ambiguation and disambiguation strategies)
  • the handling of dialogue
  • strategies of focalization, the representation of consciousness
  • the forms, functions and positioning of descriptive passages
  • narrative and metaphor (see already Fludernik 2010 and under review)


(C) Features relating to the communicative level of narrative and to the infringement of narrative levels:

  • the narrator persona
  • narrative commentary, including narratorial pretence at lack of knowledge (Füger 1978/2004)
  • narrative refusals (Warhol[2])
  • metalepsis (Malina 2002, Pier/Schaeffer 2005)


(D) Features relating to the framing of narratives and their consumer-related presentation:

  • prefaces and editorial introductions
  • the management of titles and chapter divisions


The first step in the project will be to determine where in the work of historical narratologists the traditional narratological paradigm has been observed to fail. These narrative aspects and categories will need to be studied in depth. Secondly, functional shifts will be identified and analyzed with a view towards establishing continuities and discontinuities in the history of English narrative. Owing to the mass of material and the time it will take to analyze it in detail, only the most important and paradigmatically significant features will eventually be compared diachronically in the whole temporal range. Especially for the texts from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, only selected genres or case studies will be featured. These will be chosen on the basis of the research results from the first two stages of the project.

To illustrate the kind of work that will be undertaken, an example may be useful here. Let us take narrative discourse markers (see Brinton 1996). In English vernacular texts from the late Middle Ages, discourse markers like þo, thus, anon, now, so, and then, etc. are employed primarily to mark the beginnings and ends of narrative episodes and to shift from narrative proper to commentary. (I am simplifying for the benefit of easy comprehensibility.) At the end of the medieval period, these discourse markers dwindle both in variety and number, with early modern narratives most frequently employing so and then. At the same time, the use of discourse markers to underline the narrative voice and foreground it in relation to the narrative becomes more prominent. So, what we have here is a shift in the use of a narrative element (describable in linguistic terms) at the cusp of modernity. This shift needs to be understood more fully, with its implications for the structure of narratives; but it also has to be asked whether some of the original functions of these discourse markers are fulfilled by quite different narrative strategies after the late seventeenth century.


IMPACT |
The project is of major interest not only to English studies but to all Indo-European philologies and beyond; it is also relevant to the literary historical approach in these disciplines since it aims at providing a model for functional shifts in the realm of narrative texts. The documentation of such processes in the history of English narrative paradigmatically opens up the possibility of similar analyses for French, German, Russian and other narrative traditions, and it could serve as a model for the analysis of comparable processes in non-Indo-European traditions of literary narrative. In addition to these more narrowly narratological issues, the project also raises questions about the causes of the described shifts in narrative developments, thus facilitating the integration of narratological inquiry with social history and cultural studies in general.

[1] For medieval German work see Knapp/Niesner (2002), Hübner (2003), Haferland/Meyer (2010), Schulz (2012), Kragl/Schneider (2013), Bleumer (2015) and Peters/Warning (2009); for medieval English studies Spearing (2005, 2012), von Contzen/Kragl (in print); von Contzen/Tilg (in progress).

[2] Warhol understands by this term "uses of unnarration (when a narrator says he or she will not tell something) and disnarration (when a narrator tells something that did not happen in place of telling what did)" (Warhol-Down 2010: 45; see also Warhol 2007).

 

 

www.anglistik.uni-freiburg.de/abteilungen/literatur-kulturwissenschaft/lsfludernik/projekte

 

Past Projects

Leisure in Contemporary Indian Literature

SFB 1015

SFB 1015 | Otium. Boundaries, Chronotopes, Practices
[2013 – 2020]

Subproject G4

In this project, the theme of leisure will be documented and analyzed in Indian novels written in English and one of the north Indian regional languages in the period between 1990 and 2016. Novels like Pankaj Mishras The Romantics, Nayantara Sahgal’s A Time to be Happy, Sunetra Gupta’s A Sin of Colour and Anita Desai’s The Artist of Disappearance depict leisure in nostalgic and anti-colonial ways. They do this by arguing that there exists a genuinely Indian leisure which radically differs from the Western dichotomy of work and idleness and which correlates with moments of reflection, the appreciation of landscape and of art. Comparing English-language novels displaying this theme and comparing them with representations of leisure in novels in the regional languages will elucidate whether the motif is linked to an indiginous Indian tradition or needs to be interpreted as an autostereotypical reinterpretation of a colonial heterostereotype.

G4: Publications

Fludernik, Monika:

  • (forthcoming) "Kolonialismus/Postkolonialismus." Kompendium Muße. Eds. Gregor Dobler and Tilman Kasten. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck.
  • (2021) "Narrating Otium – A Narratology of Leisure?" Journal of Narrative Theory 51/2: 179-199.
  • (2021) "In the Twilight of Nostalgia: Ambivalences of Leisure, Patriarchy and Genre in two Classic Muslim Novels." AAA 46/2: 3-30. 
  • (2020) "Nostalgia for Otiose Leisure: Laying Claim to an Indian Tradition of Otium." Cambridge Journal of Postcolonial Literary Inquiry 7/1: 14-34. doi: 10.1017/pli.2019.22
  • (2019) Metaphors of Confinement: The Prison in Fact, Fiction and Fantasy. Law and Literature 2. Eds. Robert Spoo and Simon Stern. Oxford: Oxford University Press. [contains sections on otium in prison]
  • (2018) "Ideology, Dissidence, Subversion. A Narratological Perspective." Narratology and Ideology: Negotiating Context, Form, and Theory in Postcolonial Narratives. Eds. Divya Dwivedi, Henrik Skov Nielsen and Richard Walsh. Columbus, OH: Ohio State University Press. 193-212. [discussion of Indian texts]
  • (2017) "Muße als soziale Distinktion." Muße und Gesellschaft. Eds. Gregor Dobler and Peter Philipp Riedl. Otium 6. Tübingen: Mohr-Siebeck. 163-77.
  • (2017) "Spectators, Ramblers and Idlers: The Conflicted Nature of Indolence and the Eighteenth-Century Tradition of Idling." Anglistik 28/1: 133-54.


Munz, Melina:

  • (2020) The Promise of Purposelessness: Alternative Temporalities and Experiences of Otium in Contemporary Indian Fiction in English. Freiburg: University of Freiburg.
  • (2020) "Leisurely Being in the City as a Critique of the Functionalist Modern City Space in Amit Chaudhuri's A Strange and Sublime Address and Navtej Sarna's We Weren't Lovers Like That." Urbane Muße: Materialitäten, Praktiken, Repräsentationen. Eds. Peter Philipp Riedl, Hans Hubert and Tim Freytag. Otium 19. Tübingen: Mohr-Siebeck. 315-334.
  • (2020) "Village Idyll? The Blending of Work and Otium in Contemporary Indian Fiction on Rural Life." Produktive Unproduktivität. Eds. Gregor Dobler, Markus Tauschek, Michael Vollstädt and Inga Wilke. Otium 14. Tübingen: Mohr-Siebeck. 247-262.


Noor, Farha:

  • (forthcoming) "Of Other Islands and New Worlds: Satyajit Ray’s Professor Shonku and Geopolitical Reorientation in Postcolonial Science Fiction." Island Indias and Archipelagic Memory. Eds. Ananya Jahanara Kabir, Luca Raimondi and Sandrine Soukai. Leiden: Brill.
  • (2022) "Leisurely Feelings: Conceptualising Emotional Manifestations of Otium in South Asia", PhD thesis submitted at University of Heidelberg (defended 2023).
  • (2021) "The Sensory Semantics of Otium in South Asia: Asymmetries, Entanglements and the Affective." Semantiken der Muße aus interdisziplinären Perspektiven / The Semantics of Otium from Interdisciplinary Perspectives. Eds. Monika Fludernik and Thomas Jürgasch. Otium 20. Tübingen: Mohr-Siebeck. 291-313.
  • (2021) "Negotiating Nostalgia: Progressive Women’s Memoirs in Urdu." South Asian History and Culture 12/4: 371-384. doi: 10.1080/19472498.2020.1848144 

 
Siverio, Francesca:

  • (2023) "Negotiating Temporalities. Performing the Cultural Present in Selected Works by Salman Rushdie, Jeet Thayll and Rana Dasgupta", PhD thesis, University of Freiburg.
  • (2016) "Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard and The Romantics: A Chaotic Reading", MA thesis, University of Freiburg.

 

Bibliography of texts significant for a study of Otium in Indian fiction

www.sfb1015.uni-freiburg.de

Literature on Otium | Bengali – English – Urdu

Texts in Bengali


  • Peyari Chand Mitra / Tekchand Thakur (pseudonym), Aalaaler Gharer Dulaal (1857) [English translation by G D Oswell, The Spoilt Child (1893)]
  • Kaliprasanna Sinha, Hutom Pyanchar Naksha (1862) [English Translation by Swaroop Roy, The Observant Owl: Hootum's Vignettes of Nineteenth-century Calcutta (2008)]
  • Bankim Chandra Chatterjee, Kamalakanta (1885)
  • Rabindranath Tagore, Ghare Baire (1916) [English translation by Surendranath Tagore, The Home and the World (1919)]
  • –––, Nashtanir (1926) [English translation by Mary M Lago and Supriya Sen, Broken Nest (2000)]
  • –––, Chhuti ('Leave/Holiday')
  • –––, Shesher Kabita (1928) [English translation by Radha Ckaravarty, Farewell Song, 2005]
  • Bibhutibhushan Bandopadhyay, Pather Panchali (1929) [English translation by T. W. Clark and Tarapada Mukherji, Song of the Road (1968)]
  • –––, Ichhamati (1950) [English translation by Rimli Bhattacharya, The Restless Waters of the Ichhamati (2015)]
  • Buddhadev Bose, Tithidore (1949) [English translation by Arunava Sinha, When the Time is Right (2011)]
  • –––, Moner Moto Meye (1951) [English translation by Arunava Sinha, My Kind of Girl (2010)]
  • Sankar, Chowringhee (1962) [English translation by Arunava Sinha, Chowringhee (2007)]
  • Buddhadev Bose, Raat Bhor Brishti (1967) [English translation by Clinton B. Seely, It Rained All Night (1973)]
  • Bandopadhyay, Aranyak (1976) [English translation by Rimli Bhattacharya, Of the Forest (2002)]
  • Sunil Gangopadhyay, Shei Samay (1985) [English translation by Aruna Chakabarty, Those Days, 1997]
  • Sunil Gangopadhyay / Nil Lohit (pseudonym), Niruddesher Deshe ('In a Lost Land') (1986)
  • –––, Kaishore (Youth) (1989)
  • Bani Basu, Gandharbi, (1993) [English translation by Jayati Sengupta, Gandharvi: The Life of a Musician (2017)]

  • Nabarun Bhattacharya, Harbert (1993)

Texts in English


  • Ahmed Ali, Twilight in Delhi (1940)
  • Nayantara Sahgal, A Time to Be Happy (1958)
  • M. Anantanarayanan, The Silver Pilgrimage (1961)
  • Arun Joshi, The Last Labyrinth (1981)
  • Upamanyu Chatterjee, English, August (1988)
  • Amit Chaudhuri, A Strange and Sublime Address (1991)
  • Githa Hariharan, The Thousand Faces of Night (1992)
  • Amit Chaudhuri, Afternoon Raag (1993)
  • Sunetra Gupta, The Glassblower's Breath (1993)
  • Gita Mehta, A River Sutra (1993)
  • Vikram Seth, A Suitable Boy (1993)
  • Vikram Chandra, Red Earth and Pouring Rain (1995)
  • Ardashir Vakil, Beach Boy (1997)
  • Shyam Selvadurai, Cinnamon Gardens (1998)
  • Kiran Desai, Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard (1998)
  • Sohaila Abdulali, The Madwoman of Jagore (1998)
  • Sunetra Gupta, A Sin of Colour (1999)
  • Raj Kamal Jha, The Blue Bedspread (1999)
  • Pankaj Mishra, The Romantics (1999)
  • Manil Suri, The Death of Vishnu (2001)
  • Anita Nair, Ladies Coupé (2001)
  • Navtej Sarna, We Weren't Lovers Like That (2003)
  • Kunal Basu, The Miniaturist (2003)
  • Amitav Ghosh, The Hungry Tide (2004)
  • Tabish Khair, The Bus Stopped (2004)
  • Kiran Desai, The Inheritance of Loss (2006)
  • M. G. Vassanji, The Assassin's Song (2007)
  • Amit Chaudhuri, The Immortals (2009)
  • Manjula Padmanabhan, Getting There (2010)
  • Anita Desai, The Artist of Disappearance (2011)
  • [Amitav Ghosh, River of Smoke (2011)]
  • Anuradha Roy, The Folded Earth (2011)
  • Amit Chaudhuri, Odysseus Abroad (2015)
  • –––, Friend of My Youth (2017)

Texts in Urdu


  • Altaf Husain Hali, Madd va jazr-e-Islam. 1879 [English translation by by Christopher Shackle and Javed Majeed, MusaddasThe Flow and Ebb of Islam, 1997.]
  • Nazir Ahmed, Taubat-un-Nasuh.1884 [Translation by Matthew Kempson, edited by C M Naim, The Repentance of Nussooh (Taubat-al-Nasuh): The Tale of a Muslim Family a Hundred Years Ago. 2004 [1884].]
  • –––, Ibn-ul-vaqt (man of his times) 1888 [Translation by Mohammad Zakir, The Son of the Moment,2002.]
  • Mirza Hadi Ruswa, Sharifzada (A gentleman’s son). 1899.
  • –––, Umrao Jan Ada. 1899 [Translation by Khushwant Singh and M A Husaini, The Courtesan of Lucknow (Umrao Jan Ada). 1970.]
  • –––, Junoon-e-intezar. 1899 [Translation by Krupa Shandilya and Taimoor Shahid. The Madness of Waiting. 2013.]
  • Sajjad Zaheer, Stories in Angarey 1932 [translation by Khalid Alvi, Embers, 1995.]
  • –––, Landan ki ek raat. 1938 [Translation by Bilal Hashmi, A Nght in London.]
  • Ahmed Ali, Stories in Angarey1932 [translation by Khalid Alvi, 1995].
  • –––, Dilli ki sham [Twilight in Delhi (written by author in both languages)] 1940.
  • Saadat Hasan Manto, Peerun. 1950 [The following, including these are translated by Matt Reeck and Aftab Ahmed in an English collection titled Bombay Stories, 2014.]
  • –––, Das Rupay (Ten Rupees)
  • –––, Mozelle
  • –––, Araam ki Zarurat (in need of rest) 1948.
  • –––, Khaake (sketches) ~ c.1940, [translated by Khalid Hasan, Stars from Another Sky, 2010.]
  • Qurratul ain Hyder, Collection of stories in Patjhad ki Awaaz ~ c. 1960s [translation by author, The Sound of Falling Leaves, 1994.]
  • –––, Collection of stories [translated by the author in The Street Singers of Lucknow and Other Stories. 1996 [c.1960s]
  • Intizar Husain, Ek bin likhe Razmiya, 1952 [Translated by Leslie Flemming and Muhammad Umar Memon, 1983.]
  • –––, Selections from Stories, c. 1960s [translated by Muazzam Sheikh, 2004.]
  • Nayyar Masud, Collection of stories, Seemiya, 1984 [Translated by Muhammad Umar Memon, The Occult, 2013.]
  • –––, Itr-e-Kafur, 1990 [Translation by Muhammad Umar Memon, 1998.]

 

End-of-Project Report

The starting point of project G4 was the observation that there is a considerable number of contemporary Indian (South Asian) novels that address the topic of leisure and suggest that leisure is an indigenous phenomenon that stands in opposition to Western (and colonial) society, considered to be work and performance oriented. The aims of the project, which had both an analytical focus and one directed towards literary history, were twofold: on the one hand, it was our purpose to put together a corpus of these prose texts in more detail and to define this 'genre' in more detail; on the other hand, we wanted to examine and possibly undermine the thesis that these texts reflect an allegedly indigenous 'Indian' leisure.

With regard to the first goal, a dissertation on contemporary anglophone Indian literature examined the recurring topoi and constellations of the discourse about leisure. To do so, it identified additional novels beyond the already existing texts known to us and included them in the analysis. Melina Munz's dissertation, The Promise of Purposelessness: Alternative Temporalities and Experiences of Otium in Contemporary Indian Fiction in English, was completed in 2020 and published online (see Bibliography).

With regard to the second goal of critically examining the 'native' discourse of leisure (referred to here by the English term vernacular), a second dissertation examined prose narratives in selected (North) Indian languages (vernaculars) in order to explore the question whether the anglophone texts take up tendencies from the vernacular literature. We succeeded in recruiting Farha Noor, who examined texts from Urdu and Bangla literature. At the suggestion of the first supervisor of this dissertation (Prof. Dr. Hans Harder, Institute for South Asian Studies Heidelberg), the originally planned exclusive focus on contemporary literature was abandoned. The discourses of leisure that characterise Urdu and Bangla literature can only be discussed historically since they are to be located in the British colonial period. The devaluation of pre-colonial privileged lifestyles and their replacement by a modern colonial work ethos have been repeatedly treated in Urdu and Bangla literature well into the twentieth century, even up to the present. It therefore made sense to include historical developments in Farha Noor's dissertation. Her PhD thesis now provides case studies of the history of the discourses of leisure from the colonial period to the threshold of the twenty-first century and reappraises them. Without this background contemporary representations of otium could hardly be contextualised in adequate manner. The dissertation thus also provides essential insights into the sources of the discourse of leisure in anglophone texts. Farha Noor's thesis, "Leisurely Feelings: Conceptualising Emotional Manifestations of Otium in South Asia" was completed in 2022.

In the framework of the project, the project director Monika Fludernik focused on contemporary anglophone literature, especially since the origins of the discourse of leisure in anglophone novels, as has been shown, do not directly reach back to the nineteenth-century vernacular treatments of the topic. Fludernik's research dealt in particular with some theoretical concepts of postcolonial literary theory (e.g. with auto-exoticism). In addition, she and the authors of the two PhD theses were able to demonstrate the relevance of a nostalgic worldview for the discourses of leisure in anglophone fiction as well as in the vernacular texts. (See the Bibliography.) A particular focus of Fludernik's research was the linguistic and narrative representation of otium, an aspect which she discusses in two essays (Fludernik 2020, 2021a). More generally, Fludernik has been concerned with the semantics of otium, illustrating English lexical usage also in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century drama and prose (see the essays in Fludernik/Jürgasch 2021, Fludernik/Nandi 2014, and Fest 2021).

The results of the research of the sub-project can be summarized as follows:

  1. The concepts of otium in the anglophone Indian novel differ in many ways from those in vernacular texts. For example, in anglophone novels, nature plays a major role, and spirituality often has a (problematic) affinity with otium (see the dissertation of Melina Munz). In Urdu and Bangla novels, on the other hand, freedom from work-related constraints is emphasized, and urban activities such as leisurely conversational exchanges (compare adda – Chakrabarty 2008) as well as the practice of leisurely strolling (comparable to flânerie) predominate. While otium in the anglophone novel often coincides with individual self-discovery, in Bangla and Urdu the focus is more often on economic conditions and resistance to work. Parallels between anglophone literature and fiction in Bangla and Urdu exist with regard to the transgressive qualities of otium.
  2. Otium texts constitute a subgenre of their own in the anglophone Indian contemporary novel. Otium fiction is distinctly different from novels written in the wake of Rushdie's Midnight's Children. Apart from the modernist (rather than postmodernist) style of otium texts, their main characteristic is a nostalgic view of the past (the colonial period, India under the Mughals). That past is conceived of as filled with leisure and contrasted with a present associated with hectic pace and lack of leisure.  (Compare Fludernik 2020.)
  3. The discourse of leisure has a nostalgic tint in all three languages. Especially in the context of postcolonial literary theory, it becomes clear that the ambivalent attitude of many authors towards the colonial period correlates with an ambivalent relationship to leisure. It can be stated that in the examined vernaculars, the topics of leisure and the nostalgia associated with it play a prominent role in the nineteenth century, while they are less relevant to anglophone texts in the period. Rather, in the nineteenth century scenarios of leisure in the anglophone texts are socially encoded, as they are also in some twentieth-century Indian novels translated into English, for instance in Sunil Gangopadhyay's Those Days (1985, English translation 1997): in this novel, it is the Bengali upper class that has wealth and liberal space for leisure in the nostalgically portrayed 'good old days'. Leisure thus functions as a marker of social distinction (Fludernik 2017). The first anglophone otium novel is Ahmed Ali's Twilight in Delhi (1940), a historical novel marked by nostalgia for Delhi's period of glory before the 1857 uprising (see Fludernik 2021b). Significantly, Ali takes up topoi that Farha Noor traces in Urdu literature of the late nineteenth century in her dissertation. Although Tagore is a central point of reference for late otium novels from the 1990s onwards in anglophone narrative prose (Harder 2018, Fludernik 2020), as in Amit Chaudhuri and Sunetra Gupta, Tagore's novelistic work is not primarily otium-related, while his diaries (cf. the second interpretative chapter in Noor's dissertation) provide substantial impetus for the discourse of leisure.
  4. The extent to which the discourse of leisure is 'genuinely' Indian cannot be determined conclusively. On the one hand, there is a strong nostalgically charged anti-colonialist discussion of otium in the vernaculars; on the other hand, in the context of British heritage nostalgia, orientalist clichés are closely associated with situations of leisure. It thus remains a matter of debate whether otium novels borrow from British literary models (as proponents of auto-exotism would claim – see below) or, on the contrary, whether the treatment of otium is meant to undermine and criticize British colonial discourse.
  5. There are links to current controversies within postcolonial studies. Indian otium is a positive auto-stereotype based on a negative hetero-stereotype ('lazy native') (Fludernik 2020). In the context of debates on the so-called postcolonial exotic (Huggan 2001), a critical discourse has emerged on the marketing of exotic Indian scenarios, characters and topoi. As Huggan and others imply, such exoticism in novels is primarily meant to cater to the tastes of Western audiences, which have been shaped by orientalism. The adoption of positive Western hetero-stereotypes regarding India could then be characterized as auto-exoticism (Li 2017), parallelling so-called re-orientalism, i.e. the marketing of negative hetero-stereotypes as auto-stereotypes (Lau 2009, Lau/Dwivedi 2014, Mendes/Lau 2014).
  6. The discourse of leisure is shaped by certain stylistic and narrative devices. The project has also dealt intensively with the linguistic strategies employed in the discourse of leisure in the analyzed novels. The focus has been on syntax, onomatopoeic strategies, word repetition and metaphor. Most of these strategies serve to reduce reading speed and thus tend to foreground the linguistic materiality of the text (Munz 2020; Fludernik 2021a).

External impact of the sub-project: the project has identified about 150 anglophone novels and about 80 texts from Urdu and Bangla literature and produced a bibliography of the collected otium texts from the nineteenth century onwards. (See above.) Since the autumn of 2020, this list has also been permanently archived in the online repository Freidok Plus (https://freidok.uni-freiburg.de/data/226442). The texts in that bibliography are in chronological order and document the historical genesis of the discourse of leisure.

 

Works Cited:

  • Chakrabarty, Dipesh (2008) Provincializing Europe. Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference (Princeton Studies in Culture/Power/History). Princeton/Oxford: Princeton University Press.
  • Fest, Kerstin (2021) Ed. Muße im 18. Jahrhundert. Otium.  Studien zur Theorie und Kulturgeschichte der Muße, 21. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck.
  • Fludernik, Monika (2021a) "Narrating Otium – A Narratology of Leisure?"  Journal of Narrative Theory 51/2: 179-199.
  • Fludernik, Monika (2021b) "In the Twilight of Nostalgia: Ambivalences of Leisure, Patriarchy and Genre in two Classic Muslim Novels". AAA: Arbeiten aus Anglistik und Amerikanistik 46.2: 3-30.
  • Fludernik, Monika (2020) "Nostalgia for Otiose Leisure: Laying Claim to an Indian Tradition of Otium". Cambridge Journal of Postcolonial Literary Inquiry 7/1, 14-34 (online first: DOI: 10.1017/pli.2019.22).
  • Fludernik, Monika (2017) "Muße als soziale Distinktion". Muße und Gesellschaft. Otium 5. Hg. Gregor Dobler/Peter Philipp Riedl. Tübingen: Mohr-Siebeck, 163-177.
  • Fludernik, Monika, and Thomas Jürgasch (2021) Ed. Semantiken der Muße aus interdisziplinären Perspektiven. Otium.  Studien zur Theorie und Kulturgeschichte der Muße, 20. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck.
  • Fludernik, Monika, and Miriam Nandi (2014) Ed. Idleness, Indolence and Leisure in British Literature. Basingstoke: Palgrave.
  • Harder, Hans (2018) "Nostalgia and Autobiographies: Reading Rabindranath Tagore’s Jibansmriti (1912) and Chelebela (1937)". HerStory: Historical Scholarship Between South Asia and Europe. Hg. Rafael Klöbe/Manju Ludwig. Berlin: CrossAsia-eBooks. 189-210.
  • Huggan, Graham (2001) The Postcolonial Exotic: Marketing the Margins. London: Routledge.
  • Lau, Lisa (2009) "Re-Orientalism: The Perpetration and Development of Orientalism by Orientals". Modern Asian Studies 43/2, 571-590.
  • Lau, Lisa/Dwivedi, Om Prakash (2014) Re-Orientalism and Indian Writing in English. Basingstoke: Palgrave Pivot.
  • Li, Xiaofan Amy (2017) "Introduction: From the Exotic to the Autoexotic". PMLA 132/3, 392-396.
  • Mendes, Ana Cristina/Lisa Lau (2014) "India through Re-Orientalist Lenses: Vicarious Indulgence and Vicarious Redemption". Interventions 17/5, 706-727.
  • Munz, Melina (2020) The Promise of Purposelessness: Alternative Temporalities and Experiences of Otium in Contemporary Indian Fiction in English. www.freidok.uni-freiburg.de/data/230325
  • Noor, Farha (2022) "Leisurely Feelings: Conceptualising Emotional Manifestations of Otium in South Asia". PhD thesis, Heidelberg University.


Factual and Fictional Narration

GRK 1767

GRK 1767 | Factual and Fictional Narration
[2012 – 2021]

The Graduate School ”Factual and Fictional Narration“, funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG), explores the multiple intersections which exist between different kinds of factual and fictional narratives. It pursues a rigorously interdisciplinary programme which aims to establish an informed diachronic and transmedial perspective on existing approaches to narrative. In doing so, its declared goal is to develop a set of critical tools and approaches capable of pushing beyond narratology’s customary preoccupation with fictional rather than factual texts. In dealing with discourses of factuality, the Graduate School pursues a two-fold agenda. First, it focuses on the peculiarities of factual narration with the aim of establishing similarities and differences between factuality and fictionality. Second, it analyses the overlaps and mergings that can take place between factual and fictional narrative acts. These two sets of questions are examined on the basis of a broad range of genres, text types and media, taking account of functional and formal aspects as well as of their pragmatic contexts of use.

The Graduate School builds on the university’s strong expertise in the fields of language and literature, but it is also home to a large group of researchers from other disciplines such as law, the social sciences, archaeology and philosophy. The School’s interdisciplinary profile enables us to draw a comprehensive picture of historically diverse forms of factual narration and to map their interactions with fictional narratives. Instead of positing a clear-cut or transhistorically valid distinction between factual and fictional narration, we are interested in the historical convergences that exist between what is conventionally referred to as “factuality” and “fictionality”. The School’s principal interest thus lies in the potential for combination, mutual interference, and hybridization that characterizes the two fields. The following is a non-exhaustive list of such phenomena: It is well known, for instance, that (“factual”) autobiographies and histories from the medieval period onwards contain fictional elements such as dialogues between historical characters and the representation of their thought processes. At the same time, many fictional texts approximate factual narration in their use of ‘real-life’ settings (for example the city of Berlin in Alfred Döblin’s novel Berlin Alexanderplatz, London in Dickens’s Bleak House, or Paris in Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables) as well as in their rendering of the human psyche (an argument advanced by Lisa Zunshine and other advocates of the theory of mind approach). In similar fashion, literary realism tends to evoke ‘reality’ in ways which resonate with Roland Barthes’s notion of the effet de réel but which may also extend to the depiction of actually existing places, persons and institutions. Finally, fictional texts frequently mediate ideological (political, philosophical, religious) views and value systems – a process that could be considered factual because it aims at indoctrinating the reader. Starting out from such localized observations, our researchers develop a more specific and theoretically supple notion of “factuality” that will also involve a contrastive exploration of terms such as “referentiality”, “mimesis”, “representation”, “authenticity”, and “simulation”.

While some attention has been paid to overlaps between factual and fictional elements in individual texts, there is a notable lack of research into the historically variable narrative strategies that produce effects of merging and interbraiding between factual and fictional narrative modes across different periods, genres, and media. Research in the Graduate School clusters around several of these strategies. They include but are not limited to: functionalization; contextualization and historicization; narrative construction; aestheticization; hybridization; and medialization.

www.grk-erzaehlen.uni-freiburg.de

 

Muße und Performanz im 18. Jahrhundert

SFB 1015 | Muße. Grenzen, Raumzeitlichkeit, Praktiken
[2013 – 2020]

Teilprojekt B3 – 1. Förderphase

'Performing Idleness'
Das britische Theater des 18. Jahrhunderts als Ort der Muße

Anhand des britischen Metadramas des 18. Jahrhunderts wird die Performativität der Muße im Spannungsfeld zwischen Arbeitswelt und Raum der Kreativität, der Erbauung und des Entertainment untersucht, wobei anhand von Schauspielbiographien, zeitgenössischen Essays und visuellen Darstellungen Einstellungen zur Muße und zum Theater beleuchtet werden. Schauspieler/innen, Autoren/innen und Publikum inszenieren Muße in verschiedenen sozialen und kulturellen Kontexten. Als Kontrastfolie werden Mußekonzepte in Lyrik und Prosa in ihrer Ambivalenz zwischen Muße und Müßiggang mit berücksichtigt.

End-of-Project Report (in German)

Performing Idleness: Das britische Theater des 18. Jahrhunderts als Mußeort 

1.1 Entwicklung des Teilprojektes
1.1.1 Bericht

Ziel der ersten Förderphase war es, zu untersuchen inwieweit das englische Theater des 18. Jahrhunderts als Mußeraum verstanden werden kann und welche Konzepte von Muße, aber auch von deren vielleicht problematischen englischen Äquivalenten leisureidleness und indolence, in theaterrelevanten Texten zu finden sind. Von zentraler Bedeutung für das Teilprojekt war von Anfang an die ambivalente Positionierung des Theaters zwischen Kunst und Kommerz, da es gleichzeitig als wirtschaftlich erfolgreiches Unternehmen und Stätte der Erbauung, also der Muße, dienen soll. Unter diesem Gesichtspunkt gerade das englische Theater im 18. Jahrhundert zu untersuchen erschien uns in mehrfacher Hinsicht vielversprechend. Zum einen wird das Theater im 18. Jahrhundert immer mehr Teil einer sich professionalisierenden Unterhaltungsbranche (Brewer) in der künstlerischer Anspruch und Profit sich nicht unbedingt ausschließen müssen: Nicht nur reine Unterhaltung und Zerstreuung, sondern auch qualitativ hochstehende Darbietungen wie Shakespeareaufführungen und Musikkonzerte müssen Gewinne erzielen. Zum anderen verändert sich im 18. Jahrhundert die soziale Konnotation von Muße. Für eine immer größere Zahl von nicht-aristokratischen Bürgern wurde es möglich, Muße für sich in Anspruch zu nehmen. Die Formen von Muße wandelten sich von adeliger Kontemplation, philosophischem Diskurs, Meditation in der Gartenlandschaft und schriftstellerisch-künstlerischer Aktivität hin zu einer breiten Palette von Freizeitgestaltung für alle Bevölkerungsschichten. Im Zuge der Forschung des Teilprojektes B3 sollte also analysiert werden, wie diese Aspekte der Muße in Texten, die sich auf das Theater beziehen, verhandelt wird. Als Korpus sollte eine weite Auswahl unterschiedlicher Textsorten dienen: Metadramen, die die verschiedensten Aspekte des Bühnenbetriebs darstellen, Schauspielerautobiographien, die im 18. Jahrhundert vermehrt erscheinen und theaterkritische Schriften, wie z.B. Pamphlete, in denen teils sehr heftige Kontroversen ihren Niederschlag finden. Als erste zu untersuchende Textsorte wurden die im 18. Jahrhundert sehr beliebten Metadramen herangezogen. Diese satirischen Bühnenstücke bieten einen lebhaften Einblick in das zeitgenössische Bühnenleben und thematisieren auch den Gegensatz von Theater als Ort der Kunst und als Arbeitsplatz, es stellte sich aber nach eingehender Sichtung heraus, dass sich in Metadramen nur bedingt die soziale Funktionen des Theaters als Mußeort analysieren lassen. Das Hauptaugenmerk verlagerte sich dementsprechend von Bühnenstücken auf (nicht-fiktionale) Texte über das Theater.

Als Herausforderung für das Projekt stellte sich die Ambiguität der englischen Übersetzung des Terminus Muße heraus: leisureidleness und auch otium können nur in den seltensten Fällen klar abgegrenzt werden, daher ergibt sich auch keine klare (moralische) Unterscheidung wie sie die deutschen Termini Muße, Müßiggang oder Faulheit nahelegen. Da B3 in einer Fremdsprachenphilologie angesiedelt war, zeigte sich auch deutlich, dass sich Semantiken der Muße in verschiedenen Kultur- und Sprachgebieten verschieben und verändern. Fragen der Semantik konnten gewinnbringend in der Arbeitsgruppe "Semantiken der Muße", die von Fludernik und Klinkert geleitet wurde, erörtert werden. Der vielschichtige Raumbegriff stand im Mittelpunkt der Zusammenarbeit innerhalb des Projektbereichs B. Hier waren besonders die Diskussionen mit dem ebenfalls anglistischen Teilprojekt B4 (Korte) ertragreich, da es auch in diesem Teilprojekt um eine weniger konventionelle Mußepraxis geht und zudem die Grenzen zwischen Muße und Vergnügen ebenfalls fließend sein können.

In der von Fest zusammen mit Tobias Keiling (A1) organisierten Lesegruppe zum Thema "Muße und Spiel" wurde ein zusätzlicher Mußeaspekt beleuchtet und ein Brückenschlag vom Theater als Spielraum zum mehr abstrakten Konzept von Muße als spielerisches Tun geschlagen. Fest nahm auch in einem Kolloquium zum Habitusbegriff teil und sprach dort über das self-fashioning (Greenblatt) David Garricks, der sich zur Mußefigur stilisierte und sich mit seinem Landsitz auch einen eigenen Mußeraum schuf.

Besonders eng war die Zusammenarbeit mit C3 (Nandi). Die Projektleiterin gab zusammen mit Miriam Nandi den ersten Sammelband zur diachronen Erforschung von Muße in der britischen Literatur und Kultur vom Mittelalter bis ins 20. Jahrhundert heraus, für den internationale Expertinnen und Experten aus der Anglistik und Soziologie gewonnen werden konnten. Monika Fludernik veröffentlichte in diesem Band einen Aufsatz zum Thema "The Performativity of Idleness: Representations and Stagings of Idleness in the Context of Colonialism", während Kerstin Fest sich der comedy of manners als ein besonders der Muße verpflichtetes Genre widmete

Im November 2016 organisieren Projektleiterin und Mitarbeiterin mit den Teilprojekten B5 (Häfner) und C2 (Klinkert/Martin) eine zweitägige interdisziplinäre Konferenz zum Thema "Muße im 18. Jahrhundert" zu der ausgewiesene ExpertInnen aus dem In- und Ausland gewonnen werden konnten.

Die Mitarbeiterin hat große Teile einer Monographie mit dem Titel "A Peep Behind the Curtain: Theatrical Discourses in 18th-Century England" schriftlich niedergelegt. Das Manuskript dieser Monographie soll im Jänner 2017 vollständig vorliegen. Das Hauptaugenmerk dieser Studie liegt auf dem Theaterraum, wobei neben dem tatsächlichen architektonischen Raum auch explizit eine abstrakte Raumtheorie mitgedacht wird. Die Projektleiterin befasste sich eingehend mit den Spectator-Aufsätzen und den Zeitschriften The Rambler und The Idler (herausgegeben von Samuel Johnson) und publizierte einen Aufsatz zu Johnson (im Druck) bzw. präsentierte Ergebnisse dieser Untersuchungen, die mit Hilfe von Datenbanken erstellt wurden, auf Tagungen (ASECS Richmond 2014, ISECS Rotterdam 2015). Ein weiterer Beitrag zur Muße im 18. Jahrhundert wurde auf der Tagung "Muße und Gesellschaft" im Herbst 2015 präsentiert und verschriftlicht (Fludernik, im Druck). Fest hat die Ergebnisse ihrer Recherchen veröffentlicht (Fest 2014, 2015, 2016 im Druck) und auf mehreren internationalen Tagungen präsentiert (Der Garten im Fokus kultureller Diskurse des 18. Jahrhunderts, Universität Landau-Koblenz, Juni 2014; Annual Conference of the British Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies, St Hugh's College, Oxford, Januar 2015 und 2016; Annual Conference of the Eighteenth-Century Ireland Society, University College Cork, Juni 2015).

Die Ergebnisse der Forschung des Teilprojektes lassen sich unter den folgenden Schwerpunkten zusammenfassen:

  • Theater als sozialer Mußeraum
    Im Gegensatz zu den klassischen Mußeräumen wie Garten, Palast oder Kloster, die immer eine gewisse Zurückgezogenheit in sich tragen, muss das Theater im sozialen Raum stehen und stattfinden. Dies trägt zu seinem ambivalenten Status als Mußeraum bei. In ihrer Monographie hat Fest den im ersten Antragstext formulierten Raumbegriff durch die Anwendung des Raumkonzeptes nach Lefebvre erweitert. Raum wird bei Lefebvre nicht nur als "mentaler Raum" (damit meint er rein theoretische insbesondere philosophische Raumkonzepte), sondern immer auch als sozial hergestellter und benutzter Raum gedacht. Lässt man diese Denkart zu, ist es möglich, das Theater als Raum zu betrachten der in ein soziales, politisches und wirtschaftliches (urbanes) Umfeld eingebunden und von diesem auch produziert wurde aber trotzdem von Individuen oder Gruppen als Mußeraum zu erfahren werden kann. Es gelingt so auch, den Elitenaspekt der Muße abzuschwächen und die Grenzbereiche zwischen Muße und Unterhaltung aber auch Muße und Kommerz zu erschließen.
  • Theater als architektonischer Mußeraum
    Die im ersten theoretischen Kapitel von Fests Monographie statuierte Idee von einem Lefebvre'schen Mußeraum wird in den darauffolgenden Analysekapiteln zur Entwicklung des englischen Theaterbaus und zu Theorien des idealen Theaters aufgegriffen. Im Laufe der Forschungsarbeiten zeichnete sich immer mehr heraus, dass die Materialität und die architektonische Ausgestaltung zentral in der Betrachtung des Theaters als Mußeraum stehen werden. In ihrem ersten Analysekapitel diskutiert Fest anhand mehrerer Fallbeispiele, welche Auswirkungen die Gestaltung des Bühnen- und des Zuschauerraums auf das Theatererlebnis der ZuschauerInnen aber auch das der DarstellerInnen hat. Verfolgt man die Entwicklung des Theaterraums im 18. Jahrhundert lässt sich eine immer klarer werdende Trennung zwischen Zuschauerbereich und Bühne feststellen. Während sich Publikum und DarstellerInnen in der frühen Neuzeit und in der Restoration den Theaterraum und auch die Sichtbarkeit teilen, trennen sich die Räume in der Mitte des Jahrhunderts deutlich (besonders nachdem Garrick das Publikum von der Bühne verbannt): Das Publikum sitzt nun still im verdunkelten Zuschauerraum während die DarstellerInnen auf der hellen Bühne agieren. Anstatt Selbstdarstellung ist nun mit Muße verbundener Kunstgenuss das Ziel des Theaterbesuchs geworden. Muße geht hier also mit einer Art (Selbst)disziplinierung (Foucault) Hand in Hand. Es wird auch deutlich, dass der Mußeraum Theater von den verschieden Gruppen, die in frequentieren unterschiedlich ge- und benutzt wird, dies tut seinem potentiellen Status als Mußeheterotopie jedoch keinen Abbruch. Die zeitgenössischen theoretischen Grundlagen des Theaterbaus diskutiert Fest in einem zweiten Analysekapitel. Auch hier zeigt sich das Bedürfnis durch materielle Gegebenheiten einen Kunstgenuss zu ermöglichen, der zu Muße führen kann.
  • Theater als performativer Mußeraum
    Das Theater bedingt Performanz. Es wurde im Zuge der Arbeit am Projekt klar, dass der Mußeraum Theater nicht ohne Figuren zu denken ist. Hier waren vor allem Gespräche mit den Teilprojekten B4 (Korte) und C4 (Nandi) äußerst gewinnbringend: Beide drehen sich, wenn auch mit verschiedenen Schwerpunkten, um das Verhältnis von Figur und Raum. Ein zweites Theoriekapitel von Fests Monographie greift den Performanzbegriff auf und verwendet ihn in Bezug auf die Mußefiguren im Theater sowohl im theoretischen als auch wörtlichem Sinne. Muße bzw. das Ausüben von Mußepraktiken wird als self-fashioning gesehen, SchauspielerInnen generieren sich so zu KünstlerInnen, die nicht mehr reine EntertainerInnen sind, sondern einer Tätigkeit nachgehen, die Muße erfordert. Diese Praktiken werden auch oft ins Leben außerhalb des Theaters übernommen. In dem dazugehörigen Analysekapitel steht David Garrick im Mittelpunkt, der im Zuge seiner rasanten Karriere auch sehr bewusst an seinem Image als feingeistiger Intellektueller mit einer besonderen Affinität zu Shakespeare feilte, und sich durch die Gestaltung seines Landgutes außerhalb von London auch einen tatsächlichen Mußeort schuf. Überdies übte Garrick seine Mußepraktiken auch vor einem ausgewählten Publikum von Freunden und Prominenten aus, wie seine Briefe und Gelegenheitsgedichte zeigen. Ein anderer Mußeraum, der aber auch als Bühne für öffentliche Mußepraktiken verstanden werden kann, ist der englische pleasure garden, der in Fest 2015 diskutiert wird.
  • Theater als textueller Mußeraum
    Während der Sichtung des Materials wurde klar, dass das Projekt nicht nur rein kulturwissenschaftlich bearbeitet werden sollte, sondern dass eine zusätzliche diskursive Analyse eine wertvolle Ergänzung wäre. Texte über das Theater, so unsere Prämisse, sind nicht nur als Darstellung von faktischen Gegebenheiten zu verstehen, sondern transportieren auch implizite Urteile und Deutungen des Theaterraums und seiner Funktion, die sich in close readings gut analysieren lassen. Auch hier steht der Zusammenhang zwischen der gebauten Materialität des Theaterraums und seiner ideologischen Bedeutung im Zentrum. Fest analysiert in ihrer Monographie in diesem Zusammenhang u.a. drei Texte aus den Jahren 1809 und 1810, die sich mit den Wiederaufbauplänen der abgebrannten Londoner Theater Drury Lane und Covent Garden beschäftigen. Obwohl sich diese Texte an der Oberfläche mit Architektur, Bautechnik und Sicherheitsmaßnahmen beschäftigen, liegt ihnen auch eine 'Besorgnis' über die Angemessenheit des Theaters als Raum der Muße und des Kunstgenuss inne. Es kann hier festgestellt werden, dass in diesen Texten Sicherheit und Stabilität auch als Metapher für einen stabilen sozial akzeptierten Gebrauchs des Mußeortes Theater gelesen werden kann, der nicht-mußevolles Verhalten verhindern und sanktionieren kann.
  • Außenwirkung des Teilprojektes
    Fest gründete zusammen mit MitarbeiterInnen aus den Projekten A1, A2, B4, C2, C3, C4 und C5 die Online- Zeitschrift Muße. Ein Magazin, welche die Arbeit des SFBs nach außen tragen und in feuilletonistischer Art und Weise einem breiteren Publikum zugänglich macht. Die erste Ausgabe des Magazins erschien im Frühjahr 2015. Mittlerweile sind drei Ausgaben erschienen, die vierte Ausgabe geht im Frühjahr 2016 online. Das Magazin stieß innerhalb und außerhalb des universitären Rahmens auf große positive Resonanz.

    Fest wurde auch von den irischen Kunstkuratorinnen Sarah Kelleher und Rachel Warriner, (Agentur Pluck, Cork) eingeladen, einen Text zu Muße zum Ausstellungskatalog der Installation In Pursuit of Leisure von Stephanie Hough (25.10.2014 – 15.11.2014, Wandesford Quay Gallery, Cork) beizutragen. Daraus ergab sich auch die Möglichkeit zu einem Interview mit Hough zu ihrer künstlerischen Praxis (erschienen in Muße. Ein Magazin 3).


www.sfb1015.uni-freiburg.demussemagazin.de

Norm, Law and Criminalization:
Discursive, Ethical and Legal Attributions of Norm Contravention

DFG Projekt | Prozesse der Kriminalisierung und die Erfahrung von Gefangenschaft: Räume, Körper, Identitäten, Topoi, Metaphern
[2004 – 2009]

Projektleitung: 

  • Prof. Dr. Monika Fludernik (Englisch)
  • PD Dr. Hans-Helmuth Gander (Philosophie)
  • Prof. Dr. Hans-Jörg Albrecht (Kriminologie)

Project Outline

The project "Norm, Law and Criminalization" analyses the connections between the creation of norms, the legal punishment of non-normative behavior and the exclusion of forms of deviance from the norm through discursive means. The project also includes an examination of the schematic dichotomization of inclusion and exclusion as well as an analysis of how exclusionary practices function in the creation of collective identities. Likewise, the construction of alternative anti-identities as a subjective reaction to exclusionary practices will be studied. These processes will be considered theoretically with regard to legal norms and legal ethics; practically, they will be analyzed in connection to the sentencing of hate crimes and the results of this sentencing; historically, the same processes will be examined comparatively with a focus on the radical left-wing violence of the Red Army Faction; finally, these processes will be illustrated discursively in an analysis of literary and cinematic texts about criminals and incarcerated individuals. The leading hypothesis of the project is the assumption that the criminalization of individuals and groups is actually encouraged by legal processes in democratic states when violations of norms are regarded as dangerous. And historic practices of exclusion are rapidly furthered by the discourses of exclusion that are practiced in the media and in literature.

In its trans-disciplinary scope this project consists of four subprojects in philosophy, literary studies, criminology, and history. It involves a cooperation between the University of Freiburg, the Max Planck Institute for Foreign and International Criminal Law in Freiburg, and the Department of Contemporary History at the University of Tübingen.

  • The research in philosophy "Moral and Legal Norms" addresses legal and moral norms and particularly human rights.
  • The subproject in literary studies "Prison and Criminality: Historical Development in Literature and Film" analyses literary projections of the prison in comparison to historical documents and contexts; in particular, strategies for categorizing people as criminals, and the issue of how the prison functions as a symbolic site will be considered.
  • The criminologists ("Xenophobia, Racism and Hate Crimes") will conduct an empirical study on the behavior of radical right-wing youths before, during and after their confrontation with criminal law (arrest, trial, and imprisonment). The basis for this study will be a comparison of these youths with several control groups of other potentially violent gangs (hooligans, skinheads, etc.) as well as a contrast of the former with the violent radical left, as exemplified by the Red Army Faction (in cooperation with the University of Tübingen, PD Dr. Gabriele Metzler).


The aim of this project is to document the mutual intertwining of conceptions of norms, law, ethics and discursive practices. Their reciprocal nature will be analyzed on the basis of exemplary cases that originate in law, history, and literature including film. In addition to legal, literary, and medial discourses, visual images will be considered in this project. In this manner criminologists in the project can profit from the skills of historians and literary theorists, while philosophers and literary theorists will receive important impulses from the empirical methods of criminology and history. Furthermore, this project aims to address the public directly and to make the results of this project known in an effective manner by holding regular public events, lecture series and by working with institutions outside of the university.

The basic question of the project concerns the process of criminalization. The project asks how and under what legal and societal conditions and with what means groups of persons are excluded by society as 'criminal.' To answer this question philosophy will play a central role in analyzing legal, moral, and societal norms on the one hand and the forms of exclusion that are practiced by criminal law and penalization on the other. Hence this project addresses concepts of normativity – what is dichotomously declared to be allowed/forbidden, good/bad or normal/criminal (Link 1997; Waldenfels 1998) – and normalism – what is classified as being (statistically) located within the central section of a Gauss curve, constituting 'normality.' The subproject in criminology addresses the question of normalism via a scale of groups of young men whose sense of group solidarity increases through acts of violence; the point at which these acts of violence go from being regarded as 'harmless' excesses to 'criminal acts' is socially and historically variable. By contrast criminal law has to classify normative acts as being either criminal and therefore punishable or as outside the scope of criminal law altogether.

The project also addresses the prison as society's site for exclusion. Crucial here is an awareness of the dynamics of exclusion that lead to processes of identification and self-exclusion in many of the groups analyzed in this project. For instance, sentenced, radical right-wing criminals identify themselves – like other groups of incarcerated individuals – in contradistinction to the society that excludes them via group dynamics and by constituting an identity that is strengthened by certain behaviors, symbols and rituals. Members of the Red Army Faction and their sympathizers, for example, experienced a sense of increased group identity when their comrades were incarcerated.

Moreover, the attribution of criminality on the basis of a number of characteristics that allow individuals to be labeled 'criminal' is central to the process of criminalization. The use of animal metaphors in many statements about 'criminals' will be given particular attention within the context of nineteenth-century biologically deterministic models of behavior (George Combe, Cesare Lombroso). The tendency to explain criminality as a form of atavistic animalism can also be seen in descriptions of jails and has had a tertiary influence on actual prison conditions. In the most extreme case criminals are degraded to the level of 'animals' and robbed of their human rights.

The final essential point of this study concerns the relationship between violence and ethics. The groups that will be studied by the criminology contingent (and compared to the Red Army Faction) practice violence against individual victims who are viewed as representatives of an alien group. These hate crimes are judged severely by society because they violate the norms of tolerance, respect and human dignity that are valid in a democratic society. Conversely, the question arises in connection with the subject of prisons (RAF and subproject in literary studies) of how legitimate governmental force/violence and disciplinary acts are. The prevailing norm of the right to freedom from injury, which serves to protect citizens, has to also be central to an ethics of punishment and lead to a questioning of the ethics of the legal system. A debate about the function of human rights within the context of governmentally sanctioned actions and violence emerges from these considerations.

RELEVANCE | At least since 11 September 2001 the subject of this study has become highly topical. The project is also relevant as a corrective to typical ethical discussions that usually only address genetic engineering, the death penalty, euthanasia or abortion. Such discussions tend to ignore the ethics of punishment, which can be seen as an ethics for the legal treatment of the living. Finally, this project is conceived methodologically as a surmounting of the separation between the humanities and the social sciences. Here, philology, philosophy, history, and the social sciences fuse again as was common in the nineteenth-century concept of the "sciences of man".

Literary Studies Section
Processes of Criminalization and Experiences of Prison: Spaces, Bodies, Identities, Topoi, Metaphors

Project Participants:

  • Prof. Dr. Monika Fludernik
  • Dr. Jan Alber
  • Dr. Thomas Lederer
  • Dr. Greta Olson


The literary studies section of the "Norm, Law and Criminalization" project considers the following topics. This project analyses, on one hand, the discursive stigmatization of groups of people who are excluded due to their having transgressed norms of law (criminalization). On the other hand, the project explores experiences of stigmatization. These experiences, which are associated with the prison as the site of exclusion, often lead those who are stigmatized to create new identities. Thus discourses generate objective and subjective social identities. These processes are made tangible in literature by means of literary techniques such as discourses of attribution, metaphors and imagological projections as well as strategies for attracting and directing reader/audience sympathy.

The goals of this project are:

  • To describe and analyse discursive practices
  • To delineate social identities in literary and nonliterary genres of English literature (novel, drama, film, journalism, autobiography, hagiography, criminological discourse) to the degree that these genres characterize the "criminal"
  • To explore the literary topoi, metaphorics and visual representations (also in film) of these identity configurations and the way in which they complement or counteract discursive exclusions
  • To analyse the stylistic techniques delineated above historically on the basis of chosen genres from the late Renaissance to the modern period, including analyses of film, since this genre became, in the twentieth century, the most important source for ordinary perceptions of the reality of prison
  • To study the influence of animal metaphors on scientific discourse, particularly on the discourse of positivist criminology
  • Finally, to modify substantially the theoretical position of Foucault and New Historicism with regard to the relation between power and discourse.

 

ACTIVITIES


 

  • 22–26 August 2008 | European Society for the Study of English (ESSE) 9 CONFERENCE ÅRHUS

    Roundtable: The Punitive Turn
    Convenor: Dr. Greta Olson (University of Freiburg)

    This round table deals with the increasing punitivity in legislation, treatment of suspects and conditions of incarceration in the U.K. A trend towards putting more people into prison, lengthening prison terms and implementing ever harsher treatment of suspects and inmates has been a feature of the British legal and penal system for nearly two decades, intensifying after 9/11 in the context of anti-terrorist legislation.

    The three speakers on this round table will discuss this aspect of contemporary British life from the varying perspective of cultural law-and-literature studies, legal studies and practical involvement (prison service and human rights activism).

    Invited speakers: Professor Philip Rawlings (University College London, Law School), Professor Monika Fludernik (University of Freiburg, English Department), Frances Cook (Representative of the Howard League)

    Roundtable: Ideology and Metaphor
    Convenor: Professor Dr. Monika Fludernik (University of Freiburg)

    This roundtable will debate new research on the relationship between ideology and metaphor. Cognitive research has shown metaphor to be central to political discourse (Paul A. Chilton, George Lakoff), science (Thomas Kuhn, Theodore L. Brown), culture and ideology (Sebastiaan Faber, Zoltán Kövecses). Ideology is understood here in a post-Marxian sense to mean dominant cultural beliefs and their representations. Work on metaphor demonstrates how imagery transports ideological messages and helps to build powerful arguments and subconscious attitudes. This work, as the panel will argue, has fundamental implications for cultural studies and its models of signification and transfer.

    Speakers: Professor Andrew Goatly (University of Hong Kong), Greta Olson (University of Freiburg), Craig Hamilton (Université de Haute Alsace Mulhouse)
  • Lectures

    13 – 14 February 2008 | Prof. Dr. Erica Fudge
    "'The Dog is Himself'": Humans, Animals and Self-Control in The Two Gentlemen of Verona
    "Thinking With Pets"

    5 June 2007 | Prof. Dr. Helle Porsdam (American Studies, University of Southern Denmark)
    "It’s the Judges Stupid"

  • 27 October 2006 | Symposium on Law and Literature

    Hal Gladfelder (University of Manchester), "John Cleland on Trial" 
    Simon Stern (Harvard Law School), "Detecting Doctrines: The Case Method and the Rise of the Detective Story"

  • 11 February 2005 | Colloquium on Law and Literature

    Introduction by Prof. Monika Fludernik
    Lecture by Prof. Alan Hyde (Law, Rutgers University, USA) on "The Language of Torture"
    Lecture by Prof. Martin Kayman (Centre for Critical and Cultural Theory, Cardiff, UK) on "Death and the Democratic Constitution: Jeremy Bentham and Writing the Law"

  • 19 July 2004 | Podium discussion

    Machtmissbrauch im Gefängnis: Das Stanford Prison Experiment, Guantánamo Bay, Abu Ghraib

    [The Abuse of Power in Prisons: The Stanford Prison Experiment, Guantánamo Bay, Abu Ghraib]:

    Screening of Oliver Hirschbiegel's Das Experiment, a film based on the Stanford Prison Experiment

    Podium discussion between Sumit Bhattacharyya (Amnesty International), Prof. Dr. Arthur Kreuzer (Criminology, Gießen) and Prof. Dr. Helmut Kury (Psychology, Freiburg), moderated by Prof. Dr. Monika Fludernik (English, Freiburg) and Prof. Dr. Hans-Jörg Albrecht (Max-Planck-Institut, Freiburg)

 

COMPLETED DISSERTATIONS


Dr. Jan Alber

"Banished Behind Bars: The Representation and Role of Prisons from Charles Dickens's Novels to Twentieth-Century Film"

In his dissertation, Jan Alber deals with the representation and role of prisons from Charles Dickens's novels to twentieth-century film. More specifically, he argues that Dickens's novels Little Dorrit, A Tale of Two Cities, and Great Expectations anticipate two important developments in prison narratives of the twentieth century. On the one hand, the numerous hypodiegetic first-person letters, diaries, and confessions in the authorial novels Little Dorrit and A Tale of Two Cities foreshadow the inward migration of twentieth-century prison novels, which primarily present us with first-person accounts of the self in the cell. In this respect, the pseudo autobiography Great Expectations serves as the most important link between prison narratives of the nineteenth and prison narratives of the twentieth century. On the other hand, Alber argues that Dickens's pictorial novels (and in particular the quasi-audiovisual scenes of mob violence in A Tale of Two Cities) anticipate the cinema's moving images in a variety of ways.

Moreover, on the basis of Michel Foucault's Discipline and Punish and further historical and criminological material, Alber distils essential features of the experience of imprisonment in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. He then compares the representation of these crucial aspects of imprisonment in prison novels and films of the twentieth century in order to illustrate what novels can do that films cannot do (and vice versa).

Finally, Alber investigates metaphorical extensions of the prison theme and shows how such metaphors can be generated in novels and films. First of all, he deals with metaphors of imprisonment (PRISON IS X). Second, he shows that some prison narratives posit a homological structure between the prison and society so that certain societal conflicts like class conflicts or society's racism may be reproduced (and perhaps intensified) behind the walls of the prison (PRISON IS LIKE SOCIETY). Third, Alber shows how certain prison narratives define society or the world as a prison (THE WORLD IS A PRISON). He argues that this is primarily done by using metonyms of the prison (like chains, fetters, bars, etc.) to describe the world outside.

Dr. Thomas Lederer

"Religious Antagonism. Identities and Alterities in Early Modern English Hagiography"

In his dissertation Thomas Lederer analyses English sacred biography of the Reformation. The term 'sacred biography' is used in the broadest sense to refer to narratives of the lives of women and men whose behavior and religious orientation appeared to their contemporaries and later to be above average and therefore 'pleasing to God' and worthy of imitation. The following points are central to this project:

  • Rhetorical strategies of exclusion and inclusion, of demonization and canonization, of criminalization and normativization;
  • How is the carnivalesque, the deliberate inversion of paradigms, instrumentalized for defaming the Other and justifying one's own position?;
  • The potential of (self-)deconstruction inherent to the texts, especially in cases of paradox/oxymoron and the fire metaphor;
  • The connection between religious affiliation and national belonging (Englishness) in the texts, which he describes as 'denomiNation';
  • Continuities and discontinuities between late medieval sacred biography and its Renaissance counterpart as well as between Reformational and Counter-Reformational texts.

 

HABILITATION


 

Dr. Greta Olson

'Criminal Animals' and the Rise of Positivist Criminology: From Shakespeare to Conrad and Norris

This study explores relations between science, literature, and culture. Specifically, "Criminal Animals" researches how earlier depictions of criminals as animalistic affected the genesis of criminology at the end of the nineteenth century. The use and functions of animal metaphors and imagery are analysed in two mutually dependent groups of texts. These include 'literary' texts – English dramas and prose works featuring criminals that were written between 1590 and 1900 – as well as their 'factual' counterparts, that is, accounts of crime offered by pamphlets, court sessions, news reports, and early theories of crime.

The following theses are posited with relation to three time periods – the Renaissance, the 'long' eighteenth century, and the nineteenth century:

  • Early modern 'animalistic' images of criminals contributed to later criminological theories which conceive of criminality as an inherent and biologically determined. (Analysed texts include dramas by William Shakespeare and John Webster as well as early modern comedies in comparison with Robert Greene's, Thomas Dekker's and other anonymous authors' crime pamphlets.)
  • During the eighteenth century animalistic depictions of criminals became less popular due to the rise of a "culture of sensibility", which encouraged an increasing sympathy for animals and a decreased interest in portraying them as subhuman or unfeeling. (Texts corpus includes novels by Defoe, Fielding, and Richardson as well as broadsheets and the Newgate Calendar).
  • At the end of the nineteenth century many English prose authors (Robert Louis Stevenson, Oscar Wilde, Joseph Conrad, Bram Stoker) responded directly or indirectly to Cesare Lombroso's theory that there was a class of "born criminals", that is law breakers whose numerous physical anomalies or 'stigmata' proved them to be atavistic and closely related to so-called lower animals (L'Uomo delinquente, 1876). Lombroso was, in turn, influenced by Charles Darwin's The Descent of Man (1871) and B. A. Morel's degeneration theory (Treatise on Degeneracy, 1857; Formation of Typology in Degeneracy, 1864). With its aim of working empirically, Lombroso's positivist school of anthropological criminology was particularly well received in the United States, where Naturalist writers such as Frank Norris and Stephen Crane gave concrete form to his theory in their depictions of crime.
  • Images of stigmatized 'animalistic' criminals did not simply influence early biological theories of crime but also continue to contribute to representations of criminals in popular and scientific forums.

 

MONOGRAPH


 

Prof. Dr. Monika Fludernik

Carceral Topography and Metaphorics: Fact, Fiction, and Fantasy

Prison settings and prison metaphors as well as literary topoi related to the carceral thematic are the subject of this study. The book will discuss literary schemata that recur in the representation of fictional and autobiographical representations of carceral settings and the symbolizations that can be observed to develop in these passages. Secondly, the prevalent use of prison imagery both in conjunction with prison settings and independent of them will be analysed. In particular, gender-related prison metaphors (marriage is a prison) and metaphors such as conceiving of factories as prisons or work as imprisoning will receive ample discussion, as will the postcolonial inflections of carceral metaphor.

The study compares representative example texts from the Renaissance to the late twentieth century, contrasting fictional and autobiographical writing as well as covering all three major literary genres (fiction, drama, poetry). Special emphasis will be put on the influence of the historical background on the representation of carceral settings. Moreover, the current political situation as regards views about prisoners, prison conditions, and general public attitudes and policy decisions will be focused on in the final chapter of the book.

Ultimately, the study attempts to explain why prison is such a recurrent topic and prevalent metaphor in literary texts and how literary treatments of carcerality, in particular the development of a carceral imaginary, interrelate with real-world attitudes and policies regarding crime and punishment.

 

PUBLICATIONS


 

  • ALBER, Jan (2002): "Bilder von einer Welt hinter Gittern. Der Anglist Jan Alber erforscht die fiktionale Darstellung von Gefängnissen". Freiburger Uni-Magazin 6: 22-3.
  • ----- (2003): "Das Gefängnis im Hollywoodfilm: Strafvollzug zwischen Fiktion und Realität". Zeitschrift für Strafvollzug und Straffälligenhilfe 52.1: 31-40.
  • ----- (2004): "Bodies Behind Bars: The Disciplining of the Prisoner's Body in British and American Prison Movies". In the Grip of the Law: Prisons, Trials and the Space Between. Hrsg. Monika Fludernik & Greta Olson. 241-69.
  • ----- (2006): Rezension von "Policing the City: Crime and Legal Authorities in London, 1780–1840". Zeitschrift für Anglistik und Amerikanistik 54.4: 413-14.
  • ----- (2007): Narrating the Prison: Role and Representation in Charles Dickens' Novels, Twentieth-Century Fiction, and Film. Literature, Film, Theory. Youngstown, NY: Cambria Press.
  • ----- & Brandenstein, Martin (2008): "'Hart aber gerecht'? Ethik und Strafen im öffentlichen Diskurs: Das Gefängnis als missbrauchtes Abschreckungsmittel am Beispiel der Kampagne gegen Raubkopierer". Ethik des Strafens. Hrsg. Monika Fludernik und Hans-Helmuth Gander. Würzburg: Ergon. 281-301. 
  • ----- (2009): "The Ideological Underpinnings of Prisons and their Inmates from Charles Dickens’s Novels to Twentieth-Century Film". Images of Crime III. Hrsg. Hans-Jörg Albrecht, Harald Kania & Telemach Serassiss. Freiburg: edition iuscrim. 133-48.
  • ----- & Lauterbach, Frank, eds. (2009): Stones of Law – Bricks of Shame: Narrating Imprisonment in the Victorian Age. University of Toronto Press.
  • ----- (2009): "Darkness, Light, and Various Shades of Gray: The Prison and the Outside World in Charles Dickens's A Tale of Two Cities." Dickens Studies Annual 40: 95-112.
  • ----- (2011): "Cinematic Carcerality: Prison Metaphors in Film." The Journal of Popular Culture 44.2: 217-32.
  • FLUDERNIK, Monika (1999): "Carceral Topography: Spatiality and Liminality in the Literary Prison". Textual Practice 13.1: 43-77.
  • ----- (2002): "The Prison as Colonial Space". Cycnos 19.2: 175-90. (Sonderheft Droit et littérature. Actes du Colloque, Nice 28–29 Juin 2001. Hrsg. Jacqueline Berben-Masi.)
  • ----- (2003): "The Prison as World – The World as Prison: Theoretical and Historical Aspects of two Recurrent Topoi". Symbolism 3: 147-89.
  • ----- (2004a): "Caliban Revisited: Robben Island in the Autobiographical Record". In the Grip of the Law: Prisons, Trials and the Space Between. Hrsg. Monika Fludernik & Greta Olson. Frankfurt: Peter Lang. 271-88.
  • ----- (2004b): "Fiction vs. Reality: What is the Function of Prisons in Literary Texts?" Images of Crime II. Hrsg. Hans-Jörg Albrecht et al. Freiburg: edition iuscrim. 279-97.
  • ----- (2004c): "Literarische Funktionen von Kriminalität". Alltagsvorstellungen von Kriminalität. Hrsg. Michael Walter, Hans-Jörg Albrecht & Harald Kania. Münster: Lit. 59-76.
  • ----- (2004d): "Prison Metaphors – The Carceral Imaginary?" In the Grip of the Law: Prisons, Trials and the Space Between. Hrsg. Monika Fludernik & Greta Olson. Frankfurt: Peter Lang. 145-67.
  • ----- & Olson, Greta (2004e): "Introduction". In the Grip of the Law: Prisons, Trials and the Space Between. Frankfurt: Peter Lang. xiii-liv.
  • ----- & Olson, Greta, eds. (2004f): In the Grip of the Law: Prisons, Trials and the Space Between. Frankfurt: Peter Lang.
  • ----- (2005a): "Metaphoric (Im)Prison(ment) and the Constitution of a Carceral Imaginary". Anglia 123.1: 1-25.
  • ----- (2005b): "The Metaphorics and Metonymics of Carcerality: Reflections on Imprisonment as Source and Target Domain in Literary Texts". English Studies 86.3: 226-44.
  • ----- (2005c): "'Stone Walls Do (Not) a Prison Make': Rhetorical Strategies and Sentimentalism in the Representation of the Victorian Prison Experience". Captivating Subjects: Writing Confinement, Citizenship and Nationhood in the Nineteenth Century. Hrsg. Julia Wright & Jason Haslam. Toronto: Univ. of Toronto Press. 144-74.
  • ----- (2005d): "Unreliability vs. Discordance: Kritische Betrachtungen zum literaturwissenschaftlichen Konzept der erzählerischen Unzuverlässigkeit". 'Was stimmt denn jetzt?' Unzuverlässiges Erzählen in Literatur und Film. Hrsg. Fabienne Liptay und Yvonne Wolf. edition text + kritik. München: Boorberg. 39-59.
  • ----- (2007): "Carceral Fantasies: A Database Analysis of Prison Metaphors". Anglistik 18: 27-40.
  • -----, Gander, Hans-Helmuth & Albrecht, Hans-Jörg, Hrsg. (2008): Bausteine zu einer Ethik des Strafens. Würzburg: Ergon.
  • ----- (2008): "Ethik des Strafens – Literarische Perspektiven". Bausteine zu einer Ethik des Strafens. Hrsg. Monika Fludernik, Hans-Helmuth Gander und Hans-Jörg Albrecht. Würzburg: Ergon. 213-31.
  • ----- & Brandenstein, Martin (2009): "Images of Crime and the German Justice System in German Trial Soaps". Images of Crime III. Ed. Telemach Serassis.
  • ----- (2019): Metaphors of Confinement: The Prison in Fact, Fiction and Fantasy. Law and Literature 2. Oxford University Press, 2019.
  • LEDERER, Thomas (2004): "'Thereupon There Were Produced Three False Witnesses...': Trial Scenes in Elizabethan Sacred Biography". In the Grip of the Law: Prisons, Trials and the Space Between. Hrsg. Monika Fludernik & Greta Olson. Frankfurt: Peter Lang. 23-41.
  • ----- (2007): Sacred Demonization: Saints' Legends in the English Renaissance. Wien: Braumüller Verlag.
  • OLSON, Greta (2002): "Keyholes in Eighteenth-Century Novels as Liminal Spaces Between the Public and Private Spheres". Sites of Discourse – Public and Private Spheres – Legal Culture: Papers from a Conference Held at the Technical University of Dresden. Hrsg. Uwe Böker & Julie Hibbard. Internationale Forschungen zur Allgemeinen und Vergleichenden Literaturwissenschaft 64. Amsterdam: Rodopi. 151-67.
  • ----- (2004): "'Cathredalesque' Courthouses and 'Forensic' Narratives: The Intermingling of Institutional Forms of Power with Narrative Paradigms in the Early Nineteenth-Century". (Rezension von Greta Olson über: Jonathan H. Grossman: The Art of Alibi. English Law Courts and the Novel. Baltimore, MD / London: The Johns Hopkins University Press 2002). IASLonline
  • ----- (2004): "Inarticulate, Violent White American Men". Anti-Americanisms. Hrsg. Michael Draxlbauer, Astrid Fellner & Thomas Fröschl. Münster: LIT. 233-51.
  • ----- (2004): "Law as Thought Pattern and Ordering Principle in Shakespeare's Trial Scenes". In the Grip of the Law: Trials, Prisons and the Space Between. Hrsg. Monika Fludernik & Greta Olson. Frankfurt: Peter Lang. 43-63.
  • ----- & Fludernik, Monika, eds. (2004d): In the Grip of the Law: Prisons, Trials and the Space Between. Frankfurt: Peter Lang.
  • ----- (2005): "Criminalized Bodies in Literature and Biocriminology". The Body as Interface: Dialogues Between the Disciplines. Hrsg. Sabine Sielke & Elisabeth Schäfer-Wünsche. American Studies. Heidelberg: Winter.
  • ----- (2005): "Richard III's Animalistic Criminal Body." Philological Quarterly 82.3. 301-24.
  • ----- (2005): "Introducing Alice Sebold’s The Lovely Bones". Twenty-First Century Fiction. Readings, Essays, Conversations. Hrsg. Christoph Ribbat. Anglistik & Sachunterricht 66. Heidelberg: Winter. 137-47.
  • ----- & Martin Kayman, eds. (2007): "Law, Literature, and Language". European Journal of English Studies. 11.1 (April).
  • ----- & Martin Kayman (2007): "From 'Law-and-Literature' to 'Law, Literature, and Language': A Comparative Approach." European Journal of English Studies 11.1. 1-15.
  • ----- (2007): Review Essay: "Visions and Revisions of Law-and-Literature". (Rezension über: Literature and Law, Hg. Michael J. Meyer Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2004 und Law and Literature, Hg. Patrick Hanafin, Adam Gearey und Joseph Brooker: Oxford: Blackwell, 2004.) IASLonline
  • ----- (2007): "Criminalized Bodies in Literature and Biocriminology". The Body as Interface: Dialogues between the Disciplines. Eds. Sabine Sielke & Elisabeth Schäfer-Wünsche. American Studies. Heidelberg: Winter.
  • ----- (2005): "Richard III's Animalistic Criminal Body". Reprint in: Shakespearean Criticism.
  • ----- (2008): "Class and Race Bias in the Anti-Cruelty Discourse of the Early Eighteenth-Century". Proceedings of the Anglistentag 2007 (University of Münster).
  • ----- & Verena Krenberger (2009): "Durchsetzung und Schutz von Menschenrechten mit allen Mitteln? Zur Folterdebatte in Deutschland und in den Vereinigten Staaten". Ethik des Strafens. Hrsg. Monika Fludernik, Hans-Helmuth Gander und Hans-Jörg Albrecht. Würzburg: Ergon.
  • ----- (2009): "Prisons of Stone and Mind: Henry James's The Princess Casamassima and In the Cage." Stones of Law – Bricks of Shame: Narrating Imprisonment in the Victorian Age. Eds. Jan Alber und Frank Lauterbach. Toronto: U of Toronto P. 199-232.
  • ----- (2011): "Transfers Between Science and Contemporary Fiction and Culture: Sexual Selection, Jeffrey Eugenides' Middlesex and T. C. Boyle's Drop City:" Restoring the Mystery of the Rainbow: Literature's Refraction of Science. Ed. Cedric Barfoot and Valeria Tinkler. Amsterdam: Rodopi. 507-27.
  • ----- (2014): “‘Like a Dog’: Rituals of Animal Degradation in J. M. Coetzee’s Disgrace and Abu Ghraib Prison.” Journal of Narrative Theory 44.1: 116-56.
  • ----- & Monika Fludernik, Hrsg. (2004): In the Grip of the Law: Prisons, Trials and the Space Between. Frankfurt: Peter Lang. 
  • ----- (2013): Criminals as Animals from Shakespeare to Lombroso. Law and Literature Series. Berlin and New York: De Gruyter.


gepris.dfg.de/gepris/projekt/5423095


Identität und Alterität in neuen englisch-sprachigen Literaturen:
Postkolonialismus und Multikulturalität

SFB 541 | Identitäten und Alteritäten. Die Funktion von Alterität für die Konstitution und Konstruktion von Identität
[1997 – 2003]

Teilprojekt A5

This project was concerned with contemporary literature written in English from the former British colonies India (including Pakistan and Bangladesh) and South Africa. The project directors were Monika Fludernik (English), Hans-Helmuth Gander (Philosophy) and Paul Goetsch (†) (English).

Texts from expatriate authors often thematize issues of identity and alterity as they evolve in the direct confontation of different cultures. Thus, this project addresses questions of hybridity, multiculturalism and postcolonialism. The examples of authors and fictional characters, often marginal figures or inhabitants of Edward Said´s "third space", show what problems, fears and hopes result from the contemporary global situation and how these are represented and therapeutically "worked through" in postcolonial texts.

This project links literary criticism with sociological concepts and also participates in the ongoing debate about post-structuralism, post-colonialism and feminism. Key issues are the problematization of the subject and anti-essentialist approaches to collective identities and alterities. There is also a discourse-theoretical emphasis.

Apart from the issues of hybridity and the practice of "passing" (a black person passes as white), an increasing emphasis has been laid on questions of multiculturalism and diaspora. Here the term diaspora is extended from its traditional use for the Jewish diaspora to describing the situation of Indian immigrants. This employment of the term "diaspora" makes a more group-specific reading of (post-)colonial situations possible. A volume titled Diaspora and Mutlticulturalism: Common traditions and new developments appeared in 2003 with Rodopi Publishers.

A connection to more philosophical approaches to multiculturalism is achieved by the cooperation with the Department of Philosophy, namely with Hans-Helmut Gander. A philosophical critique of multiculturalism, following Charles Taylor, enables a fruitful interpretation of both literature and socio-political praxis.

Publikationen im Rahmen des Projektes

  • ALEXANDER, Vera: "Postponed Arrivals: The Afro-Asian Diaspora in Moyez G. Vassanji's No New Land," in: Fludernik, Monika (Hrsg.): Diaspora and Multiculturalism. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2003.
  • CUJAI, Nicole: "Grenzenlose Liebe? Beziehungen jenseits der Rassengrenze im zeitgenössischen südafrikanischen Roman," in: Fludernik, Monika / Gehrke, Hans-Joachim (Hrsg.): Grenzgänger zwischen Kulturen. Würzburg: Ergon, 1999. 227-40 (Identitäten und Alteritäten 1).
  • -----: And I too am not myself – Konstruktionen weiblicher Identität in Werken der englischsprachigen Gegenwartsliteratur Südafrikas. Neue Studien zur Anglistik und Amerikanistik 81. Frankfurt/M.: Peter Lang, 2001.
  • DANNENBERG, Hilary P.: "Doorways to Anywhere vs. Repetitive Hierarchy: The Multiple-World Structure of C.S. Lewis's Narnian Universe," in: Inklings 16, 1998.
  • -----: "Begegnungen auf beweglichen Grenzen: Darstellungen von Nationalität und Weiblichkeit im zeitgenössischen indo-anglischen bzw. anglo-indischen Roman," in: Fludernik, Monika / Gehrke, Hans-Joachim (Hrsg.): Grenzgänger zwischen Kulturen. Würzburg: Ergon, 1999. 427-46 (Identitäten und Alteritäten 1).
  • -----: "Edle Wilde im Roman der britischen Kolonialzeit und ihre intergalaktischen Pendants in der Science Fiction des 20. Jahrhunderts: Aphra Behns Oroonoko, Daniel Defoes Robinson Crusoe und Ursula K. Le Guins The Left Hand of Darkness," in: Fludernik, Monika / Haslinger, Peter / Kaufmann, Stefan (Hrsg.): Der Alteritätsdiskurs des Edlen Wilden: Exotismus, Anthropologie und Zivilisationskritik am Beispiel eines europäischen Topos. Würzburg: Ergon, 2002. 193-213 (Identitäten und Alteritäten 10).
  • -----: "Die Konstruktion alternativer Identitäten durch die Rekonstruktion der Vergangenheit in den populären amerikanischen Spielfilmgattungen Fantasy und Science Fiction," in: Michael, Joachim / Schäffauer, Markus Klaus (Hrsg.): Massenmedien und Alterität, Workshop im Rahmen des SFB 541 Identitäten und Alteritäten, Freiburg 02.–03.07.1999.
  • FEST, Kerstin: ...And All Women Mere Players? The Construction of Feminine Identity in the Novels of Dorothy Richardson, Jean Rhys and Radclyffe Hall. Vienna: Braumüller, 2009.
  • FLUDERNIK, Monika (Hrsg.): Hybridity and Postcolonialism: Twentieth-Century Indian Literature. Tübingen: Stauffenburg, 1998.
  • -----: "Colonial vs. Cosmopolitan Hybridity: A Comparison of Mulk Raj Anand and R.K. Narayan with recent British and North American Expatriate Writing (Singh-Baldwin, Divakaruni, Sunetra Gupta)," in: Fludernik, Monika (Hrsg.): Hybridity and Postcolonialism, 261-90.
  • -----: "The Constitution of Hybridity: Postcolonial Interventions," in: Fludernik, Monika (Hrsg.): Hybridity and Postcolonialism, 19-53.
  • -----: "Introduction," in: Fludernik, Monika (Hrsg.): Hybridity and Postcolonialism, 9-18.
  • -----: "Sunetra Gupta, The Glassblower's Breath," in: (Hrsg.): Kindlers Neues Literaturlexikon, vol. 21, Supplement A–K. München: Kindler Verlag, 1998. 520-21.
  • -----: "Carceral Topography: Spatiality and Liminality in the Literary Prison," in: Textual Practice 13.1 (1999). 43-77.
  • -----: "Cross-Mirrorings of Alterity: The Colonial Scenario and its Psychological Legacy," in: ARIEL 30.3 (1999). 29-62.
  • -----: "Grenze und Grenzgänger: Topologische Etuden," in: Fludernik, Monika / Gehrke, Hans-Joachim (Hrsg.): Grenzgänger zwischen Kulturen. Würzburg: Ergon, 1999. 99-108 (Identitäten und Alteritäten 1).
  • -----: "The Genderization of Narrative," in: GRAAT 21 (1999). 153-75.
  • -----: "Suttee Revisited: From the Iconography of Martyrdom to the Burkean Sublime," in: New Literary History, 30.2 (1999). 411-37.
  • -----: "When the Self is an Other: Vergleichende erzähltheoretische und postkoloniale Überlegungen zur Identitäts(de)konstruktion in der (exil)indischen Gegenwartsliteratur," in: Anglia 117.1 (1999). 71-96.
  • -----: "The Hybridity of Discourses about Hybridity: Kipling's 'Naboth' as an Allegory of Postcolonial Discourse, in: Steffen, Therese (Hrsg.): Crossover – Cultural Hybridity in Ethnicity, Gender, Ethics. Tübingen: Stauffenburg, 2000. 151-68 (Stauffenburg Discussion 14).
  • -----: "Suttee as heroic martyrdom, liebestod and emblem of women's oppression: from orientalist to feminist appropriations of a Hindu rite in four narrative genres," in: RANAM 33 (2000). 145-80.
  • -----: "Der edle Wilde als Kehrseite des Kulturprogressivismus," in: Fludernik, Monika / Haslinger, Peter / Kaufmann, Stefan (Hrsg.): Der Alteritätsdiskurs des Edlen Wilden: Exotismus, Anthropologie und Zivilisationskritik am Beispiel eines europäischen Topos. Würzburg: Ergon, 2002 (Identitäten und Alteritäten 10).
  • -----: "Noble Savages and Calibans: Dryden and Colonial Discourse," in: Klein, Holger (Hrsg.): Proceedings. John Dryden and the Age of Neo-Classicism, 2001.
  • ----- (gemeinsam mit Miriam Nandi): "Hybridität – Theorie und Praxis," in: Polylog 8 (2001).
  • -----: "Sunetra Gupta," in: (Hrsg. Robert Clark) Literary Dictionary, 2001.
  • -----: "Sunetra Gupta," in: (Hrsg. Ansgar Nünning) Metzler Lexikon englischsprachiger Autoren, 2001.
  • ----- (Hrsg.): Diaspora and Multiculturalism: Common Traditions and New Developments. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2003.
  • -----: "Introduction. The Diasporic Imaginary: Postcolonial Reconfigurations in the Context of Multiculturalism," in: Fludernik, Monika (Hrsg.): Diaspora and Multiculturalism.
  • -----: "The South Asian Diaspora: An Imagined Community?," in: Fludernik, Monika (Hrsg.): Diaspora and Multiculturalism.
  • -----: "Prison as Colonial Space, in: (Hrsg. Berben) Proceedings Tagung Nice Juni 2001.
  • ----- / Haslinger, Peter / Kaufmann, Stefan (Hrsg.): Der Alteritätsdiskurs des Edlen Wilden: Exotismus, Anthropologie und Zivilisationskritik am Beispiel eines europäischen Topos. Würzburg: Ergon, 2002 (Identitäten und Alteritäten 10).
  • FRANK, Haike: Role-Play in South-African Theatre. Bayreuth: Bayreuth African Studies 70, 2004.
  • GANDER, Hans-Helmuth: "'Ich weiß nicht, ob wir jemals mündig werden' – Anmerkungen zu Foucaults Aufklärungskritik," in: Fludernik, Monika / Nestvold, Ruth (Hrsg.): Das 18. Jahrhundert. Trier: WVT, 1998 (Literatur, Imagination, Realität 17).
  • -----: "'Ich lebe die inneren Verpflichtungen meiner Faktizität.' Heideggers Wende zur hermeneutischen Phänomenologie," in: Sepp, Hans Rainer (Hrsg.): Metamorphose der Phänomenologie. Dreizehn Stadien von Husserl aus. Freiburg/München: Karl Alber, 1999 (Phänomenologie 7).
  • -----: "In den Netzen der Überlieferung. Eine hermeneutische Analyse zur Geschichtlichkeit des Erkennens," in: Figal, G. / Grondin J. / Schmidt, D. (Hrsg.): Hermeneutische Wege. Hans-Georg Gadamer zum Hundertsten. Tübingen: WVT, 2000.
  • -----: Selbstverständnis und Lebenswelt. Grundzüge einer phänomenologischen Hermeneutik im Ausgang von Husserl und Heidegger. Frankfurt a. M.: Klostermann, 2001 (Philosophische Abhandlungen 80).
  • -----: "Konstitution des Selbst in Situationen. Zur Konzeption personaler Identität bei Martin Heidegger und Charles Taylor," in: Eßbach, Wolfgang (Hrsg.): wir/ihr/sie. Identität und Alterität in Theorie und Methode. Würzburg: Ergon, 2001 (Identitäten und Alteritäten 2).
  • -----: "Zwischen Vertrautheit und Fremdheit. Zur hermeneutischen Erfahrung der Geschichte," in: Schüßler, I. (Hrsg.): Phénoménologie et herméneutique: Enjeux et actualité. 2001.
  • -----: "Verstehen als Situationsbewältigung," in: Weiß, J. (Hrsg.): Die Jemeinigkeit des Mitseins: Die Daseinsanalytik Martin Heideggers und die Kritik der soziologischen Vernunft. Konstanz: UvK, 2001.
  • -----: "Hermeneutische Überlegungen zum interpretativen Selbst- und Weltbezug im Zeichen multimedialer Wirklichkeitswahrnehmung," in: Koertner, U. (Hrsg.): Hermeneutik und Ästhetik. Die Theologie des Wortes im multimedialen Zeitalter. Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 2001.
  • GOETSCH, Paul: "Der koloniale Diskurs in Beowulf," in: Tristram, Hildegard L.C. (Hrsg.): New Methods in the Research of Epic/Neue Methoden der Epenforschung. Tübingen: Narr, 1998. 186-200 (ScriptOralia 107).
  • -----: "Die Macht des Buches in kolonialer und postkolonialer Literatur," in: Ahrens, Rüdiger / Neumann, Fritz William (Hrsg.): Fiktion und Geschichte in der anglo-amerikanischen Literatur: Festschrift für Heinz Joachim Müllenbrock. Heidelberg, 1998. 515-33.
  • -----: "Unity and Diversity in Bill Clinton's Rhetoric," in: Achilles, Jochen / Birkle, Carmen (Hrsg.): (Trans)Formations of Cultural Identity in the English-Speaking World. Heidelberg: Winter, 1998. 28-39.
  • -----: "Grenzen und Grenzüberschreitungen in der Literatur aus der Perspektive des Lesers," in: Fludernik, Monika / Gehrke, Hans-Joachim (Hrsg.): Grenzgänger zwischen Kulturen. Würzburg: Ergon, 1999. 63-74 (Identitäten und Alteritäten 1).
  • -----: "Passing in South African Literature," in: Antor, Heinz / Cope, Kevin L. (Hrsg.): Intercultural Encounters – Studies in English Literatures. Essays Presented to Rüdiger Ahrens on the Occasion of His Sixtieth Birthday. Heidelberg, 1999. 479-95.
  • -----: "Identitätskonstruktion in Robinson Crusoe: Zur verführerischen Macht eines autobiographischen Erzählmusters," in: Neumann, Michael (Hrsg.): Erzählte Identitäten: Ein interdisziplinäres Symposion. München: Fink, 2000. 90-105.
  • -----: "The Monstrous in Hamlet," in: Bode, Christoph / Kloos, Wolfgang (Hrsg.): Historicizing/Contemporizing Shakespeare. Essays in Honour of Rudolf Böhm. Trier: WVT, 2000. 91-113.
  • -----: "Der Andere als Monster," in: Eßbach, Wolfgang (Hrsg.): wir/ihr/sie. Identität und Alterität in Theorie und Methode. Würzburg: Ergon, 2001. 279-95 (Identitäten und Alteritäten 2).
  • -----: "Das Kind als edler Wilder: Seine Funktionen in der englischen Literatur," in: Fludernik, Monika / Haslinger, Peter / Kaufmann, Stefan (Hrsg.): Der Alteritätsdiskurs des Edlen Wilden: Exotismus, Anthropologie und Zivilisationskritik am Beispiel eines europäischen Topos. Würzburg: Ergon, 2002 (Identitäten und Alteritäten 10).
  • -----: "Lincolns Gettysburg Address als 'Testament der nationalen Identität'," in: Gehrke, Hans-Joachim (Hrsg.): Geschichtsbilder und Gründungsmythen. Würzburg: Ergon, 2001 (Identitäten und Alteritäten 7).
  • -----: "Menschen und Monster," in: Tagungsband Wien, 2002.
  • -----: "The Fantastic in Poetry of the First World War," in: Tagungsband Tübingen, 2002.
  • HESTERMANN, Sandra: "The German-Turkish Literature of Diaspora: Hyphenated and/or Multicultural Identity in the Works of Zafer Senocak and Feridun Zaimoglu," in: Fludernik, Monika (Hrsg.): Diaspora and Multiculturalism: Common Traditions and New Developments. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2003. 329-74.
  • -----: Meeting the Other – Encountering Oneself: Paradigmen der Selbst- und Fremddarstellung in ausgewählten anglo-indischen und indisch-englischen Kurzgeschichten. Frankfurt/M.: Peter Lang, 2003 (Neue Studien zur Anglistik und Amerikanistik 88).
  • KRÜCKELS, Birgit: "'Men Live in Homes, Women Live in Bodies': Body and Gender in Sara Suleri's Meatless Days," in: Fludernik, Monika (Hrsg.): Hybridity and Postcolonialism: Twentieth-Century Indian Literature. Tübingen: Stauffenburg, 1998. 167-86.
  • LESAAR, Henrik Richard: "Semper idem? The Relationship of European and National Identities," in: Drulák, Petr (Hrsg.): National and European Identities in EU Enlargement. Prag, 2001. 179-94.
  • NANDI, Miriam. M/Other India/s: Zur literarischen Verarbeitung von Armuts- und Kastenproblematik in ausgewählten Texten der indisch-englischen und muttersprachlichen indischen Literatur. Heidelberg: Winter, 2007.
  • OED, Anja: "Aspects of (Self-) Representation in Sara Suleri's Meatless Days, or: What does it mean, to write a book beyond what it is about?," in: Fludernik, Monika (Hrsg.): Hybridity and Postcolonialism: Twentieth-Century Indian Literature. Tübingen: Stauffenburg, 1998. 187-97.
  • PETZOLD, Jochen: "Zwischen 'Nigger' und 'Noble Savage': Das Afrikabild in R. M. Ballantynes Black Ivory," in: Heydenreich, Titus / Späth, Eberhard (Hrsg.): Afrika in den europäischen Literaturen zwischen 1860 und 1930. Erlangen, Universitätsbund Erlangen-Nürnberg 2000. 171-88 (Erlanger Forschungen 89).
  • -----: "André Brink's Magical History Tour: Postmodern and Postcolonial Influences in 'The First Life of Adamastor'," in: English in Africa 27.2 (October 2000). 45-58.
  • -----: "In Search of a New National History: Debunking Old Heroes in Robert Kirby's The Secret Letters of Jan van Riebeeck," in: Research in African Literatures 32.3 (2001). 143-54.
  • -----: Re-imagining White Identity by Exploring the Past: History in South African Novels of the 1990s. Trier: WVT, 2002 (Studies in English Literary and Cultural History 5).
  • STROBEL, Susanne: "Möglichkeiten der Grenzüberschreitung in Reiseberichten viktorianischer Frauen am Beispiel von Lucie Duff Gordons Letters from the Cape (1864)," in: Fludernik, Monika / Gehrke, Hans-Joachim (Hrsg.): Grenzgänger zwischen Kulturen. Würzburg: Ergon, 1999. 409-26 (Identitäten und Alteritäten 1).
  • -----: Various Forms of Savagery. Identitäts- und Alteritätskonstruktionen in Reiseberichten viktorianischer Frauen zu Süd- und Westafrika. Frankfurt/M.: Peter Lang, 2003.
  • VOGEL, Elisabeth / LUTTERER, Wolfram / NAPP, Antonia (Hrsg.): Zwischen Ausgrenzung und Hybridisierung. Zur Konstruktion von kulturwissenschaftlichen Perspektiven. Würzburg: Ergon, 2003 (Identitäten und Alteritäten 14).


Abgeschlossene Dissertationen im Rahmen des Projektes:

  • CUJAI, Nicole (2000). "And I too am not myself: Konstruktionen weiblicher Identität in Werken der englischsprachigen Gegenwartsliteratur Südafrikas."
  • FEST, Kerstin (2006). "Are all Women Mere Players?... Performances of Feminine Identity in the Novels of Dorothy Richardson, Jean Rhys, and Radclyffe Hall."
  • FRANK, Haike (2002). "Das südafrikanische Drama unter rollentheoretischen Aspekten: Role Play in South African Theatre."
  • HESTERMANN, Sandra (2002). "Meeting the Other – Encountering Oneself: Paradigmen der Selbst- und Fremddarstellung in ausgewählten anglo-indischen und indisch-englischen Kurzgeschichten."
  • NANDI, Miriam (2006). "M/Other India/s: Zur literarischen Verarbeitung von Armuts- und Kastenproblematik in ausgewählten Texten der indisch-englischen und muttersprachlichen indischen Literatur seit 1935."
  • PETZOLD, Jochen (2002). "Re-imaging White Identity by Exploring the Past: History in South African Novels of the 1990s."
  • STROBEL, Susanne (2002). "Various Forms of Savagery: Identitäts- und Alteritätskonstruktionen in Reiseberichten viktorianischer Frauen zu Süd- und Westafrika."


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