Revisionen

The study of narrative—the object of the rapidly growing discipline of narratology—has been traditionally concerned with the fictional narratives of literature, such as novels or short stories. But narrative is a transdisciplinary and transmedial concept whose manifestations encompass both the fictional and the factual. In this volume, which provides a companion piece to Tobias Klauk and Tilmann Köppe’s Fiktionalität: Ein interdisziplinäres Handbuch, the use of narrative to convey true and reliable information is systematically explored across media, cultures and disciplines, as well as in its narratological, stylistic, philosophical, and rhetorical dimensions. At a time when the notion of truth has come under attack, it is imperative to reaffirm the commitment to facts of certain types of narrative, and to examine critically the foundations of this commitment. But because it takes a background for a figure to emerge clearly, this book will also explore nonfactual types of narratives, thereby providing insights into the nature of narrative fiction that could not be reached from the narrowly literary perspective of early narratology.

This volume includes 22 articles that provide an introduction to fundamental issues in the theory of fiction. It covers the most influential approaches used to demarcate the boundary between fictional and non-fictional media based on pragmatic, receptive, and contextual theories. The handbook explores core philosophical and psychological questions about the functions and the institutional history of fictionality since ancient times.

Although fictional characters have long dominated the reception of literature, films, television programs, comics, and other media products, only recently have they begun to attract their due attention in literary and media theory. The book systematically surveys today´s diverse and at times conflicting theoretical perspectives on fictional character, spanning research on topics such as the differences between fictional characters and real persons, the ontological status of characters, the strategies of their representation and characterization, the psychology of their reception, as well as their specific forms and constellations in - and across - different media, from the book to the internet.

The concept of "literature" is notoriously vague and defies definition, yet at the same time it is indispensable in an age where traditional subject boundaries are breaking down. This volume discusses possible ways of defining the concept in such a manner that it can be productively deployed heuristically in varied historical and cultural contexts. At the same time, phenomena such as fictionality and literaricity are taken as the starting point for a search for common features of literature. The following topics are dealt with: 1. Aspects of 'Literature' as a prototype, 2. Fictionality, 3. Historical aspects of the phenomenon of 'Literature', 4. Cultural and social aspects of the phenomenon of 'Literature', 5. The constitution of literature as an object in literary studies.

The volume Regeln der Bedeutung ('Rules of meaning') marks the launch of Revisionen, a projected series of some eight volumes on basic concepts of literary theory. The series aims to reflect on central concepts of literary studies which have become questionable or problematic in the course of recent debates and to open up new perspectives on them in order to make them available for research in a new manner.