Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-lnqnp Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-23T10:26:07.388Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

8 - The Power of Literature in Intercultural Communication

from Part II - Theoretical Approaches

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 February 2020

By
Birgit Neumann
Edited by
Guido Rings  and
Sebastian Rasinger
Guido Rings
Affiliation:
Anglia Ruskin University, Cambridge
Sebastian Rasinger
Affiliation:
Anglia Ruskin University, Cambridge
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 communicationliteratureothernessidentityfictional discourseaesthetics
Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge Handbook of Intercultural Communication , pp. 136 - 154
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.)

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.CrossRefGoogle 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.CrossRefGoogle 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.CrossRefGoogle 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.CrossRefGoogle 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

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure no-reply@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×