Published by De Gruyter

Symbolism

An International Annual of Critical Aesthetics

Edited by: Rüdiger Ahrens, Florian Klaeger and Klaus Stierstorfer

ISSN: 1528-3623

AMS Press, Inc. / New York (up to vol. 11)

eISSN: 2195-5115

Overview
Volumes

Symbolism. An International Annual of Critical Aesthetics is an interdisciplinary, peer-reviewed annual dedicated to pursuing fundamental questions on the forms and functions of the symbolic. Symbolism publishes high-profile research on various topics related to the use of figurative language, thought and signification in artistic expression and constructions of reality. While maintaining a strong literary focus, the annual also enquires into practices of the symbolic across various media.

Supplementary Materials

Stylesheet Symbolism

Book 2022

Symbolism

An International Annual of Critical Aesthetics

Florian Klaeger, Klaus Stierstorfer, Marlena Tronicke, Patrick Gill

Volume 22 in this series

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Special Focus: "Omission", edited by Patrick Gill

Throughout literary history and in many cultures, we encounter an astute use of conspicuous absences to conjure an imagined reality into a recipient’s mind. The term ‘omission’ as used in the present study, then, demarcates a common artistic phenomenon: a silence, blank, or absence, introduced against the recipient’s generic or experiential expectations, but which nonetheless frequently encapsulates the tenor of the work as a whole. Such omissions can be employed for their affective potential, when emotions represented or evoked by the text are deemed to be beyond words. They can be employed to raise epistemological questions, as when an omission marks the limits of what can be known. Ethical questions can also be approached by means of omissions, as when a character’s voice is omitted, for instance. Finally, omission always carries within it the potential to reflect on the media and genres on which it is brought to bear: as its efficacy depends on the recipient’s generic expectations, omission is frequently characterized by a high degree of meta-discursiveness. This volume investigates the various strategies with which the phenomenon of omission is employed across a range of textual forms and in different cultures to conclusively argue for its status as a highly effective and near-universal form of artistic signification.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110775884
ISBN:: 9783110775884
ISBN:: 9783110775853
ISBN:: 9783110775945
Subject:: Literary Studies
Subject:: Literary Studies, general
Publisher:: De Gruyter

Book 2021

Symbolism 21

An International Annual of Critical Aesthetics

Rüdiger Ahrens, Florian Klaeger, Klaus Stierstorfer, Marlena Tronicke, Franziska Quabeck

Volume 21 in this series

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Special Focus: Law and Literature

This special focus issue of Symbolism takes a look at the theoretical equation of law and literature and its inherent symbolic dimension. The authors all approach the subject from the perspective of literary and book studies, foregrounding literature’s potential to act as supplementary to a very wide variety of laws spread over historical, geographical, cultural and spatial grounds. The theoretical ground laid here thus posits both literature and law in the narrow sense. The articles gathered in this special issue analyse Anglophone literatures from the Renaissance to the present day and cover the three major genres, narrative, drama and poetry. The contributions address questions of the law’s psychoanalytic subconscious, copyright and censorship, literary negotiations of colonial and post-colonial territorial laws, the European ‘refugee debate’ and migration narratives, fictional debates on climate change, contemporary feminist drama and classic 19th-century legal narratives. This volume includes two insightful analyses of poetic texts with a special focus on the fact that poetry has often been neglected within the field of law and literature research.

Special Focus editor: Franziska Quabeck, Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster, Germany.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110756456
ISBN:: 9783110756456
ISBN:: 9783110756395
ISBN:: 9783110756531
Subject:: Literary Studies
Subject:: Literary Theory
Subject:: Topics in Literary Studies
Subject:: Law
Publisher:: De Gruyter

Book 2020

Symbolism 2020

An International Annual of Critical Aesthetics

Rüdiger Ahrens, Florian Klaeger, Klaus Stierstorfer

Volume 20 in this series

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This special anniversary volume of Symbolism explores the nexus between symbolic signification and the future from an interdisciplinary perspective. How, contributors ask, has the future been variously rendered in symbolic terms? How do symbols and symbolic reference shape our ideas of the future? To what extent are symbols constitutive of futures, and to what extent do they restrain communication about what is possible and the imagination of fundamental change? Moreover, how have symbolic practices shaped not only artistic representations of the future, but also scientific attempts at forecasting and modelling it? What, then, is the relevance of symbolism for negotiations of the future in cultural and academic production? In essays ranging from literary and film studies to the philosophy of art and ecological modelling, the volume seeks to lay groundwork in theorizing and historicising ‘symbols of the future’ as much as ‘the future of symbolism’.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110716962
ISBN:: 9783110716962
ISBN:: 9783110716719
ISBN:: 9783110717051
Subject:: Literary Studies
Subject:: Literary Studies, general
Subject:: Literary Theory
Publisher:: De Gruyter

Book 2019

Symbolism 2019

Special Focus: Beyond Mind

Natasha Lushetich

Volume 19 in this series

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Special Focus editor: Natasha Lushetich
Series editors: Rüdiger Ahrens, Florian Kläger, Klaus Stierstorfer

Symbolism is cohesive. It gathers heterogeneity over time, across fields of human endeavor and systems of communication. Non-sequiturs, paradox and tautology, appear dissipative. Yet they are highly productive in reticular and fractal ways. Suffice it to look at the philosophical tautology of Parmenides’s kind, which suggests that being "is"; at the practice of the koan, which collapses dualistic thinking by way of incompatible propositions, such as "the Eastern hill keeps running on the water"; at logical paradoxes in which the operative logic is sabotaged by its own means, as in Hempel’s paradox; at absurdist dramatic texts in which protagonists record empty time in order to mark the emptiness of the time they are recording, as in Beckett’s Krapp’s Last Tape; or at paradoxical games like Maciunas’s Prepared Table Tennis played with paddles that have huge holes in them. In all of these examples, the existence-apprehending processes occur via unexpected itineraries, in vacant but nevertheless enunciative codes, in seemingly futile, yet calibrating performances, and in a temporality that is the cumulative time’s "other." They catapult the mind into the realm of the extra-linguistic, the para-logical and the meta-experiential, or they transfigure it through a series of reticular iterations.

Forty years after Varela et al’s groundbreaking work on the embodied, emotional and environmentally embedded mind – that marked a definitive departure from its former strictly rational conception – there is a need to re-examine the territory that lies beyond mind for a different reason: the proliferation of algorithmic logics that rely on the idea of a rational agent (human or algorithmic) making logical, self-serving decisions. This special issue explores neither-rational-nor-irrational forms of thinking and making. It sketches a cartography of a-rational processes of meaning- and knowledge-production that operate across numerous sites, practices, and disciplines: visual and media art; literature; art history; music; dance; film; intermedia and photography. Part I "Ahistoricity, Assemblages and Interpretative Reversals" focuses on the legacy of the (neo) avant-garde and amodernism. Part II "Destinerrance, Labyrinths and Folds" investigates the ways in which the Derridian delays/detours and the Deleuzian folding function as concrete ways of embodied knowledge-production. Part III, "Immanent Transcendence", offers a glimpse into the reticular and iterative structuring of transcendence that does not pre-exist immanence but is its residue.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110634952
ISBN:: 9783110634952
ISBN:: 9783110667486
ISBN:: 9783110635539
Subject:: Literary Studies
Subject:: Literary Studies, general
Subject:: Literary Theory
Publisher:: De Gruyter

Book 2018

Symbolism 2018

Special Focus: "Cranes on the Rise" - Functions of Metaphor in Autobiographical Writing

Rüdiger Ahrens, Florian Kläger, Klaus Stierstorfer, Katja Sarkowsky

Volume 18 in this series

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This special issue of Symbolism: An International Annual of Critical Aesthetics explores the various functions of metaphor in life writing. Looking at a range of autobiographical subgenres (pathography, disability narratives, memoirs of migration, autofiction) and different kinds of metaphors, the contributions seek to ‘map’ the possibilities of metaphor for narratively framing an individual life and for constructing notions of selfhood.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110580822
ISBN:: 9783110580822
ISBN:: 9783110579796
ISBN:: 9783110579581
Subject:: Linguistics and Semiotics
Subject:: Levels of Linguistic Analysis
Subject:: Semantics
Subject:: Literary Studies
Subject:: Literary Genres and Media
Subject:: Biography and Autobiography
Subject:: Literary Theory
Subject:: Topics in Literary Studies
Subject:: Individual Motifs, Motif Research
Publisher:: De Gruyter

Book 2017

Symbolism 17: Latina/o Literature

The Trans-Atlantic and the Trans-American in Dialogue

Rüdiger Ahrens, Florian Kläger, Klaus Stierstorfer, Patricia M. García, John Morán González

Volume 17 in this series

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The complex nature of globalization increasingly requires a comparative approach to literature in order to understand how migration and commodity flows impact aesthetic production and expressive practices. This special issue of Symbolism: An International Journal of Critical Aesthetics explores the trans-American dimensions of Latina/o literature in a trans-Atlantic context. Examining the theoretical implications suggested by the comparison of the global North-global South dynamics of material and aesthetic exchange, this volume highlights emergent Latina/o authors, texts, and methodologies of interest in for comparative literary studies. In the essays, literary scholars address questions of the transculturation, translation, and reception of Latina/o literature in the United States and Europe. In the interviews, emergent Latina/o authors speak to the processes of creative writing in a transnational context. This volume suggests how the trans-American dialogues found in contemporary Latina/o literature elucidates trans-Atlantic critical dialogues.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110532913
ISBN:: 9783110532913
ISBN:: 9783110531312
ISBN:: 9783110530414
Subject:: Literary Studies
Subject:: Romance Literature
Subject:: Romance Literature, general
Subject:: Hispanic Literature
Subject:: 20th Century
Subject:: Literary Theory
Subject:: Topics in Literary Studies
Subject:: Avantgarde
Publisher:: De Gruyter

Book 2016

Symbolism 16

Rüdiger Ahrens, Florian Kläger, Klaus Stierstorfer, Keith A. Sandiford

Volume 16 in this series

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Essays in this special focus constellate around the diverse symbolic forms in which Caribbean consciousness has manifested itself transhistorically, shaping identities within and without structures of colonialism and postcolonialism. Offering interdisciplinary critical, analytical and theoretical approaches to the objects of study, the book explores textual, visual, material and ritual meanings encoded in Caribbean lived and aesthetic practices.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110465938
ISBN:: 9783110465938
ISBN:: 9783110462524
ISBN:: 9783110465907
Subject:: Literary Studies
Subject:: Literary Studies, general
Subject:: Romance Literature
Subject:: Hispanic Literature
Subject:: Hispanic Literature, general
Subject:: Literary Theory
Publisher:: De Gruyter

Book 2015

Symbolism 15

[Special Focus – Headnotes, Footnotes, Endnotes]

Rüdiger Ahrens, Klaus Stierstorfer, Patrick O'Donnell, Heide Ziegler

Volume 15 in this series

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While paratexts – among them headnotes, footnotes, or endnotes – have never been absent from American literature, the last two decades have seen an explosion of the phenomenon, including (mock) scholarly footnotes, to an extent that they seem to take over the text itself. In this Special Focus we shall attempt to find the reasons for this astonishing development. In our first (diachronic) section we shall explore such texts as might have fostered the present boom, from fictions by Edgar Allan Poe to Vladimir Nabokov to Mark Z. Danielewski. The second (synchronic) section, will concentrate on paratexts by David Foster Wallace, perhaps the “father” of the post-postmodern footnote, as well as those to be found in novels by Bennett Sims, Jennifer Egan and Junot Diaz, among others. It appears that, while paratexts definitely point to a high degree of self-reflexivity in the author, they equally draw attention to the textual and authorial functions of the works in which they exist. They can thus cause a reflection on the boundaries between genres like fiction, faction, and autobiography, as well as serving to highlight a host of pedagogical and social concerns that exist in the interstices between fiction and reality.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110449075
ISBN:: 9783110447439
ISBN:: 9783110449075
ISBN:: 9783110447811
Subject:: Literary Studies
Subject:: Literary Studies, general
Subject:: Anglo-American Literature
Subject:: Anglo-American Literature, general
Subject:: 19th Century
Subject:: 20th Century
Publisher:: De Gruyter

Book 2014

Symbolism 14

[Special Focus – Symbols of Diaspora]

Rüdiger Ahrens, Klaus Stierstorfer, Florian Kläger

Volume 14 in this series

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Symbolic representation is a crucial subject for and a potent heuristic instrument of diaspora studies. This special focus inquires into the forms and functions of symbols of diaspora both in aesthetic practice and in critical discourse, analyzing and theorizing symbols from Shakespeare to Bollywood as well as in critical writings of theorists of diaspora. What kinds of symbols and symbolic practices, contributors ask, are germane to the representation, both emic and etic, of diasporics and diasporas? How are specific symbols and symbolic practices analyzed across the academic fields contributing to diaspora studies? Which symbols and symbolic practices inform the academic study of diasporas, sometimes unconsciously or without being remarked on? To study these phenomena is to engage in a dialogue that aims at refining the theoretical and methodological vocabulary and practice of truly transdisciplinary diaspora studies while attending to the imperative of specificity that inheres in this emerging field. The volume collects a range of analyses from social anthropology, history and ethnography to literary and film studies, all combining readings of individual symbolic practices with meta-theoretical reflections.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110407990
ISBN:: 978-3-11-040794-5
ISBN:: 978-3-11-040799-0
ISBN:: 9783110408041
Subject:: Jewish Studies
Subject:: Jewish History
Subject:: Diaspora
Subject:: Literary Studies
Subject:: Literary Studies, general
Subject:: Topics in Literary Studies
Subject:: Exile Literature
Subject:: Individual Motifs, Motif Research
Publisher:: De Gruyter

Book 2013

Symbolism 12/13

[Special Focus – Jewish Magic Realism]

Rüdiger Ahrens, Klaus Stierstorfer, Florian Kläger, Axel Stähler

Volume 12/13 in this series

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Magic realism has become a significant mode of expression in Jewish cultural production. This special focus of Symbolism for the first time explores in a comparative and transnational approach the magic realist engagement of Jewish writers, artists, and filmmakers from the Diaspora and from Israel with issues of identity, oppression and persecution as well as the Holocaust.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110297201
ISBN:: 978-3-11-029701-0
ISBN:: 978-3-11-029720-1
Subject:: Literary Studies
Subject:: Literary Studies, general
Subject:: Topics in Literary Studies
Subject:: Individual Motifs, Motif Research
Publisher:: De Gruyter