Maria Löschnigg Boeken

Since the late twentieth century, letters in literature have seen a remarkable renaissance. The prominence of letters in recent fiction is due in part to the rediscovery, by contemporary writers, of letters as an effective tool for rendering aspects of historicity, liminality, marginalization and the expression of subjectivity vis-à-vis an 'other'; it is also due, however, to the artistically challenging inclusion of the new electronic media of communication into fiction.While studies of epistolary fiction have so far concentrated on the eighteenth century and on thematic concerns, this volume charts the epistolary renaissance in recent literature, entering new territory by also focusing on the aesthetic implications of the epistolary mode. In particular, the essays in this volume illuminate the potential of the epistolary (including digital forms) for rendering contemporary sensitivities. The volume thus offers a comprehensive assessment of letter narratives in contemporary literature. Through its focus on the aesthetic and structural aspects of new epistolary fiction, the inclusion of various narrative forms, and the consideration of both conventional letters and their new digital kindred, The Epistolary Renaissance offers novel insight into a multi-facetted (re)new(ed) genre.

The essays in this volume focus on new approaches to how literature reflects and creates ?world?, and thus to the issues of ?literature ?and? world? and ?literature ?as? world?. They discuss questions of the implied worldview of literary texts on the one hand, and the way literature may create ?world? through self-referentiality and the establishing of intermedial relations with other arts on the other. 00In the latter cases, works will foreground their own fictionality and/or mediality, and their status as artefacts and as the products of a poietic act of creation. Illustrating the potential of new approaches and developments for describing the nature of the worlds devised in fictional texts, the authors pay tribute to a scholar whose work has been foundational regarding the study of metareferentiality in literature and the arts, contemporary intermediality studies and the study of implied worldviews in literary texts: Werner Wolf.