The Power of Literature in Intercultural Communication

doi:10.1017/9781108555067.011

8 - The Power of Literature in Intercultural Communication

from Part II - Theoretical Approaches

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 18 February 2020

Birgit Neumann

Edited by

Guido Rings and

Sebastian Rasinger

Show author details

Guido Rings: Affiliation:
Anglia Ruskin University, Cambridge
Sebastian Rasinger: Affiliation:
Anglia Ruskin University, Cambridge

Book contents

Get access

Summary

Birgit Neumann’s chapter focuses on the specificities of literature, i.e., its distinct poetic and affective potential, to create and negotiate concepts of self and otherness, which underlie processes of intercultural communication. This includes close readings of identity constructs in Andrea Levy’s Small Island (2004) and Teju Cole’s Open City (2011), which illustrate how literary representations may promote, trouble or problematize intercultural communication.

Keywords

intercultural communication literature otherness identity fictional discourse aesthetics

Information

Type: Chapter
Information: The Cambridge Handbook of Intercultural Communication , pp. 136 - 154

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108555067.011 [Opens in a new window]

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Print publication year: 2020

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Book purchase

Temporarily unavailable

References

Adichie, C. N. (2009). The danger of a single story. TEDGlobal. Online video. www.ted.com/talks/chimamanda_adichie_the_danger_of_a_single_story#t-1067848 (last accessed 10 August 2018).Google Scholar

Antor, H. (1995). Alterität als literaturhistorisches Problem. In Ahrens, R., Bald, W. D. and Hüllen, W., eds., Handbuch Englisch als Fremdsprache. Berlin: Erich Schmidt, pp. 323–5.Google Scholar

Attridge, D. (2004). The Singularity of Literature. London and New York: Routledge.CrossRef Google Scholar

Bhabha, H. (2004). The Location of Culture. London and New York: Routledge.Google Scholar

Boxall, P. (2013). Twenty-First-Century Fiction: A Critical Introduction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRef Google Scholar

Bredella, L. (2002). Literarisches und Interkulturelles Verstehen. Tübingen: Gunter Narr Verlag.Google Scholar

Byram, M., Gribkova, B. and Starkley, H. (2002). Developing the Intercultural Dimension in Language Teaching: A Practical Introduction for Teachers. Language Policy Division. Strasbourg: Council of Europe.Google Scholar

Cole, T. (2011). Open City. London: Faber & Faber.Google Scholar

Derrida, J. (1992). ‘This strange institution called literature’: an interview with Jacques Derrida. In Attridge, D., ed., Acts of Literature. London and New York: Routledge, pp. 33–75.Google Scholar

Erll, A. and Gymnich, M. (2015). Uniwissen. Interkulturelle Kompetenzen. Erfolgreich Kommunizieren zwischen den Kulturen. Stuttgart: Klett.Google Scholar

Fludernik, M. (1996). Towards a ‘Natural’ Narratology. London: Routledge.Google Scholar

Fludernik, M. (1999). ‘When the self is an other’: Vergleichende erzähltheoretische und postkoloniale Überlegungen zur Identitäts(de)konstruktion in der (exil)indischen Gegenwartsliteratur. Anglia, 117(1), 71–96. DOI: 10.1515/angl.1999.117.1.71.Google Scholar

Freitag-Hild, B. (2010). Theorie, Aufgabentypologie und Unterrichtspraxis inter- und transkultureller Literaturdidaktik. British Fictions of Migration im Fremdsprachenunterricht (Studies in English Literary and Cultural History 42). Trier: Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Trier.Google Scholar

Glissant, É. (1997). Poetics of Relation. Trans. Wing, Betsy. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.Google Scholar

Goodman, N. (1995 [1978]). Ways of Worldmaking. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing.Google Scholar

Goyal, Y. (2017). The transnational turn and postcolonial studies. In Goyal, Y., ed., The Cambridge Companion to Transnational American Literature. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 53–71.Google Scholar

Hallemeier, K. (2014). Literary cosmopolitanism in Teju Cole’s Every Day is for the Thief and Open City. ARIEL, 44(2–3), 239–50. DOI: 10.1353/ari.2013.0023.Google Scholar

Jameson, F. (1981). The Political Unconscious: Narrative as a Socially Symbolic Act. London: Methuen.Google Scholar

Keen, S. (2007) Empathy and the Novel. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press.CrossRef Google Scholar

Keen, S. (2018). Twenty-first-century fictional experiments with emotion and cognition. In Baumbach, S. and Neumann, B., eds., Novel Approaches to the 21st-Century Anglophone Novel. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan.Google Scholar

Krishnan, M. (2015). Postcoloniality, spatiality and cosmopolitanism in the open city. Textual Practice, 29(4), 675–96. DOI: 10.1080/0950236X.2014.987686.Google Scholar

Levine, C. (2015). Forms: Whole, Rhythm, Hierarchy, Network. Princeton, NJ, and Oxford: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar

Levy, A. (2004). Small Island. London: Headline Review.Google Scholar

Lüsebrink, H. J. (2008). Interkulturelle Kommunikation. Interaktion – Fremdwahrnehmung – Kulturtransfer. Stuttgart: J. B. Metzler.Google Scholar

McDaniel, E., Samovar, L. A. and Porter, R. E. (2009). Understanding intercultural communication: the working principles. In McDaniel, E., Samovar, L. A. and Porter, R. E., eds. Intercultural Communication: A Reader. Boston, MA: Wadsworth, pp. 6–17.Google Scholar

Neumann, B. (2016). Liberationist political poetics: the Caribbean artists movement. In Osborne, D., ed., Cambridge Companion to British Black and Asian Literature (1945–2010). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 59–76.Google Scholar

Neumann, B. (2018). Fictions of migration: Monica Ali’s Brick Lane (2003), Andrea Levy’s Small Island (2004) and Gautam Malkani’s Londonstani (2006). In Nünning, V., ed., The British Novel in the 21st Century: Cultural Concerns – Literary Developments – Model Interpretations. Trier: WVT, pp. 87–102.Google Scholar

Neumann, B. and Kappel, Y. (2019). Music and latency in Teju Cole’s Open City: presences of the past. ARIEL, 50 (1), 31–62.Google Scholar

Neumann, B. and Nünning, A. (2011). An Introduction to the Study of Narrative Fiction. Stuttgart: Klett.Google Scholar

Nünning, A. (2002). Historicizing British cultural studies: patriotic xenophobia and the rhetoric of national character in eighteenth-century British literature. Journal for the Study of British Culture 9(1), 69–94.Google Scholar

Palmer, A. (2004). Fictional Minds. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.Google Scholar

Perfect, M. (2014). Contemporary Fictions of Multiculturalism: Diversity and the Millennial London Novel. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan.Google Scholar

Pfister, M. (1974). Studien zum Wandel der Perspektivenstruktur in Elisabethanischen und Jakobäischen Komödien. Munich: W. Fink.Google Scholar

Richter, V. (2007). Andrea Levy, Small Island: imagining multiracial conviviality in British postwar culture. In Döring, T., ed., A History of Postcolonial Literature in 12½ Books. Trier: WVT, pp. 155–68.Google Scholar

Rupp, J. (2010). Genre and Memory in Black British Literature (Studies in English Literary and Cultural History 47). Trier: WVT.Google Scholar

Schoene, B. (2017). Contemporary American literature as world literature: cruel cosmopolitanism, cosmopoetics, and the search for a worldlier American novel. Anglia, 135(1), 86–104.Google Scholar

Scholes, R. (1998). The Rise and Fall of English. New Haven, CT and London: Yale University Press.Google Scholar

Schmid, W. (1977). Die Semantisierung der Form: Zum Inhaltskonzept Jurij Lotmans. Russian Literature, 5, 61–80.Google Scholar

Sommer, R. (2001). Fictions of Migration: Ein Beitrag zur Theorie und Gattungstypologie des zeitgenössischen interkulturellen Romans in Großbritannien. Trier: WVT.Google Scholar

Sommer, R. and Surkamp, C. (2002) ‘Mit anderen Augen’ – Multikulturalismus und Fremdverstehen am Beispiel ausgewählter britischer multikultureller Erzähltexte. Neusprachliche Mitteilungen aus Wissenschaft und Praxis, 4, 227–37.Google Scholar

Vermeulen, P. (2015). Contemporary Literature and the End of the Novel: Creature, Affect, Form. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan.CrossRef Google Scholar

Volkmann, L. (1999). Universal truths or ethnic peculiarities? On tensions inherent in the reception of postcolonial and minority literature. In Antor, H. and Cope, K. L., eds., Intercultural Encounters: Studies in English Literatures. Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag C. Winter, pp. 131–52.Google Scholar

Accessibility standard: Unknown

Why this information is here

This section outlines the accessibility features of this content - including support for screen readers, full keyboard navigation and high-contrast display options. This may not be relevant for you.

Accessibility Information

Accessibility compliance for the HTML of this chapter is currently unknown and may be updated in the future.