In the 21st century the discipline of literary studies is faced with a considerable number of
new challenges and cultural concerns which demand problem-solving strategies different from
those envisaged by established approaches and theories. The present volume explores innovative
pathways with regard to the question of how literary studies can be reconceptualised and engage
with the key challenges of our time - from digitalisation climate change terrorism animal
rights and urbanisation to fake news the financial crisis global migration flows resurgent
nationalisms changes in labour and many more. The volume's 24 contributions are dedicated to
three main tasks: firstly to rethinking literary studies by mapping out new models and
approaches secondly to examining new forms and storytelling practices in contemporary
literature thirdly to exploring literature's engagement with current cultural concerns in
British US-American and Anglophone contexts. CONTENTS Preface & Acknowledgements
............................................................................ ix ANSGAR NÜNNING
VERA NÜNNING & ALEXANDER SCHERR Passion Pleasure Problem-Solving and Purpose: Reinvigorating
Literary Studies for the Twenty-First Century and Coping with Challenges Changing Contexts
Concerns and New Concepts ................... 1 I. NEW ORIENTATIONS AND APPROACHES IN LITERARY
STUDIES JAN ALBER Towards a Critical Ethical Narratology: Narrative Strategies and World Views
................................................................51 SIBYLLE BAUMBACH Only
Connect: The Aesthetics of Fragmentation and Mindful Literary Studies
.....................................................................................73 VERA
NÜNNING Empathy as a Key Twenty-First-Century Issue: Disciplinary Challenges and the Value of
Literature ..........................................93 ELIZABETH KOVACH & IMKE
POLLAND-SCHMANDT The Cultural Work of Forms: Methods of New Formalism in the Twenty-First
Century ................................117 II. EMERGING TRENDS FORMS AND GENRES IN
CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE ELIZABETH KOVACH Absurdly on the Job: A New Spirit of Humour Work
Ethics and Narrative Aesthetics in Twenty-First-Century Office Fictions ...................137
ALEXANDER SCHERR Cultural Concerns in Twenty-First-Century Plotless Fiction: Everyday
Experience Form and 'Possibilitarianism' in Ben Lerner's Leaving the Atocha Station (2011)
....................................................................151 ALEXANDRA EFFE
Autofiction in the Anthropocene: Ben Lerner's 10:04 (2014) ..........................167
CHRISTINE SCHWANECKE Crashing Finances Clashing Genres: David Hare's The Power of Yes (2009)
as an Analysis of the 2007 8 Financial Crisis in 'Journalist-Academic-Narrative-Dramatic' Terms
.......................................185 III. KEY CULTURAL CONCERNS IN TWENTY-FIRST-CENTURY
LITERATURE (I): POLITICAL AND SOCIAL ISSUES IN TIMES OF CHANGE IMKE POLLAND-SCHMANDT Gauging
the State of the Nation in 'BrexLit': Literary Negotiations of Resurgent Nationalism and
Regionalism ...................203 CLAIRE EARNSHAW Groups and Group Identities in Contemporary
British Fiction .........................221 GESINE BOWEN Rituals and Ritual Change in the
Twenty-First-Century Novel ........................233 CHRISTINA JORDAN Staging Britain's
(A)Political Leader: Queen Elizabeth II in Peter Morg
