REAL - Yearbook of Research in English and American Literature, Volume 21 (2005)

The more recent cultural turn in the humanities has been accompanied by an increasing interest in cultural and collective memory, it is within this context that the relation between literature, literary history and cultural memory deserves special attention. The present collection tackles the phenomenon from many angles, focusing on a wide variety of aspects, including intertextual mnemonics, genres as repositories of memory, the canon and literary history, and theoretical approaches to the study of literary and cultural memory. Specific topics covered include: encodings of the folktale in literature, Hemingway's style in American culture, French, German and English literary historiography and national consciousness, retrospection in modern British poetry and country-house fiction, the 'wild thinking' of visionary poets as counter-memory, Richard III, Elizabeth I and processes of memorialization past and present, the ethical and aesthetic implications of cultural memory, and much more.