Internationality in American Fiction

This collection of essays is part of a project that surveys American literatures in terms of the writers’ responses to international literature. Among English American novelists, 1860s to 1990s, James and Howells contributed significantly to the programmatic «Great American Novel» by broadening the internationality they engaged with to include French and Russian books among the works to which they related their own. Faulkner is a key figure of a later phase when a number of American authors, while drawing upon a similar breadth of internationality, in turn became exemplary abroad in various countries. Morrison, interpreted as contributing to intra-American internationality, and the French Canadian writer Hébert, discussed in a summarizing essay, represent responses to Faulkner.

The Editors: Armin Paul Frank, Professor Emeritus of English Philology, was founding director of Sonderforschungsbereich 309, the Göttingen Center of Advanced Studies in Literary Translation, and also directed cooperative projects on comparative American literary historiography. Rolf Lohse received his Dr. phil. degree in French Literature from the Technical University of Berlin. His interests in the Italian theater of the 16th century, the French Canadian novel, comic writing, the literature of avant-garde movements, and cinematographic analysis resulted in numerous articles on French, Italian and French Canadian literature of the 19th and 20th century.