Zeitschrift für Anglistik und Amerikanistik Volume 60 Issue 4

Zeitschrift für Anglistik und Amerikanistik

Volume 60 Issue 4

Contents
Journal Overview

Minds at War, Minds in War: The Wartime Short Fiction of D.H. Lawrence and Wyndham Lewis

Ann-Marie Einhaus March 15, 2014 Page range: 319-334

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Abstract

This article provides a re-investigation of the war fiction of Wyndham Lewis and D.H. Lawrence, focusing on their short fiction. It proposes to read the war-related short stories of both writers as displaced autobiographical writing used to negotiate the impact of their war experiences. The texts discussed are placed in the context of critical assumptions in dealing with modernist war writing, challenging the notion that modernist writers opted primarily for indirect, impersonal treatment of the war in their work. Comparing the military perspective of Lewis to Lawrence’s civilian outlook, this article shows that straightforward literary treatment of the First World War was not restricted to the canonical soldier-writers, and that modernist war writing does not necessarily limit itself to allusion, metaphor and oblique stylistic experimentation to address the experience of armed conflict. It traces a profound disillusionment commonly associated with the work of the ‘trench-poets’ in the short fiction of these two disparate modernist/avant-garde writers and explores its impact on Lewis and Lawrence’s respective cultural theory and philosophy.

Analyzing Graphic Novels in Terms of Complexity: A Typology

Achim Hescher March 15, 2014 Page range: 335-360

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Abstract

Several attributes have been used to label or legitimize the graphic novel as a relative of the comic book family. However, as single attributes, they are generally too blurry to cogently categorize certain long-form graphic works. The attribute ‘complexity’ bears enough potential to do so in the form of a typology, a graph functioning on two axes: horizontally, through a scalar continuum with the traditional (and possibly lengthy) comic book on the one extreme end and the graphic novel on the other; vertically, through a total of seven parameters which represent single aspects specifying graphic works by degree. Such a typology allows exclusive category assignments (e.g. ‘graphic novel and not comic book’) as well as differentiating assessments (‘rather/not a traditional comic book/graphic novel’).

Painful Interactions: The Elusive Mother-Daughter Relationship in Alice Munro’s “The Peace of Utrecht”

Dragos Zetu March 15, 2014 Page range: 361-374

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Abstract

This paper deals with the narrative treatment of an obsessive theme in Alice Munro’s fiction: the mother-daughter relationship. There are two problematic sets of interrelations: the first one refers to the young daughter’s inability to deal with her mother’s neurodegenerative disease, the second one concerns the adult daughter, especially her revisiting of traumatic childhood experiences. Drawing on recent developments in psychoanalysis and developmental psychology this paper analyzes the way Munro presents family relationships, offering deep insights into her characters’ psychological development and discussing the causes of the adult daughter’s apparent failure to come to terms with her past.

Exit Strategies: Narrative Closure and Political Allegory in Lost and Battlestar Galactica

Steffen Hantke March 15, 2014 Page range: 375-390

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Abstract

Thanks to technological developments that allow controlled, scheduleindependent, and repeated attentive viewing, dramatic television series have substantially increased narrative and thematic complexity, both within the individual episode and season, and within the multi-season arc. Lost and Battlestar Galactica , which opened with a single cataclysmic event determining their storyline over several seasons, did so by reflecting on the trauma of 9/11 and its long aftermath. Each series also spoke to the political question how long national identity can, or should, be determined by historical trauma, and in what manner this trauma itself is to be written into the national record. In their specific ways of aligning their own narrative closure with the Bush administrations’ exit from office in 2008, Lost and Battlestar Galactica pursued a historical allegory of transcending trauma and achieving national renewal.

“It’s About Being Connected”: Reframing the Network in Colum McCann’s Post 9/11 Novel Let the Great World Spin

Regina Schober March 15, 2014 Page range: 391-402

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Abstract

Colum McCann’s novel Let the Great World Spin (2009) is one of the rare responses to 9/11 which displays not a falling man but, quite the opposite, someone who manages to keep their balance. This paper reveals how the concept of network functions to enhance such a different reaction to the terror attacks, expressing a sense of coherence, balance, and reconciliation within the novel. As opposed to former network representations, such as in postmodern fiction, this novel no longer depicts human inability to cope with complexity, but rather partakes in re-defining cultural trauma while re-gaining national identity at a time of crisis. The idea of network portrayed and constructed within the narrative and symbolic level of this novel is optimistic, presenting the network as a figure of thought that transcends the dehumanizing tendencies of complex systems, foregrounding its potential for creating stability and meaningful relationships. The novel thus returns to a more traditional concept of network, one which carries the image back to the level of the individual, thereby installing an ultimate hope in man’s ability to cope with complexity, while at the same time evoking a traditional notion of human identity that grants the subject the chance to acquire autonomy, albeit in interdependence with and according to the rules of the network.

Buchbesprechungen

March 15, 2014 Page range: 403-421

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Bucheingänge

March 15, 2014 Page range: 422-423

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Die Autoren dieses Heftes

March 15, 2014 Page range: 424-424

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March 15, 2014 Page range: 425-430

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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.