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.CONTENTSPREFACE AND ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
............................................. viiIMKE POLLAND-SCHMANDT AND ANSGAR
NÜNNINGIntroducing the Cultural Work of Fictions:Theoretical and Conceptual Explorations
..................................................................... 1I. THE CULTURAL WORK OF
FICTIONS:EXPLORING THE INTERFACES OF SOCIO-CULTURALAND LITERARY FICTIONSANGELA LOCATELLIFiction
as Play: Theoretical and Literary Perspectives on Simulation(Embodied or Not)
.......................................................................................................
23PETER HANENBERGRe-reading Peter Weiss: Life in Fiction - Fiction in Life
............................................ 35VERA HEROLDFrom Fact to Fiction: The Travels of
a Memory .......................................................... 47SARIANNA
KANKKUNENWorldmaking and Metaphors: Gauging the Nordic Welfare State Projectin Maarit
Verronen's Varjonainen (2013)
.................................................................... 65MAREIKE GLIERFiction as
a Platform for the Negotiation of Cultural Modelsin Elisabeth Elliot's Essay Series On Asking
God Why (1989) .................................... 81DARIA STEINERHunger Worlds and World
Hunger: The Cultural Work of Famine Fiction ................. 97II. FICTIONS ENGAGING IN
CULTURAL WORK:POTENTIALITIES OF TEXTS AND TRAJECTORIES OF LITERARY STUDIESMARKUS
HUSSOverhearing in the Underground: The Cultural Work of Listeningin Wolfgang Hilbig's Ich
(1993) ............................................................................. 115DIMITRI
SMIRNOVLiterary Sonic Imagination and the Cultural Work of Fictional Textswithin Sound Culture:
A Case Study of Wajdi Mouawad's Incendies (2003) ............ 129ALENA HEINRITZTextual Work as
Practice of Evidence Productionin Novels by Guzel' Yakhina and Aleksandr Ilichevskii
............................................ 145IIDA TURPEINENKnowledge without Language?
Functions of Narrationin Ben Marcus' The Flame Alphabet (2012)
.............................................................. 161FREDRIK RENARD[A]usserhalb
unserem kleinen Horizont:Christoph Martin Wieland's Geschichte des Agathon (1766-1767)as World
Literature ..........................................................................
