The Transformative Power of Literature and Narrative: Promoting Positive Change

289 Pages·2023·1.81 MB·English

by  Corinna Assmann (editor), Jan Rupp (editor), Christine Schwanecke (editor)

Corinna Assmann · Jan Rupp · Christine Schwanecke (eds.)
The Transformative
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Narrative plays a central role for individual and collective lives – this
86 Power of Literature
insight has arguably only grown at a time of multiple social and
cultural challenges in the 21st century. The present volume aims to
further substantiate the case for literature and narrative, taking and Narrative
inspiration from Vera Nünning’s eminent work over the past decades.
Located at the intersection of cognitive and cultural narratology, the
book is concerned with the way literature affects individuals, how it Promoting Positive Change

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ISBN 978-3-8233-8573-8
The Transformative Power of Literature and Narrative:
Promoting Positive Change
herausgegeben von
Anja Bandau (Hannover), Justus Fetscher (Mannheim), Ralf Haekel (Leipzig),
Caroline Lusin (Mannheim), Cornelia Ruhe (Mannheim)
Band 86
Corinna Assmann / Jan Rupp /
Christine Schwanecke (eds.)
The Transformative Power of
Literature and Narrative:
Promoting Positive Change

A Conceptual Volume in Honour of Vera Nünning
Umschlagabbildung: Adobe Stock-ID: 359840858; Ping198
Bibliografische Information der Deutschen Nationalbibliothek
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.24053/9783823395737
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Contents
Foreword . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
Corinna Assmann, Jan Rupp, and Christine Schwanecke
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
I. Literature Affecting Lives at an Individual Level
Jan Rupp
Haiku and Healing. Lessons from the Pandemic Classroom for Literature
and Narrative in Life . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
Stefanie Schäfer
‘Not form which you see, but emotion which you feel’. Crisis, Time, and
Hyperempathy in Octavia Butler’s Earthseed Novels . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
Christine Schwanecke
Narrating the Pandemic. Daniel Defoe’s A Journal of the Plague Year (1722)
as Salutogenesis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65
Cristian Camilo Cuervo
Can Literature Heal? Therapeutic Dimensions of Writing and Narrative . . 83
II. Literature and Positive Change at an Intersubjective Level
Dorina-Daniela Vasiloiu
Reflections of ‘Togetherness’ and a Co-Narrating Community in Fictional
‘We’-Narratives. A Case Study of the Japanese ‘Picture Brides’ in Julie
Otsuka’s The Buddha in the Attic (2011) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109
Max Cannings
Reading Unreliable Narration. Enhancing our Empathy, Understanding, and
Self-Examination . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 131
6 Contents
Sebastian Beckmann
Promoting Empathy in ‘Generation Me’. The Didactic Potential of
Unreliable Narratives Featuring Narrators with a Mental Illness in the EFL
Classroom . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 153
Caroline Lusin
Renouncers, Rumours, and ‘Beyond-the-Pales’. Nikolai Gogol and the
Subversive Power of Narrative(s) in Anna Burns’ Milkman (2018) . . . . . . . . 173
III. Narratives Promoting Social and Cultural Change
Alexander Schindler
Positive Change in Crime Fiction. Genre Renewal and the Politics of Gender,
Race, and Sexuality in Cheryl A. Head’s Bury Me When I’m Dead (2016) . . 197
Corinna Assmann
Maps and Narrative. Mobilizing and Connecting Perspectives in a Space of
Encounter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 219
Nina Gillé
‘United in Positive Intention’. Self-Transcendence Values and the
Negotiation of Crises in George Saunders’s Lincoln in the Bardo (2017) . . . 243
Désirée Link
Optimism in the Anthropocene. Cultivating Hope in Barbara Kingsolver’s
Flight Behaviour (2012) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 263
Foreword
This project initially grew from our collective desire to celebrate Vera Nünning’s
outstanding contribution to the research of narrative and the study of English
literature and culture on the occasion of her 60th birthday in April 2021. As
her (former) PhD students and mentees, we were keen to express our gratitude
for her academic guidance and long-standing support. With her research and
teaching at Heidelberg, she has generated a veritable ‘school’ of literary scholars
who are both narratologically-minded and interested in culture, in historical
contexts, as well as in the functions, effects, and values of reading fiction.
This volume began with an online celebration of Vera Nünning’s jubilee in
the form of a virtual colloquium with greetings, presentations, and musical
interludes. Besides the contributors to this volume, we would like to thank, first
and foremost, Ansgar Nünning, whose cordial and conspiratorial support in
preparation of the surprise colloquium proved essential and invaluable. We are
also grateful to the former members of Vera Nünning’s team who participated
in the colloquium but were not able to submit a chapter to this book – Claire
Earnshaw, Stephanie Frink, Gesine Heil, and Bernard Woodley.
We, the editors, would like to extend our thanks to our colleague and friend
Caroline Lusin and the other general editors of the MABEL-series, in which
this volume appears. We are grateful to Kathrin Heyng, Sariya Sloan, and
Iris Steinmaier from Narr Francke Attempto, who kindly assisted us in the
publication process. For further support we thank Marion Gymnich (University
of Bonn) and Jacqueline Auer (University of Graz). Last, but not least, we
thank our magnificent English proof-reader, Max Cannings, as well as our
fantastic copy-editing crew, Lukas Kreutzwiesner and Alex Thallinger from the
University of Graz, for their energetic, thorough, and substantial contribution
to this publication.
Corinna Assmann, Jan Rupp, and Christine Schwanecke
Heidelberg, Gießen, and Graz, August 2022

Introduction
Corinna Assmann, Jan Rupp, and Christine Schwanecke
1. Celebrating Vera Nünning’s Scholarship in Literature and
Narrative
Literature and narrative play a central role for individual and collective lives –
this insight has arguably only grown at a time of multiple social and cultural
challenges in the 21st century. Whether it is to grapple with increasingly complex
identities or with a proliferation of migrant, public health, economic, and
environmental crises, literature and narrative are time and again being evoked
as interpretive frames and tools of meaning-making. For anyone interested
in the formal workings, the cultural functions, and the transformative power
of literature and narrative, Vera Nünning’s scholarship stands as an eminent
orientation and inspiration. With the present volume, we would like to pay
tribute to our mentor, who celebrated a jubilee birthday in 2021 and from whom
we were able to learn so tremendously since she became Chair of English
Philology at Heidelberg University in 2002. Collecting contributions from a
school of junior researchers and colleagues who cut their academic teeth under
her supervision, we seek to celebrate her work by bringing it into dialogue
with ‘positive change’ – a concept that resonates in many of her writings and,
as a veritable travelling concept, informs a broad range of current inter- and
transdisciplinary debates.
With her groundbreaking research in English literature and culture, as well
as in literary and narrative theory, Vera Nünning has profoundly influenced
and shaped the national and international landscape of English literary and
cultural studies.1 With her accomplishments in breaking down the complexities
1 She has not only contributed to literary criticism with her multitude of monographs,
edited volumes, and articles on cultural history from the 16th to the 19th century and
British fiction from the 18th to the 21st century; she has also carried out research
and taught in various international contexts: for instance, as guest professor at the
Universities of Zaragoza (2006), Lisbon (2009), Helsinki (2010), and Bergamo (2011). In
addition, she has held major offices in international higher education, having served as