Travelling concepts, metaphors, and narratives

The notion of ‘travelling concepts’ has attained a remarkable impact on recent approaches in literary and cultural studies. With the increasing focus on interdisciplinary and international cooperations and exchange, the dynamic travelling of concepts between different disciplines and academic research cultures has become ever more important for the humanities in general and the study of literature and culture in particular. As this book serves to show, these journeys are highly complex and, while being highly productive, they often bear considerable risks. Through constant adaptation, translation, and reassessment across various boundaries and research areas, concepts, as well as metaphors and narratives, gain new or widened heuristic potential on their way. The volume at hand covers a wide range of approaches to the mobility of concepts and the metaphor of travelling alike, ranging from synchronic and diachronic journeys of theories, metaphors, and research practices to the travelling of narratives and their translations across spatial, temporal, and medial boundaries. Sixteen contributions from various fields of literary and cultural studies explore the potential of transfers between disciplines, social subsystems, cultures, and historical periods. They invite readers to trace conceptual journeys and reflect upon the challenges, impediments, and transformations they meet as they undergo academic, literary, and cultural transitions.