Exploring the complex relationship between literature and memory, the volume addresses a theme that over the last two decades has become one of the central issues in literary and cultural studies. Literature is one of the media that play a crucial role in the process of representing and constructing individual and collective memories. Throughout literary history, fictional texts have engaged in a discussion of the implications, the problems, and the purposes of remembering. Literature participates in the processes of shaping collective memories and of subversively undermining culturally dominant memories by establishing counter-memories, which seek to consider, for example, gender-conscious or ethnic perspectives on past events. The 25 articles explore various facets of the relationship between literature and memory from a number of different theoretical vantage points. Particular attention is paid to genre-specific ways of representing and constructing memories.

Ansgar Nünning ist Professor für Englische und Amerikanische Literatur- und Kulturwissenschaft an der Universität Gießen und Direktor des 'Gießener Graduiertenzentrum Kulturwissenschaften'. Roy Sommer ist Geschäftsführer des Gießener Graduiertenzentrums Kulturwissenschaften (GGK) der Justus-Liebig-Universität Gießen.