9/11 in European Literature

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xi

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2. Introduction: 9/11 in European Literature

   • Svenja Frank

   Pages 1-34

3. September 11 Seen Through European Media and Semiotic Theory

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 35-35

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   2. 9/11: The Interpretation of Disaster as Disaster of Interpretation—An American Catastrophe Reflected in American and European Discourses

      • Rolf G. Renner

      Pages 37-60

   3. The Wind of the Hudson. Gerhard Richter’s September (2005) and the European Perception of Catastrophe

      • Ulrich Kinzel

      Pages 61-81

   4. ‘Burning from the Inside Out’: Let the Great World Spin (2009)

      • Eoin Flannery

      Pages 83-101

4. Literary Translations of September 11 into Europe’s National Contexts

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 103-103

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   2. Seeing Is Disbelieving: The Contested Visibility of 9/11 in France

      • Jean-Philippe Mathy

      Pages 105-129

   3. Cultural and Historical Memory in English and German Discursive Responses to 9/11

      • Sandra Singer

      Pages 131-157

   4. The Post-9/11 World in Three Polish Responses: Zagajewski, Skolimowski, Tochman

      • Ewa Kowal

      Pages 159-179

   5. The Islamic World as Other in Oriana Fallaci’s “Trilogy”

      • Charles Burdett

      Pages 181-204

5. Negotiating European Identity After September 11 Through the Double Other of the US and Islam

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 205-205

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   2. National Identity and Literary Culture After 9/11: Pro- and Anti-Americanism in Frédéric Beigbeder’s Windows on the World (2003) and Thomas Hettche’s Woraus wir gemacht sind (2006)

      • Birte Christ

      Pages 207-251

   3. The Mimicry of Dialogue: Thomas Lehr’s September. Fata Morgana (2010)

      • Svenja Frank

      Pages 253-282

   4. Europe and Its Discontents: Intra-European Violence in Dutch Literature After 9/11

      • Maria Boletsi

      Pages 283-321

   5. Tourist/Terrorist: Narrating Uncertainty in Early European Literature on Guantánamo

      • Philipp Hubmann

      Pages 323-355

6. Back Matter

   Pages 357-386

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This volume looks at the representation of 9/11 and the resulting wars in European literature. In the face of inner-European divisions the texts under consideration take the terror attacks as a starting point to negotiate European as well as national identity. While the volume shows that these identity formations are frequently based on the construction of two Others—the US nation and a cultural-ethnic idea of Muslim communities—it also analyses examples which undermine such constructions. This much more self-critical strand in European literature unveils the Eurocentrism of a supposedly general humanistic value system through the use of complex aesthetic strategies. These strategies are in itself characteristic of the European reception as the Anglo-Irish, British, Dutch, Flemish, French, German, Italian, and Polish perspectives collected in this volume perceive of the terror attacks through the lens of continental media and semiotic theory.

 

• 9/11 Europe
• National Trauma
• September 11 attacks
• Muslim society
• post-national identities
• Thomas Kling
• Colum McCann
• Let the Great World Spin
• middle east
• 9/11 social media
• cultural and historical memory
• Ian McEwan Saturday
• Bernhard Schlink
• Adam Zagajewski
• Oriana Fallaci Trilogy
• literary culture after 9/11
• Frederic Beigbeder Windows of the World
• Thomas Tettche
• terrorist attacks literature
• Twin Towers: poesie

• Promotionsprogramm Textwissenschaften, Georg-August-Universität Göttingen, Göttingen, Germany

  Svenja Frank

Svenja Frank, Georg-August-Universität Göttingen, currently works on the meta-critical novel in contemporary German literature and has previously held teaching positions at the University of Freiburg and at Oxford. Her research interests include narrative and literary theory, intermediality and German-language literature of the 20^th and 21^st century. 

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