A. General.

Miscellaneous 23

work by second generation writers in reconnecting with their family’s pre-Holo-

caust life, a ‘usable past,’ in spite of horrific loss.

15. Fludernik, Monika, Nicole Falkenhayner, and Julia Steiner, eds. 2015.
Faktuales und fiktionales Erzählen: Interdisziplinäre Perspektiven [Factual
and Fictional Narration: Interdisciplinary Perspectives]. Würzburg: Ergon,
293 pp.

Key words: interdisciplinary approach; narratology; fictionality

DOI: ./EAST--

This, the first volume of a book series containing research produced by the Ger-
man Research Council-funded graduate research training programme on “Factu-
al and Fictional Narration” (GRK 1767) at the University of Freiburg, provides an
overview of topics relevant to the area, studying the differences, congruences
and interfaces between factual and fictional narration from a variety of discipli-
nary traditions. The volume contains a number of case studies and theoretical
analyses relating to factual and fictional discourses, featuring analyses both
from disciplines with a long tradition in this area (e. g. literary and cultural stud-
ies, psychology, and history), and from fields that have so far not been represent-
ed in broader discussions of fictional and factual narration (e. g. Islamic studies,
theology, or ‘storytelling’ as a method in business consulting).
While literary studies have advanced elaborate theories of fiction, and fic-
tionality is currently a hot topic in literary and cultural studies, the development
of medial forms and genres that deliberately and strategically blur the distinc-
tion between factual and fictional narratives have not yet received sufficient the-
oretical and practical attention. There are a number of contributions in this vol-
ume which deal with general or theoretical concerns: Monika Fludernik’s
chapter on the narratological problems of factual narration, Jutta Weiser’s
essay on the genealogy of the genre of ‘autofiction’, and Barbara Korte’s analysis
of the hybrid form of the ‘docudrama’. Bettina Korintenberg’s essay on image
representation in South American postmodern novels discusses interferences be-
tween factual and fictionalised representational strategies, whereas Matthias
Bauer’s contribution on irony and ambiguity is connected to questions of the fic-
tionalisation of factual discourse from a literary studies perspective. Historical
and historiographical discourse has long struggled with the presence of fiction-
alisation or dramatization in its factual discourses, resulting sometimes in a re-
jection of the use of narrative modes in historiography, but more recently also

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24 III. Literature and culture

leading to a positive re-valuation of the importance of such techniques both in

establishing historical agency and in creating an engaging view of the past.
These issues are dealt with in essays by Johannes Rohbeck and Mary Fulbrook,
with Fulbrook’s contribution foregrounding a combination of dispassionate his-
torical research with personal Betroffenheit. Factuality and fictionalisation are
also important to the psychoanalytical relationship between patient and thera-
pist (as outlined in the contribution by Brigitte Boothe) and in the conceptuali-
sation of narrative ethics (see Dietmar Mieth’s essay on Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never
Let Me Go). The volume also includes an article by Isabel Toral-Niehoff on the
study of Islamic narrative, focusing on debates surrounding the question of fic-
tionality in Arab historical writing from the Middle Ages. Hubert Irsigler provides
a theological perspective in his analysis of the status of narrative in biblical
texts, and Bernhard Zimmermann complements this with a comparable exami-
nation of narrative in classical and archaic Greek culture. As the final chapter
in the volume illustrates, storytelling has also entered the realm of business con-
sulting, with a discussion of the ‘storytelling’ paradigm current in the fields of
management and branding (Karin Thier). Overall, the collection supplies a sur-
vey of diverse approaches to the practical and theoretical ways in which a nar-
ratological focus can be applied to the fact vs. fiction dichotomy and its
modes of hybridisation.

16. Funk, Wolfgang. 2015. The Literature of Reconstruction: Authentic Fiction

in the New Millennium. New York: Bloomsbury, 224 pp.

Key words: authenticity; reconstruction; metareference

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The Literature of Reconstruction argues in favour of the term and concept of ‘post-
millennial reconstruction’ being the best candidate to fill the gap left by the de-
cline of postmodernism and deconstruction as useful cultural and literary cate-
gories. Wolfgang Funk shows how this notion emerges from the theoretical and
philosophical development that led to the demise of postmodernism by relating
it to the idea of ‘authenticity’, i. e. immediate experience that eludes direct rep-
resentation. By updating the narratological category of ‘metafiction’, originally
established in the 1980s, he also provides a clear formal framework with
which to identify and classify the features of ‘reconstructive literature’. Through
developing Werner Wolf’s observation of a ‘metareferential turn’ in contempo-
rary arts and media, he illustrates how the specific use of metareference results

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