The Cultural Work of Fictions

Taking its cue from the ubiquity of fictions in current society – regularly dubbed ‘post-truth’ era – this volume dedicates itself to the examination of fictions, the cultural work they engage in, and the functions they fulfill. We employ a broad definition of the notion of fiction that takes into account literary fictions as well as cultural fictions and pays respect to their pervasiveness and affordances. The contributions to this volume engage in exemplary analyses that offer a collection of the various facets of the cultural work of fictions. By way of model interpretations and case studies, the articles explore the interfaces of literary and socio-cultural fictions and the cultural work these fictions accomplish.

The contributors to this conceptual collection address one of the main research agendas in the contemporary study of literature and culture – namely the role and functions of fictions – and, on this basis, deliberate the trajectories of the study of literature and culture. In this way, they also contribute to strengthening the very institutional importance of literary studies in the academic landscape of the 21st century.

CONTENTS

PREFACE AND ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ............................................. vii

IMKE POLLAND-SCHMANDT AND ANSGAR NÜNNING
Introducing the Cultural Work of Fictions:
Theoretical and Conceptual Explorations ..................................................................... 1

I. THE CULTURAL WORK OF FICTIONS:
EXPLORING THE INTERFACES OF SOCIO-CULTURAL
AND LITERARY FICTIONS

ANGELA LOCATELLI
Fiction as Play: Theoretical and Literary Perspectives on Simulation
(Embodied or Not) ....................................................................................................... 23

PETER HANENBERG
Re-reading Peter Weiss: Life in Fiction – Fiction in Life ............................................ 35

VERA HEROLD
From Fact to Fiction: The Travels of a Memory .......................................................... 47

SARIANNA KANKKUNEN
Worldmaking and Metaphors: Gauging the Nordic Welfare State Project
in Maarit Verronen’s Varjonainen (2013) .................................................................... 65

MAREIKE GLIER
Fiction as a Platform for the Negotiation of Cultural Models
in Elisabeth Elliot’s Essay Series On Asking God Why (1989) .................................... 81

DARIA STEINER
Hunger Worlds and World Hunger: The Cultural Work of Famine Fiction ................. 97

II. FICTIONS ENGAGING IN CULTURAL WORK:
POTENTIALITIES OF TEXTS AND TRAJECTORIES OF LITERARY STUDIES

MARKUS HUSS
Overhearing in the Underground: The Cultural Work of Listening
in Wolfgang Hilbig’s “Ich” (1993) ............................................................................. 115

DIMITRI SMIRNOV
Literary Sonic Imagination and the Cultural Work of Fictional Texts
within Sound Culture: A Case Study of Wajdi Mouawad’s Incendies (2003) ............ 129

ALENA HEINRITZ
Textual Work as Practice of Evidence Production
in Novels by Guzel’ Yakhina and Aleksandr Ilichevskii ............................................ 145

IIDA TURPEINEN
Knowledge without Language? Functions of Narration
in Ben Marcus’ The Flame Alphabet (2012) .............................................................. 161

FREDRIK RENARD
“[A]usserhalb unserem kleinen Horizont”:
Christoph Martin Wieland’s Geschichte des Agathon (1766–1767)
as World Literature .................................................................................................... 175

ELEONORA RAPISARDI
Rhizomatic Trajectories of Literary Studies:
Polyphony and Family Relations in Cristina García’s Dreaming in Cuban (1992) ... 191

NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS .............................................................. 203