Jan Alber Bücher

Exploring the portrayal of prisons in literature and film, this study examines the divergence between fictional narratives and the realities of imprisonment in Britain and America. It highlights the role of prison metaphors in enhancing interpretations of various works, including those by Charles Dickens and twentieth-century prison novels and films. Additionally, the book delves into the ideological implications of these narratives, questioning how they shape cultural perceptions regarding the legitimacy of the prison system.

Explores the startling and persistent presence of the impossible or the unnatural throughout British and American literary history. Layering the lenses of cognitive narratology, frame theory,and possible-worlds theory, Unnatural Narrative offers a rigorous and engaging new characterization of the unnatural and what it yields for individual readers as well as literary culture.

The book explores the impact of prison writings on inmates, the prison system, and Victorian society. Contributors analyze how these texts influenced perceptions of incarceration and the broader cultural context of the era. Through this examination, the volume reveals the intricate relationship between literature and the realities of prison life during the Victorian period.

Focusing on the evolution of unnatural narrative studies, this collection delves into ideologically significant areas such as feminism and postcolonialism. It engages with critical debates in narrative theory, exploring themes like affect, immersion, and character theory. The book also extends antimimetic perspectives to diverse fields, including autobiography and graphic narratives. Featuring contributions from both established and emerging scholars, it aims to deepen the understanding of narrative and push the boundaries of narrative theory.

This volume combines narratological analyses with an investigation of the ideological ramifications of the use of narrative strategies. The collected essays do not posit any intrinsic or stable connection between narrative techniques and world views. Rather, they demonstrate that world views are inevitably expressed through highly specific formal strategies. This insight leads the contributors to investigate why and how particular narrative techniques are employed and under what conditions.

Climate change and the apocalypse are frequently associated in the popular imagination of the twenty-first century. This collection of essays brings together climatologists, theologians, historians, literary scholars, and philosophers to address and critically assess this association. The contributing authors are concerned, among other things, with the relation between cultural and scientific discourses on climate change; the role of apocalyptic images and narratives in representing environmental issues; and the tension between reality and fiction in apocalyptic representations of catastrophes. By focusing on how figures in fictional texts interact with their environment and deal with the consequences of climate change, this volume foregrounds the broader social and cultural function of apocalyptic narratives of climate change. By evoking a sense of collective human destiny in the face of the ultimate catastrophe, apocalyptic narratives have both cautionary and inspirational functions. Determining the extent to which such narratives square with scientific knowledge of climate change is one of the main aims of this book.