Published by De Gruyter

Handbooks of English and American Studies

Text and Theory

Edited by: Martin Middeke, Gabriele Rippl and Hubert Zapf

Overview
Volumes

This handbook series has been designed to offer students and researchers a compact means of orientation in their study of Anglophone literary texts. Each volume – involving a particular historical or theoretical focus – introduces readers to current concepts and methodologies, as well as academic debates, by combining theory with text analysis and contextual anchoring. It is this bridging between abstract survey and concrete analysis which is the central aim and defi ning feature of the series, bringing together literary history and interpretation, theory and text.

At a time when students of English and American literary studies have to deal with an overwhelming amount of highly specialized research literature, such a handbook series is indispensable. However, this series is also catering to the requirements of scholars who would like to keep up with the current state of various fields within their discipline.

Individual volumes in this Handbook series will typically provide:

• knowledge of relevant literary periods, genres, and historical developments;
• knowledge of representative authors and works of those periods;
• knowledge of cultural and historical contexts;
• knowledge about the adaptation of literary texts through other media;
• knowledge of relevant literary and cultural theories;
• examples of how historical and theoretical information weaves fruitfully into interpretations of literary texts.

Supplementary Materials

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Topics

Book 2022

Handbook of the British Novel in the Long Eighteenth Century

Katrin Berndt, Alessa Johns

Volume 16 in this series

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The handbook offers a comprehensive introduction to the British novel in the long eighteenth century, when this genre emerged to develop into the period’s most versatile and popular literary form. Part I features six systematic chapters that discuss literary, intellectual, socio-economic, and political contexts, providing innovative approaches to issues such as sense and sentiment, gender considerations, formal characteristics, economic history, enlightened and radical concepts of citizenship and human rights, ecological ramifications, and Britain’s growing global involvement. Part II presents twenty-five analytical chapters that attend to individual novels, some canonical and others recently recovered. These analyses engage the debates outlined in the systematic chapters, undertaking in-depth readings that both contextualize the works and draw on relevant criticism, literary theory, and cultural perspectives. The handbook’s breadth and depth, clear presentation, and lucid language make it attractive and accessible to scholar and student alike.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110650440
ISBN:: 9783110650440
ISBN:: 9783110649765
ISBN:: 9783110649895
Subject:: Literary Studies
Subject:: Anglo-American Literature
Subject:: Anglo-American Literature, general
Subject:: 18th Century
Publisher:: De Gruyter

Book 2022

Handbook of the American Short Story

Erik Redling, Oliver Scheiding

Volume 15 in this series

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The American short story has always been characterized by exciting aesthetic innovations and an immense range of topics. This handbook offers students and researchers a comprehensive introduction to the multifaceted genre with a special focus on recent developments due to the rise of new media. Part I provides systematic overviews of significant contexts ranging from historical-political backgrounds, short story theories developed by writers, print and digital culture, to current theoretical approaches and canon formation. Part II consists of 35 paired readings of representative short stories by eminent authors, charting major steps in the evolution of the American short story from its beginnings as an art form in the early nineteenth century up to the digital age. The handbook examines historically, methodologically, and theoretically the coming together of the enduring narrative practice of compression and concision in American literature. It offers fresh and original readings relevant to studying the American short story and shows how the genre performs American culture.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110587647
ISBN:: 9783110587647
ISBN:: 9783110585322
ISBN:: 9783110585230
Subject:: Literary Studies
Subject:: Anglo-American Literature
Subject:: Anglo-American Literature, general
Subject:: 20th Century
Subject:: 21st Century
Publisher:: De Gruyter

Book 2021

Handbook of American Romanticism

Philipp Löffler, Clemens Spahr, Jan Stievermann

Volume 14 in this series

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The Handbook of American Romanticism presents a comprehensive survey of the various schools, authors, and works that constituted antebellum literature in the United States. The volume is designed to feature a selection of representative case studies and to assess them within two complementary frameworks: the most relevant historical, political, and institutional contexts of the antebellum decades and the consequent (re-)appropriations of the Romantic period by academic literary criticism in the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110592238
ISBN:: 9783110592238
ISBN:: 9783110590906
ISBN:: 9783110590753
Subject:: Literary Studies
Subject:: Anglo-American Literature
Subject:: Anglo-American Literature, general
Subject:: 19th Century
Subject:: 20th Century
Publisher:: De Gruyter

Book 2020

Handbook of Anglophone World Literatures

Stefan Helgesson, Birgit Neumann, Gabriele Rippl

Volume 13 in this series

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The Handbook of Anglophone World Literatures is the first globally comprehensive attempt to chart the rich field of world literatures in English. Part I navigates different usages of the term ‘world literature’ from an historical point of view. Part II discusses a range of theoretical and methodological approaches to world literature. This is also where the handbook’s conceptualisation of ‘Anglophone world literatures’ – in the plural – is developed and interrogated in juxtaposition with proximate fields of inquiry such as postcolonialism, translation studies, memory studies and environmental humanities. Part III charts sociological approaches to Anglophone world literatures, considering their commodification, distribution, translation and canonisation on the international book market. Part IV, finally, is dedicated to the geographies of Anglophone world literatures and provides sample interpretations of literary texts written in English.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110583182
ISBN:: 9783110583182
ISBN:: 9783110580945
ISBN:: 9783110580846
Subject:: Literary Studies
Subject:: Comparative Literary Studies
Subject:: Anglo-American Literature
Subject:: Anglo-American Literature, general
Publisher:: De Gruyter

Book 2020

Handbook of British Travel Writing

Barbara Schaff

Volume 12 in this series

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This handbook offers a systematic exploration of current key topics in travel writing studies. It addresses the history, impact, and unique discursive variety of British travel writing by covering some of the most celebrated and canonical authors of the genre as well as lesser known ones in more than thirty close-reading chapters. Combining theoretically informed, astute literary criticism of single texts with the analysis of the circumstances of their production and reception, these chapters offer excellent possibilities for understanding the complexity and cultural relevance of British travel writing.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110498974
ISBN:: 9783110498974
ISBN:: 9783110499834
ISBN:: 9783110497052
Subject:: Literary Studies
Subject:: Anglo-American Literature
Subject:: Anglo-American Literature, general
Subject:: Literary Genres and Media
Subject:: Other Genres
Publisher:: De Gruyter

Book 2021

Handbook of Comics and Graphic Narratives

Sebastian Domsch, Dan Hassler-Forest, Dirk Vanderbeke

Volume 11 in this series

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Whether one describes them as sequential art, graphic narratives or graphic novels, comics have become a vital part of contemporary culture. Their range of expression contains a tremendous variety of forms, genres and modes − from high to low, from serial entertainment for children to complex works of art. This has led to a growing interest in comics as a field of scholarly analysis, as comics studies has established itself as a major branch of criticism. This handbook combines a systematic survey of theories and concepts developed in the field alongside an overview of the most important contexts and themes and a wealth of close readings of seminal works and authors. It will prove to be an indispensable handbook for a large readership, ranging from researchers and instructors to students and anyone else with a general interest in this fascinating medium.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110446968
ISBN:: 9783110446968
ISBN:: 9783110446616
ISBN:: 9783110446838
Subject:: Literary Studies
Subject:: Anglo-American Literature
Subject:: Anglo-American Literature, general
Subject:: Literary Genres and Media
Subject:: Graphic Novel
Publisher:: De Gruyter

Book 2019

Handbook of English Renaissance Literature

Ingo Berensmeyer

Volume 10 in this series

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This handbook of English Renaissance literature serves as a reference for both students and scholars, introducing recent debates and developments in early modern studies. Using new theoretical perspectives and methodological tools, the volume offers exemplary close readings of canonical and less well-known texts from all significant genres between c. 1480 and 1660. Its systematic chapters address questions about editing Renaissance texts, the role of translation, theatre and drama, life-writing, science, travel and migration, and women as writers, readers and patrons. The book will be of particular interest to those wishing to expand their knowledge of the early modern period beyond Shakespeare.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110444889
ISBN:: 9783110444889
ISBN:: 9783110443677
ISBN:: 9783110436082
Subject:: Literary Studies
Subject:: Anglo-American Literature
Subject:: 16th-17th Century
Subject:: Literary History
Publisher:: De Gruyter

Book 2020

Handbook of the English Novel, 1830–1900

Martin Middeke, Monika Pietrzak-Franger

Volume 9 in this series

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Part I of this authoritative handbook offers systematic essays, which deal with major historical, social, philosophical, political, cultural and aesthetic contexts of the English novel between 1830 and 1900. The essays offer a wide scope of aspects such as the Industrial Revolution, religion and secularisation, science, technology, medicine, evolution or the increasing mediatisation of the lifeworld. Part II, then, leads through the work of more than 25 eminent Victorian novelists. Each of these chapters provides both historical and biographical contextualisation, overview, close reading and analysis. They also encourage further research as they look upon the work of the respective authors at issue from the perspectives of cultural and literary theory.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110376715
ISBN:: 9783110376715
ISBN:: 9783110376418
ISBN:: 9783110394214
Subject:: Literary Studies
Subject:: Anglo-American Literature
Subject:: Anglo-American Literature, general
Subject:: Literary Genres and Media
Subject:: Prose
Publisher:: De Gruyter

Book 2021

Handbook of British Literature and Culture of the First World War

Ralf Schneider, Jane Potter

Volume 8 in this series

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The First World War has given rise to a multifaceted cultural production like no other historical event. This handbook surveys British literature and film about the war from 1914 until today. The continuing interest in World War I highlights the interdependence of war experience, the imaginative re-creation of that experience in writing, and individual as well as collective memory. In the first part of the handbook, the major genres of war writing and film are addressed, including of course poetry and the novel, but also the short story; furthermore, it is shown how our conception of the Great War is broadened when looked at from the perspective of gender studies and post-colonial criticism. The chapters in the second part present close readings of important contributions to the literary and filmic representation of World War I in Great Britain. All in all, the contributions demonstrate how the opposing forces of focusing and canon-formation on the one hand, and broadening and revision of the canon on the other, have characterised British literature and culture of the First World War.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110422467
ISBN:: 9783110422467
ISBN:: 9783110426670
ISBN:: 9783110422559
Subject:: History
Subject:: Topics in History
Subject:: Cultural History
Subject:: Literary Studies
Subject:: Literary Studies, general
Subject:: Anglo-American Literature
Subject:: Anglo-American Literature, general
Subject:: 20th Century
Publisher:: De Gruyter

Book 2018

Handbook of the American Novel of the Nineteenth Century

Christine Gerhardt

Volume 7 in this series

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This handbook offers students and researchers a compact introduction to the nineteenth-century American novel in the light of current debates, theoretical concepts, and critical methodologies. The volume turns to the nineteenth century as a formative era in American literary history, a time that saw both the rise of the novel as a genre, and the emergence of an independent, confident American culture. A broad range of concise essays by European and American scholars demonstrates how some of America‘s most well-known and influential novels responded to and participated in the radical transformations that characterized American culture between the early republic and the age of imperial expansion. Part I consists of 7 systematic essays on key historical and critical frameworks ― including debates aboutrace and citizenship, transnationalism, environmentalism and print culture, as well as sentimentalism, romance and the gothic, realism and naturalism. Part II provides 22 essays on individual novels, each combining an introduction to relevant cultural contexts with a fresh close reading and the discussion of critical perspectives shaped by literary and cultural theory.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110481327
ISBN:: 9783110481327
ISBN:: 9783110480818
ISBN:: 9783110480917
Subject:: Literary Studies
Subject:: Anglo-American Literature
Subject:: Anglo-American Literature, general
Subject:: 19th Century
Publisher:: De Gruyter

Book 2017

Handbook of British Romanticism

Ralf Haekel

Volume 6 in this series

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The Handbook of British Romanticism is a state of the art investigation of Romantic literature and theory, a field that probably changed more quickly and more fundamentally than any other traditional era in literary studies. Since the early 1980s, Romantic studies has widened its scope significantly: The canon has been expanded, hitherto ignored genres have been investigated and new topics of research explored. After these profound changes, intensified by the general crisis of literary theory since the turn of the millennium, traditional concepts such as subjectivity, imagination and the creative genius have lost their status as paradigms defining Romanticism. The handbook will feature discussions of key concepts such as history, class, gender, science and the use of media as well as a thorough account of the most central literary genres around the turn of the 19th century. The focus of the book, however, will lie on a discussion of key literary texts in the light of the most recent theoretical developments. Thus, the Handbook of British Romanticism will provide students with an introduction to Romantic literature in general and literary scholars with a discussion of innovative and groundbreaking theoretical developments.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110376692
ISBN:: 9783110376692
ISBN:: 9783110376364
ISBN:: 9783110393408
Subject:: Literary Studies
Subject:: Anglo-American Literature
Subject:: Anglo-American Literature, general
Subject:: 19th Century
Publisher:: De Gruyter

Book 2017

Handbook of the English Novel of the Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries

Christoph Reinfandt

Volume 5 in this series

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The Handbook systematically charts the trajectory of the English novel from its emergence as the foremost literary genre in the early twentieth century to its early twenty-first century status of eccentric eminence in new media environments. Systematic chapters address ̒The English Novel as a Distinctly Modern Genreʼ, ̒The Novel in the Economy’, ̒Genres’, ̒Gender’ (performativity, masculinities, feminism, queer), and ̒The Burden of Representationʼ (class and ethnicity). Extended contextualized close readings of more than twenty key texts from Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness (1899) to Tom McCarthy’s Satin Island (2015) supplement the systematic approach and encourage future research by providing overviews of reception and theoretical perspectives.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110369489
ISBN:: 9783110369489
ISBN:: 9783110374469
ISBN:: 9783110393361
Subject:: Literary Studies
Subject:: Anglo-American Literature
Subject:: Anglo-American Literature, general
Subject:: 20th Century
Subject:: Literary Genres and Media
Subject:: Prose
Publisher:: De Gruyter

Book 2017

Handbook of the American Novel of the Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries

Timo Müller

Volume 4 in this series

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Increasing specialization within the discipline of English and American Studies has shifted the focus of scholarly discussion toward theoretical reflection and cultural contexts. These developments have benefitted the discipline in more ways than one, but they have also resulted in a certain neglect of close reading. As a result, students and researchers interested in such material are forced to turn to scholarship from the 1960s and 1970s, much of which relies on dated methodological and ideological presuppositions.

The handbook aims to fill this gap by providing new readings of texts that figure prominently in the literature classroom and in scholarly debate − from James’s The Ambassadors to McCarthy’s The Road. These readings do not revert naively to a time “before theory.” Instead, they distil the insights of literary and cultural theory into concise introductions to the historical background, the themes, the formal strategies, and the reception of influential literary texts, and they do so in a jargon-free language accessible to readers on all levels of qualification.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110422429
ISBN:: 9783110422429
ISBN:: 9783110426663
ISBN:: 9783110422542
Subject:: Literary Studies
Subject:: Anglo-American Literature
Subject:: Anglo-American Literature, general
Subject:: 20th Century
Subject:: 21st Century
Subject:: Literary Genres and Media
Subject:: Prose
Publisher:: De Gruyter

Book 2016

Handbook of Transatlantic North American Studies

Julia Straub

Volume 3 in this series

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Transatlantic literary studies have provided important new perspectives on North American, British and Irish literature. They have led to a revision of literary history and the idea of a national literature. They have changed the perception of the Anglo-American literary market and its many processes of transatlantic production, distribution, reception and criticism. Rather than dwelling on comparisons or engaging with the notion of ‘influence,’ transatlantic literary studies seek to understand North American, British and Irish literature as linked with each other by virtue of multi-layered historical and cultural ties and pay special attention to the many refractions and mutual interferences that have characterized these traditions since colonial times.

This handbook brings together articles that summarize some of the crucial transatlantic concepts, debates and topics. The contributions contained in this volume examine periods in literary and cultural history, literary movements, individual authors as well as genres from a transatlantic perspective, combining theoretical insight with textual analysis.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110376739
ISBN:: 9783110376739
ISBN:: 9783110376371
ISBN:: 9783110393415
Subject:: Literary Studies
Subject:: Comparative Literary Studies
Subject:: Anglo-American Literature
Subject:: Anglo-American Literature, general
Subject:: Literary Genres and Media
Subject:: Prose
Subject:: Topics in Literary Studies
Subject:: Individual Motifs, Motif Research
Publisher:: De Gruyter

Book 2016

Handbook of Ecocriticism and Cultural Ecology

Hubert Zapf

Volume 2 in this series

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Ecocriticism has emerged as one of the most fascinating and rapidly growing fields of recent literary and cultural studies. From its regional origins in late-twentieth-century Anglo-American academia, it has become a worldwide phenomenon, which involves a decidedly transdisciplinary and transnational paradigm that promises to return a new sense of relevance to research and teaching in the humanities. A distinctive feature of the present handbook in comparison with other survey volumes is the combination of ecocriticism with cultural ecology, reflecting an emphasis on the cultural transformation of ecological processes and on the crucial role of literature, art, and other forms of cultural creativity for the evolution of societies towards sustainable futures. In state-of-the-art contributions by leading international scholars in the field, this handbook maps some of the most important developments in contemporary ecocritical thought. It introduces key theoretical concepts, issues, and directions of ecocriticism and cultural ecology and demonstrates their relevance for the analysis of texts and other cultural phenomena.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110314595
ISBN:: 9783110314595
ISBN:: 9783110308372
ISBN:: 9783110394894
Subject:: Cultural Studies
Subject:: Topics in Cultural Studies
Subject:: Other Topics
Subject:: Literary Studies
Subject:: Anglo-American Literature
Subject:: Anglo-American Literature, general
Subject:: 20th Century
Subject:: 21st Century
Publisher:: De Gruyter

Book 2015

Handbook of Intermediality

Literature – Image – Sound – Music

Gabriele Rippl

Volume 1 in this series

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This handbook offers students and researchers compact orientation in their study of intermedial phenomena in Anglophone literary texts and cultures by introducing them to current academic debates, theoretical concepts and methodologies. By combining theory with text analysis and contextual anchoring, it introduces students and scholars alike to a vast field of research which encompasses concepts such as intermediality, multi- and plurimediality, intermedial reference, transmediality, ekphrasis, as well as related concepts such as visual culture, remediation, adaptation, and multimodality, which are all discussed in connection with literary examples. Hence each of the 30 contributions spans both a theoretical approach and concrete analysis of literary texts from different centuries and different Anglophone cultures.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110311075
ISBN:: 978-3-11-030836-5
ISBN:: 978-3-11-031107-5
ISBN:: 9783110393781
Subject:: Literary Studies
Subject:: Anglo-American Literature
Subject:: Anglo-American Literature, general
Subject:: Topics in Literary Studies
Subject:: Mediality, Intermediality
Publisher:: De Gruyter