Open-Access-Bücher zur anglistischen Literaturwissenschaft

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Equine medicine and popular romance in late medieval England

Francine McGre­gor
https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004538405

Equine Med­i­cine and Pop­u­lar Romance in Late Medieval Eng­land explores a sel­dom-stud­ied trove of Eng­lish vet­eri­nary man­u­als, illu­mi­nat­ing how the dai­ly care of hors­es they describe reshapes our under­stand­ing of equine rep­re­sen­ta­tion in the pop­u­lar romance of late medieval Eng­land. A saint removes a horse’s leg the more eas­i­ly to shoe him; a wild horse trans­forms spur wounds into the self-heal­ing prac­tice of bleed­ing; a mes­sen­ger cal­cu­lates time through his horse’s body. Such are the rich and con­flict­ed visions of horse/human con­nec­tion in the peri­od. Explor­ing this imag­ined rela­tion, Francine McGre­gor reveals a cul­tur­al under­cur­rent in which medieval Eng­land is so reliant on equine bod­ies that human anx­i­eties, desires, and very ori­en­ta­tion in dai­ly life are often fig­ured through them. This book illu­mi­nates the com­plex and con­tra­dic­to­ry yearn­ings shap­ing medieval per­cep­tions of the horse, the self, and the iden­ti­ties born of their affin­i­ty.

On Making Fiction: Frankenstein and the Life of Stories

Friederike Dane­brock
https://doi.org/10.14361/9783839465509

Fic­tion is gen­er­al­ly under­stood to be a fas­ci­nat­ing, yet some­how defi­cient affair, mere­ly deriv­a­tive of real­i­ty. What if we could, instead, come up with an affir­ma­tive approach that takes sto­ries seri­ous­ly in their capac­i­ty to bring forth a sub­stance of their own? Icon­ic texts such as Mary Shelley’s Franken­stein and its numer­ous adap­ta­tions stub­born­ly resist our attempts to clas­si­fy them as mere rep­re­sen­ta­tions of real­i­ty. Friederike Dane­brock shows how these texts insist that we take them seri­ous­ly as agents and inter­locu­tors in our world- and cul­ture-mak­ing activ­i­ties. Draw­ing on this analy­sis, she devel­ops a the­o­ry of nar­ra­tive fic­tion as a gen­er­a­tive prac­tice.

Maritime Mobilities in Anglophone Literature and Culture

Alexan­dra Ganser & Charne Lav­ery (Hrsg.)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978–3‑030–91275‑8

This open access edit­ed col­lec­tion explores var­i­ous aspects of how ocean­ic im/ mobil­i­ties have been framed and artic­u­lat­ed in the lit­er­ary and cul­tur­al imag­i­na­tion. It cov­ers the entan­gle­ments of mar­itime mobil­i­ty and immo­bil­i­ty as they are artic­u­lat­ed and prob­lema­tized in select­ed lit­er­a­ture and cul­tur­al forms from the ear­ly mod­ern peri­od to the present. In par­tic­u­lar, it brings cul­tur­al mobil­i­ty stud­ies into con­ver­sa­tion with the mar­itime and ocean­ic human­i­ties. The con­trib­u­tors exam­ine the inter­face between the tra­di­tion­al Euro­cen­tric imag­i­na­tion of the sea as roman­tic and metaphor­i­cal, and the mate­ri­al­i­ty of the sea as a deathbed for racial­ized and ille­gal­ized humans as well as non-human pop­u­la­tions.