The Anglophone Novel in the Twenty-First Century

Nadia Butt, Alexander Scherr, Ansgar Nünning (Eds.)

The Anglophone Novel in the Twenty-First Century. Cultural Contexts – Literary Developments – Model Interpretations

ISBN 978-3-98940-002-3, 300 pp., paperback, € 35,00 (2023)

(WVT-Handbücher zum literatur- und kulturwissenschaftlichen Studium, Vol. 25)

In an age pervaded by global crises and planetary concerns, the Anglophone novel is undergoing significant transformations – as are the theoretical vantage points from which literary scholars study literature. This handbook aims to establish a decidedly transnational and global perspective on the contemporary novel in English. In addition to offering frameworks for theorising Anglophone literature (postcolonial studies, world literary studies, new sociological approaches, and more), it surveys (trans)cultural contexts of Anglophone fiction, literary responses to global concerns, and new novelistic forms as well as transformations of established genres.

Addressing students, professors, and literary scholars alike, the volume explores the following key questions: What are the dominant themes and topics of 21st-century Anglophone novels? Which cultural dynamics have impacted the development of Anglophone fiction, roughly over the past two decades? How can we link these developments to the genre of the novel with its European legacies? What authors – from all parts of the globe – have shaped the Anglophone literary field? Which works are among the most significant novels of the new millennium so far, and how have they altered and propelled our very notion of ‘the Anglophone novel’? What new forms of the novel have emerged in recent years, and how have established genres been transformed to negotiate transnational concerns? How can we read contemporary novels as articulations of both local and global narratives? Providing multifaceted answers to these and several other questions, the chapters in this handbook offer different models for investigating the contemporary Anglophone novel on a transnational plane.

Preview / Table of Contents (pdf)