Internationality in American Fiction

«Recently, a fascinating approach to literary studies called ‘writer response criticism’ originated among Americanists at the University of Göttingen. It marks a promising advance over the Constance Model of ‘reception aesthetics’. By focusing on the act of writing in the context not of a given academic discipline but of the choices made by the writer under study, the Göttingen Model transcends the customary national perspective to take the transnational intertext fully into account. Writer response studies delineate the choices made, in the act of writing, among rival perspectives and the artistic potential provided by different literatures and cultures. This concept of literary writing as the challenging of competing foreign literatures by means of modification, transformation, and purposeful avoidance also serves to liberate the customary, nationally circumscribed literary historiography by methodically engaging the comprehensive but focused internationality of literary life. This emphasis is one of the strongest assets of the Göttingen Model. It accounts for its originality and innovative force.» (Roland Hagenbüchle, Zürich)