Zeitschrift für Anglistik und Amerikanistik Volume 54 Issue 4

Zeitschrift für Anglistik und Amerikanistik

Volume 54 Issue 4

Contents
Journal Overview

Inhalt

April 15, 2014 Page range: I-II

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John Keats and Mythopoetics: A Reading of "La Belle Dame sans Merci"

Sibylle Baumbach April 15, 2014 Page range: 337-348

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Abstract

While the tide of Keats's "La Belle Dame sans Merci" points to Alain Chartier's medieval poem as major source, there is an even earlier subtext suggesting itself in both the ballad's narrative and structure. As demonstrated in this paper, Keats's depiction of the relationship between the knight and the fairy-figure, between poetic ward and mysterious muse, ,refers to the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice as it is presented in Ovid's Metamorphoses. Exceeding what can be regarded a fine example of creative reception, the recurrence to the classical tale of poetic inspiration and, as it were, despair adds a metapoetic level to "La Belle Dame." Playing on in a world that is depicted as having fallen silent, the ballad becomes a means for reviving orphic singing and enacts an encounter with antiquity, in which the poet's anxiety of belatedness is eventually overcome. Thereby Keats emerges as another Ovid or even a new writing, writing himself into a greater tradition of mythopoetry

Legrands Opus Magnum: Der alchemistische Code in Edgar Allan Poes "The Gold-Bug"

Klaas Voss April 15, 2014 Page range: 349-363

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Abstract

Edgar Allan Poe's short story "The Gold-Bug", originally published in 1843, is one of his most cryptographic writings and his been subject to many interpretative approaches. I contend that the alchemical code hidden within the superficial framework of an adventure story permeates the entire tale and adds a coherent, yet mystifying, layer of meaning. Based on the findings of Barton Levi St. Armand in 1971, this article shows that Poe's numerous alchemichal allusions in this story form a detailed account of the so called opus magnum, the greatest quest of the alchemist, who 'is personified by the character Legrand. Furthermore, the alchemical code in "The Gold-Bug" demonstrates how the strife for material wealth is transformed through a process of ratiocination into a search for enlightenment. This reflects the original project of hermetic alchemy as well as Poe's critical perception of the economic and political turmoil of the 1840s

The Risks of Intertextuality: Shakespearean Allusions in Isak Dinesen's Out o[ Africa and William Trevor' s Fools of Fortune

Dorothea Kehler April 15, 2014 Page range: 365-378

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Abstract

Although allusion or intertextuality can deepen the resonances of a literary work, it may backfire. Both Isak Dinesen's Out of Africa (1938) and William Trevor's" Pools of Fortune (1983) are set in erstwhile British colonial possessions, and both repeatedly invoke Shakespeare. Dinesen favors quotation, positioning Shakespeare.":$D. the surface of her narrative, thus minimizing the risk of non-recognition. This strategy, however, unwittingly intimates her elitist ethos. Trevor contrasts with Dinesen not only in his greater sensitivity to issues of class and race (his perspective is post colonial), but also in his mode of using Shakespeare: structurally. He employs only one explicit allusion, that in his tide from Romeo and Juliet. Instead, by embedding allusions to Renaissance drama within the plot, Trevor models one of his recurrent themes - we are made out of history - while at the same time neutralizing the risks of "purposes mistook."

Media Criticism in Contemporary British Poetry

Uwe Klawitter April 15, 2014 Page range: 379-392

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Pharmakon Zeitreise: Verborgene kulturelle Phantasmen in Audrey Niffeneggers The Time Traveler's Wife

Sylvia Mieszkowskl April 15, 2014 Page range: 393-408

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Abstract

Henry DeTamble is unable to stay in time. A genetic defect causes the protagonist of Audrey Niffenegger's The Time Traveler's Wife (2003) to unwillingly and spontaneously 'fallout of the present' - without control as to where the trip takes him or when he might be back. Henry and his wife Clare Abshire are the novel's two alternating first person narrators who also focalise the plot of their (extra-) ordinary marriage. My first thesis suggests that, in this novel, time traveling is a cultural fentasy. Having traced the term from Freud's 'Phantasie' to Lacan's 'fantasme' and Žižek's 'fantasm,' I shall focus on the question of how time traveling stages. other, more hidden, cultural fantasies. It"is this article's second contention that time traveling is characterised by precisely those contradictory qualities which define Derrida's term 'pharmakon.' Abrief introduction of this second concept will allow me to show more precisely how time traveling as a cultural fantasm operates in tackling issues crucial to the formation of the (heterosexual) couple such as negotiation of gender roles, empowerment and self-supplementation as weIl as structures of desire.

Buchbesprechungen

April 15, 2014 Page range: 409-428

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Gesamtinhaltsverzeichnis 54 (2006)

April 15, 2014 Page range: 429-433

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About this journal

Zeitschrift für Anglistik und Amerikanistik (ZAA) is a peer-reviewed journal that traditionally reflects the entire spectrum of English and American language, literature and culture. Particular attention will also be paid to the new literatures in English, the development of linguistic varieties outside Britain and North America, the culture of ethnic minorities and the relationship between anglophone and neighbouring cultural areas. The journal also welcomes contributions which examine theoretical and interdisciplinary issues in literary, linguistic and socio-cultural research. Thus, ZAA invites contributions concerning a wide range of research on current issues, survey articles featuring recent developments in the fields of culture, literature and language, research reports as well as proposals concerning new directions within the discipline. For two of the journal’s four annual issues articles may be submitted in the field of literary and cultural studies; the remaining two issues will be reserved for special topics, one in literature and culture, the other in linguistics.