Zeitschrift für Anglistik und Amerikanistik

A Quarterly of Language, Literature and Culture

ISSN: 2196-4726

First published: January 15, 2004

Edited by: Michael Butter, Lars Eckstein, Joachim Frenk, Brigitte Georgi-Findlay, Thomas Herbst, Barbara Korte, Günter Leypoldt, Christoph Reinfandt, Anatol Stefanowitsch

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.

History

ZAA was founded in 1953. The journal has been published by de Gruyter since 2014.

Other publications in the field:

Anglia

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Supplementary Materials

Topics

Volume 69 Issue 2

Frontmatter

June 14, 2021 Page range: i-iv

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Accessible PDF

Editorial

June 14, 2021 Page range: 107-107

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Introduction

The Short Story, the New Weird, and the Literary Market

Raphael Zähringer June 14, 2021 Page range: 109-128

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Abstract

The short story is commonly – and very productively – treated in the spirit of critical terms such as marginality and liminality. Quite surprisingly, though, New Weird Fiction, which postulates similar interests in, e.g., formal and aesthetic innovation as well as literary ambition, is primarily associated with the novel. The underlying lack of interest in the New Weird Short Story in both popular culture and academic work is scrutinised in this article. In a first step, it will survey the short story as a liminal form, both formally and aesthetically, and contextualize it by drawing upon the state of the literary market in the twenty-first century. The contribution’s main argument is that the short story has always either been considered to be too ‘popular’ or too ‘literary’ in order to contest the novel as the prevalent literary form. Step two will perform a similar move regarding Weird Fiction, thus highlighting the parallels between the short and the Weird, and the need for more academic attention dedicated to the New Weird short story.

Articles

The Long and the Short of It: Approaching the (Un-)Representable in China Miéville’s “The Tain” (2002) and “The Condition of New Death” (2014)

Christoph Reinfandt June 14, 2021 Page range: 129-142

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Abstract

How can the genre of the short story accommodate the ‘inflationary tendency’ of weird fiction (Carl Freedman)? This article will trace how a very long and a very short story by China Miéville establish their respective weird elements in order to function as ‘placeholders for the unrepresentable’ (China Miéville). As will be shown, “The Tain” frames the weird in an elaborate and intricate narrative construction which is clearly literary while “The Condition of New Death” is basically expository and partly relies on the non-literary genre conventions of the academic report and the manifesto. In both instances, however, there is a reflexive turn which insists on the text itself not only in its representational but also in its performative (telling stories, writing) and material (print, paper, screen) dimensions as a constitutive part of what makes reality real for human beings. The article concludes with a brief placing of the New Weird short story in the wider field of (post-)modern(ist) literature and fiction and in the conceptual shift from deconstruction to more recent theoretical approaches like Actor-Network-Theory and the New Materialisms.

Descriptive Economy in the New Weird Short Story: China Miéville’s “The Condition of New Death”

Guido Isekenmeier June 14, 2021 Page range: 143-157

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Abstract

This article investigates the forms and functions of description in New Weird fiction, using texts by China Miéville as examples. It contrasts the expansive descriptive routines of his novel Perdido Street Station (2000) with the compact forms of descriptivity found in the short story “The Condition of New Death,” focussing on the role of metaphoric condensation and the blending of description with narrative and explanatory modes. Occasionally drawing on other stories contained in Miéville’s 2015 collection Three Moments of an Explosion , it formulates a model of the descriptive economy of short fiction.

Mean Streets: Tracking the Dispositives of Address(es) with China Miéville’s “Reports of Certain Events in London”

Nicola Glaubitz June 14, 2021 Page range: 159-171

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Abstract

Miéville’s short story stands out for its perhaps experimental, perhaps old-fashioned form: the story’s first-person narrator adopts, in nineteenth-century fashion, the persona of an editor and presents both his own view on the ‘events’ in question and a number of mock documents he has allegedly been sent. Readers are encouraged to piece together the story elements – events and characters – from postcards, minutes of a meeting, memos, personal letters, and tables. Typographically distinct and juxtaposed rather than narratively linked, these text fragments suggest internal conflicts in a group of people who track rogue streets – streets that change their location spontaneously and wreak havoc on the geographical and the political order of cities. It is no coincidence that a mix-up of names and addresses is the starting point of the story; the story’s ending hints at the consequences of having or not having a fixed address. My contribution examines Miéville’s use of the short story form in the context of fantastic literature. Following suggestions of Miéville’s “The Conspiracy of Architecture” (1998), the foregrounding of formal and quasi-material aspects of organising and mediating knowledge is read as an engagement with the power/knowledge dispositives made up of discursive ordering principles as well as city planning and city geography.

Character and Perspective in Cosmic Horror: Lovecraft and Kiernan

Heinrich Wilke June 14, 2021 Page range: 173-190

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Abstract

Despite their overt focus on inexplicable alien forces, cosmic horror stories are also determined by their human cast. Far from being merely fodder for horror, the characters significantly contribute to the generation of meaning, including that of the supernatural entity or phenomenon itself. The same holds for the narrators’ (implicitly) political perspectives on the world of which they are part. Much of the perspective propounded in Lovecraft’s cosmic horror stories partakes of myth, adopting in particular the latter’s universal view and pronounced sidelining of humanity as a whole, which it intensifies to the point of horror. Appearances to the contrary notwithstanding, this universal perspective is consistent with the racism permeating and structuring Lovecraft’s writing. Though eschewing racism and universalism, the cosmic horror of Kiernan’s “Tidal Forces” negotiates literary reflections of colonialism from an unreflective white perspective.

Book Reviews

Stefan Schubert: Narrative Instability: Destabilizing Identities, Realities, and Textualities in Contemporary Popular Culture

Maria Sulimma June 14, 2021 Page range: 191-194

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Michael Weber: Die Chronologie von Emily Brontës Wuthering Heights. Literary and Cultural Studies, Theory and the (New) Media

Lisa Ebert June 14, 2021 Page range: 195-197

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Timo, Müller: The African American Sonnet: A Literary History

Thomas Austenfeld June 14, 2021 Page range: 199-201

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Books Received

June 14, 2021 Page range: 203-203

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Volume 69 (2021)

Volume 68 (2020)

Volume 67 (2019)

Volume 66 (2018)

Volume 65 (2017)

Volume 64 (2016)

Volume 63 (2015)

Volume 62 (2014)

Volume 61 (2013)

Volume 60 (2012)

Volume 59 (2011)

Volume 58 (2010)

Volume 57 (2009)

Volume 56 (2008)

Volume 55 (2007)

Volume 54 (2006)

Volume 53 (2005)

Volume 52 (2004)

Cite Score	0.4
European Reference Index for the Humanities
SCImago Journal Rank	0.113
Source Normalized Impact per Paper	0.215

Submit

ZAA invites contributions concerning a wide range of research on current issues in English and American Studies, such as research reports, survey articles featuring recent developments in the field or proposals concerning new directions within the discipline. Two of the journal’s four annual issues are open for individual submissions in the field of literary and cultural studies, the remaining two are reserved for special topics, one in linguistics and one in literary and cultural studies.

Articles, preferably written in English, should not exceed 40,000 characters and be accompanied by an abstract in English of no more than 1,000 characters. All manuscripts have to be submitted in accordance with the ZAA style sheet (see section “Overview” – “Supplementary Information”). The style sheet may also be obtained from the journal’s homepage (www.zaa.uni-tuebingen.de) or requested directly from the editorial office (contact: zaa@uni-tuebingen.de).

Hybrid Open Access

For complete details on hybrid open access publishing at De Gruyter please see: https://www.degruyter.com/page/560

Effective 1st January 2016, authors from an institution affiliated with either the Association of Dutch Universities (VSNU), the Consortium of Swiss Academic Libraries or some UK libraries participating in the Jisc Collections SMP 　may publish primary research and review articles open access in any of De Gruyter’s OnlineOpen journals at a discount of 90% of the APC price. For more information and to confirm whether your institution is eligible please see the following:

The Netherlands: https://www.degruyter.com/page/1461
The UK: https://www.degruyter.com/page/1462
Switzerland: 　https://www.degruyter.com/page/1463

Editorial

Editorial Board
Michael Butter, University of Tübingen; Lars Eckstein, University of Potsdam; Joachim Frenk, University of Saarbrücken; Brigitte Georgi-Findlay, Dresden University of Technology; Thomas Herbst, University of Erlangen-Nürnberg; Barbara Korte, University of Freiburg; Günter Leypoldt, University of Heidelberg; Christoph Reinfandt, University of Tübingen; Anatol Stefanowitsch, Free University of Berlin.

Advisory Board
Susan Bassnett, University of Warwick, UK; Winfried Siemerling, University of Waterloo, Ontario, Canada; Bernd Engler, University of Tübingen, Germany; T. Vijay Kumar, Osmania University, Hyderabad, India; Caroline Rosenthal, University of Jena, Germany; Daniel S. Malachuk, Western Illinois University, USA; Gill Plain, University of St Andrews, UK; Gerhard Stilz, University of Tübingen, Germany; John Storey, University of Sunderland, UK; Percy Walton, Carlton University, Canada.

Contact the Editorial Team
zaa@uni-tuebingen.de

Journal Homepage
www.zaa.uni-tuebingen.de

(Deutsch)

Zeitschrift für Anglistik und Amerikanistik

A Quarterly of Language, Literature and Culture

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