Literary Encounters of Fundamentalism

A Case Book. Edited by Klaus Stierstorfer and Annette Kern-Stähler.

Across a wide range of contemporary discourses and from a number of cultural perspectives, 20 contributions examine literature's contentious, ambivalent and fruitful relationship with fundamentalism in its various forms. - Literature, literary interpretation and criticism have always had an interestingly paradoxical relationship with fundamentalism: fundamentalisms are generally built on texts, which can be sacred and exclusive, and on a claim to exclusive authority for interpretation. Therefore they tend to see the cornucopian profusion of texts and interpretations so typical of Western concepts of Literature as a threat; a circumstance which has been widely exploited by writers and critics to engage with fundamentalism on its home turf. The volume addresses the cultural given that the term 'fundamentalism' has acquired such wide-spread currency, at least in the West. In their various approaches, the contributions examine what fundamentalism has come to signify for those who use the term so extensively and so indiscriminately; and they try to establish what this implies for reaching more productive and positive positions in negotiating fundamentalisms. In doing so, the contributors offer investigations of literary approaches to fundamentalism across a wide range of important contemporary discourses and from a number of cultural perspectives. - Contents: Caryl Phillips: American Stories, American Silence. - Simon Louvish: Segment of "The Days of Miracles and Wonders" (1997). - Sridhar Rajeswaran: Rubbing Knuckles against the Grain at Least Twice. Fundamental Poetry in Resistant Spaces. - Barry Asker: Fighting for What's Fundamental. Leo Tolstoy, V. S. Naipaul, Nadine Gordimer and John Updike. - Debjani Bhattacharyya: Of Shadows and Silences. Militant Nationalism in Amitav Ghosh's "The Shadow Lines". - Flaminia Nicora: An Imperfect Resistance. Kureishi's Rhetorical Strategies as Critique in the Short Story "My Son the Fanatic". - Monica Chan: Love and Transgression. Arundhati Roy, Style and Fundamental Values. - Rüdiger Ahrens: Equity as Fundamental Ethical Principle in Modern English Fiction. Joseph Conrad, E. M. Forster and Caryl Phillips. - Raimund Borgmeier: Fundamentalism in American SF-Novels of the 1980s and 1990s. - Barbara Korte: Fundamentalism and the End. A Reading of Margaret Atwood's "Oryx and Crake" in the Context of Last Man Fiction. - Nilufer E. Bharucha: Cities Under Siege. Metropolitan Journeys from Plural Identities to Essentialisms. - Hage Weslati: Deserts in Literary and Religious Fundamentalism. - Eva Ulrike Pirker: 'Private Matters' under Public Scrutiny. Recent Fictional Contributions to the Discourse around Arranged Marriages. - Marion Fries-Dieckmann: Pentecostal Fundamentalism and the Narrative. Jeanette Winterson's "Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit". - Melanie Just: »In their proper places«. Hindu Women Between Religious Fundamentalism and Western Secularism in Divakaruni's "Sister of My Heart" and Misra's "Ancient Promises". - Dirk Vanderbeke: »Oh one fine day, and it won't be long« (I). Ploughshares into Swords. - Lutz Schowalter: »Oh one fine day, and it won't be long« (II). The 'trap that had been set before the foundation of the World'. - Albert-Reiner Glaap: Fundamentalism and the 'War on Terror'. "Ali & Ali and the AXes of Evil". - Nuvid Alemdaroglu: Fundamentalism as Ignorance and Strife. - Christopher Innes: Terrorists on Stage. Dialogue, Dualities and Drama. - 341 Seiten, gebunden (Anglistische Forschungen; Vol. 385/Universitätsverlag Winter 2008)