Natalia Igl

• Igl, Natalia (2024). Erzähltes Erinnern in Fontanes Meine Kinderjahre: Der autobiographische Roman als bewegt-bewegende Bildkomposition und narratives Reenactment. In Haberland, Detlef & Szabó, Erszébet (Ed.), "Apparat und Inscenirung". Eine Tagung zum Werk von Theodor Fontane. Georg Olms Verlag AG. ISSN 9783487166964. p. 169–185.
• Igl, Natalia (2024). Caught in Observation: Sublime tableaux morts in Female Serial Killer Narratives. In Patnaik, Anhiti & Gomel, Elana (Ed.), Serial Killers and Serial Spectators: Cultures, Narratives, and Representations. Brill Academic Publishers. ISSN 978-90-04-51909-1. p. 70–86. Show summary

  This chapter examines the emotional and cognitive reader engagement in contemporary female serial killer narratives and the constitutive role of the reader as ‘serial spectator’ by means of two case in point analyses. Chelsea G. Summers’ novel "A Certain Hunger" (2020) pointedly reflects on the interplay of delight and distress that comes with this role. The reader’s role as a serial spectator also often finds its mirror image within a storyworld. An extreme case of such ‘mirroring’ can be observed in the book and television series "Killing Eve" (2017–2020 and 2018–2020). In this narrative, an investigator and ‘her’ killer are becoming increasingly obsessed and entangled with each other. Both Summers’ novel and "Killing Eve" utilize an aesthetic framing of violence in form of so-called tableaux morts to ‘recalibrate’ the dynamics of their recipients’ distance and proximity to the storyworld throughout the course of the narration. They allow the reader/viewer to experience the dynamics of distant observation and visceral involvement—and the ambiguity of pleasure and distress that comes with the role of an ‘entangled observer.’

• Igl, Natalia (2023). Stylistic design elements of literary texts. In Schiewer, Gesine Lenore; Altarriba, Jeanette & Ng, Bee Chin (Ed.), Language and Emotion. An International Handbook. Volume 3. De Gruyter Mouton. ISSN 9783110795486. p. 1511–1528. doi: 10.1515/9783110795486-008. Show summary

  Based on current research on the triad of language, literature, and emotion in cognitive linguistics, (neuro-)psychology, and cognitive poetics and stylistics, the present chapter sheds light on specific stylistic strategies and their potential emotive qualities. The chapter focuses on how stylistic devices such as patterns of rhythm and sound in literature are functionalized to evoke emotional responses in readers. It thus deals only indirectly with questions of (mimetic) representations of emotion and emotionality in literature. The chapter outlines the theoretical discussion and current state of debate in the interdisciplinary field of emotion research and stylistics and argues for a stronger consideration of mood as an emotive reader response in its own right. As point of departure for an analytical framework, it takes up a gestalt theoretical framework of poetic rhythm. Drawing on a conceptualization of rhythm as a perceptional category rather than a property of a text as well as an embodied cognition model of reader engagement in literature, the chapter pro-poses a phonostylistic approach. This means to understand a written text as a potential phonotext whose stylistic features of rhythm, accentuation, sound and tone can be seen as crucial with regard to the textual evocation of emotive reader responses.

• Igl, Natalia (2023). Geschlecht. In Parr, Rolf; Radecke, Gabriele; Trilcke, Peer & Bertschik, Julia (Ed.), Theodor Fontane Handbuch. Walter de Gruyter (De Gruyter). ISSN 9783110541496. p. 1171–1178. doi: 10.1515/9783110545388-164. Show summary

  Theodor Fontanes Werke verhandeln das Spannungsfeld zwischen Individuum und sozialer Ordnung in der von Wandel und Modernisierungen geprägten Gesellschaft des 19. Jahrhunderts immer wieder in zentraler Weise anhand der Ordnung der Geschlechter – und dies nicht nur genrespezifisch in den Ehe- und Frauenromanen. Mit Sabina Becker und Sascha Kiefer lässt sich der Geschlechterdiskurs – „verstanden als Schnittpunkt von Liebeskonzeptionen und Standesfragen, gesellschaftlich dominierenden Rollenbildern und Machtverhältnissen bzw. -interessen“ (2005, 13) – als ein wesentlicher ‚roter Faden‘ begreifen, der sich durch Fontanes erzählerisches Œuvre zieht. Die literarische Verhandlung oder gar Offenlegung gesellschaftlicher Konstruktionen von ‚Weiblichkeit‘ und ‚Männlichkeit‘, wie sie die Forschung in Fontanes Werken beobachtet, ist zunächst vor dem diskursgeschichtlichen Kontext der polaristisch-komplementären Geschlechtersemantik zu betrachten. Diese prägt sowohl die gesellschaftliche Ordnung als auch den öffentlichen und literarischen Diskurs im 19. Jahrhundert und stellt den entsprechenden Rahmen dar, innerhalb dessen affirmative oder kritische Positionierungen zu sehen sind.

• Igl, Natalia (2022). Materialität. In Scheiding, Oliver & Fazli, Sabina (Ed.), Handbuch Zeitschriftenforschung. Transcript Verlag. ISSN 9783839451137. p. 85–95. doi: 10.14361/9783839451137-004. Show summary

  Natalia Igl beleuchtet in diesem Beitrag die Zeitschrift als materielles (Print-)Artefakt. Als multimodales Medium verfügt die Zeitschrift nicht nur über vielfältige und komplexe Mittel, um ihre Rezipient:innen als Lesende oder Betrachtende anzusprechen, sondern sie auch interaktiv in einen multisensorischen Lektüreprozess zu involvieren. An konkreten Beispielen aus der aktuellen Zeitschriftenforschung zeigt Igl dabei auf, dass die physisch-sinnliche Beschaffenheit des Mediums Zeitschrift ihr interaktives Wirkungspotential nicht erst im Falle einer besonders in den Vordergrund gerückten materiellen Ausgestaltung entfaltet. Vielmehr ist das Medium in seiner grundlegenden Materialität immer schon auf eine multisensorische Rezeption und Hantierung hin ausgerichtet.

• Igl, Natalia (2022). Fontanes Impressionen und Essays: Vom Bild zur Bewegtheit, vom Fragment zum Flow. Fontane Blätter. ISSN 0015-6175. 114, p. 42–54.
• Igl, Natalia (2022). Making Sense of the Material: Multisensory Reader Involvement in Contemporary Multimodal Novels. Art Style | Art & Culture International Magazine. ISSN 2596-1802. 10(10), p. 71–85. doi: 10.5281/zenodo.7020556. Show summary

  The material dimension of literature—with regard to its textuality as well as its manifestation in form of concrete medial artefacts—has always provided the potential to make use of different semiotic resources to engage the reader. While printed media in general have been increasingly challenged within our digital age, the interest in the specific affordances of print materiality and mediality has nonetheless been rekindled within current approaches in media and literary studies. Correspondingly, recent studies on how a narrative text may engage its readers take into account literature’s specific material and medial constitution. This increased interest is not least connected to the rise in so-called multimodal novels since the turn of the millennium—that is, works that integrate images and visual forms into the narration and frequently challenge the layout conventions of the printed page altogether. Following Jessica Pressman’s reflections on the “aesthetic of bookishness,” the genre can be seen as an illustrative case of the printed book’s revitalization in the digital age by making radical use of its media- specific affordances. Drawing on current research on multimodality in literature and the materiality of reading, the article discusses how contemporary multimodal novels make use of multisemiotic strategies and foregrounded (media-)materiality to engage readers in multisensory experiences of “being present” with the book, not just the story. At this, it also stresses the importance to understand reading as a process that involves both the mind and the body. Based on a case in point analysis of J.J. Abrams & Dough Dorst’s S. (2013), the article thus aims to demonstrate how multimodal novels functionalize their narrative composition and foregrounded print materiality to engage the “embodied reader” in a process of making sense of the text as both a story and a material artefact.

• Igl, Natalia (2021). Multisensorische Lektüren: Zur Rezeption und Meta-Ästhetik multimodaler Gegenwartsromane. In Brückl, Stefan; Haefs, Wilhelm & Wimmer, Max (Ed.), META-Fiktionen. Der experimentelle Roman seit den 1960er Jahren (NeoAvantgarden 12). Edition text+kritik (et+k). ISSN 9783967074239. p. 331–363.
• Igl, Natalia (2020). Christoph Wegmann: Der Bilderfex. Im imaginären Museum Theodor Fontanes. Jahrbuch der Raabe-Gesellschaft. ISSN 0075-2371. 61(1), p. 237–242. doi: 10.1515/raabe-2020-0016. Full text in Research Archive
• Igl, Natalia (2019). Sammelrezension: Fragen des Formats. MEDIENwissenschaft: Rezensionen | Reviews. ISSN 1431-5262. p. 279–283. doi: 10.17192/ep2019.3.8184. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  Review article on: Michael Niehaus: Was ist ein Format? Hannover: Wehrhahn 2018 (Kleine Formate, Bd.1); Carlos Spoerhase: Das Format der Literatur: Praktiken materieller Textualität zwischen 1740 und 1830. Göttingen: Wallstein 2018.

• Igl, Natalia (2019). Un/Gleichzeitigkeiten. Großstadt als Verhandlungsraum der multimodalen Moderne von Fontane bis Ruttmann. Text + Kritik. ISSN 0040-5329. p. 57–72. Show summary

  In Fontanes Berlin mit seinen Sichtachsen, Beobachterposten am Fenster(-spiegel) und der starken Fokussierung auf Innenräume gilt weitgehend noch die statische Seh-Ordnung, wie sie mit Renate Brosch für das 19. Jahrhundert als dominant anzusehen ist. Wo der urbane Raum als solcher in Fontanes Werken sichtbar wird, weist er noch immer stark zurück auf literarische Großstadtdarstellungen des 18. und 19. Jahrhunderts von Autoren wie E.T.A. Hoffmann, Poe, Balzac und Dickens, die die Wahrnehmungszumutungen und -reize der Großstadt in Genre-Bilder überführt und topisch gewordene urbane Wahrnehmungssituationen in Szene gesetzt haben. Doch zugleich befindet sich ‚Fontanopolis‘ an der Schwelle zur multimodalen und polyphonen Moderne, wie sie beispielsweise in Alfred Döblins Roman „Berlin Alexanderplatz“ (1929) narrativ inszeniert wird: Flanierende Figuren wie Olga und Waldemar in Fontanes „Stine“ (1890) erleben als dynamisierte Betrachter die multi-sensorische Eindrücklichkeit der modernen, sich wandelnden Großstadt und ihrer Deutungsoffenheiten. Ironisch perspektivierte, ‚merkwürdige‘ Raumordnungen und die für Fontane typische Dialogizität konfrontiert die Leserinnen und Leser mit der ‚Gleichzeitigkeit des Ungleichzeitigen‘, mit dem Aufeinandertreffen von Mentalitäten und Stilen und setzt so die Prozesshaftigkeit von Moderne in Szene.

• Igl, Natalia (2019). Framing the narrative: The "fictive publisher" as a bridge builder between intra- and extratextual world. In Neurohr, Benedict & Stewart-Shaw, Lizzie (Ed.), Experiencing Fictional Worlds. John Benjamins Publishing Company. ISSN 9789027202017. p. 97–117. doi: 10.1075/lal.32.06igl. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  Drawing on cognitive linguistic and narratological conceptualisations
of “frames” and “framing” (notably Quendler 2008, 2010) and taking up Grishakova’s (2009: 188) notion of frames as “a link between the ‘real-life’
and ‘fictional’ experience”, this chapter aims to elucidate the phenomenon of paratextual framing and in particular the “fictive publisher” frame as a transitional device that can blend fictional storyworlds and extratextual “reality” and thus act as a bridge between the text and the reader. In the context of fantastic literature, this potential of blending can be seen working at its best. By means of an analysis of the multilayered “fictive publisher” frame in the definitive edition of Adelbert von Chamisso’s fantastic Romantic novella The Wonderful History of Peter Schlemihl, the chapter examines the inherent ontological and perspectival ambivalence and shifting capacity of the “fictive publisher” frame. In the course of this, it sheds light on the dynamics of distance and proximity created by the paratextual frame and – in the case of the specific arrangement in Chamisso’s definitive edition – the utilisation of framing strategies and familiarity to appeal to re-readers.

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• Igl, Natalia & Zeman, Sonja (2016). Perspectives on Narrativity and Narrative Perspectivization. John Benjamins Publishing Company. ISBN 9789027234100.
• Igl, Natalia & Menzel, Julia (2016). Illustrierte Zeitschriften um 1900. Mediale Eigenlogik, Multimodalität und Metaisierung. Transcript Verlag. ISBN 9783837636598.
• Igl, Natalia (2014). Geschlechtersemantik 1800/1900. Zur literarischen Diskursivierung der Geschlechterkrise im Naturalismus. V&R Unipress. ISBN 9783847102762.

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• Igl, Natalia (2024). Sensuous knowledge and embodied cognition. An ELLA special issue on reading, feeling, and studying narratives of trauma, crisis, and illness.
• Igl, Natalia (2024). „Feuchte meine Zunge, flicke meinen Blick“. Literatur als Raum der Sprache und Erkenntnis bei Dinçer Güçyeter und Asal Dardan.
• Igl, Natalia (2023). Re-Lived Experiences, Multilayered Lives: Violence, Trauma, and Agency in Postmigrant German Literature. Show summary

  As a formative part of contemporary German literature, so-called postmigrant literature deals with topics of social conflict, racialized violence, and individual/collective trauma against the backdrop of (generationally passed on) experiences of migration, marginalization and othering. Novels such as Fatma Aydemir’s "Ellbogen" (“Elbow”, 2017) and Olivia Wenzel’s "1000 Serpentinen Angst" (2020; translated as “1,000 Coils of Fear”, 2022) deal with scenarios of exclusion and identity, of ubiquitous social aggressions and racist violence against their protagonists, and not least of (post-)traumatic stress and the radically embodied effects of permanent alertness. However, novels like those by Wenzel and Aydemir do not only put into words the (re-)lived experiences and effects of marginalization and victimization. Rather, they utilize narrative strategies such as multiperspectivity or second person narration to negotiate and manifest possibilities of agency and have the potential to engage their readers in a process of developing their ‘sensuous knowledge’ (Salami 2020) about the shared experiences of multilayered lives and the crucial importance of epistemic justice (Medina 2013). In my presentation, I argue for the importance of studying postmigrant German literature both in the literature classroom as well as in the context of intercultural learning and shed light on postmigrant German literature’s potential (1) to portray contemporary discourses of individual and collective trauma, and at the same time offer means of empowerment and remedy, (2) to utilize narrative strategies of polyphony and dialogic discourse and engage readers’ senses and emotions, and (3) to relate reality / lived experiences and fiction to negotiate epistemic (in)justice. References: Medina, José (2013): The Epistemology of Resistance: Gender and Racial Oppression, Epistemic Injustice, and the Social Imagination. Oxford: OUP. Salami, Minna (2020): Sensuous Knowledge. A Black Feminist Approach for Everyone. London: Zed Books.

• Igl, Natalia; Tchokothe, Rémi Armand & Hannah, Mühlparzer (2023). Reading and Studying Narratives of Trauma, Crisis, and Illness. 2-Day Symposium at Østfold University College (Programme Brochure). Show summary

  This two-day international symposium on trauma, crisis and illness narratives is connected to the new ELLA project “Literature in the Time of Crisis” at Østfold University College, and has been made possible by means of ELLA’s generous funding. The symposium investigates literature’s potential to facilitate emotional reader engagement, ethical reflection, and (individual/collective) processing of traumatic memory and takes the ‘embodied nature’ of trauma and illness narratives as its point of departure. As trauma research has shown, traumatic experiences reshape both body and brain of an individual – and societies as a whole in the case of collective trauma (Van der Kolk 2014; Madigan 2020; Neria and Ataria 2016). In line with ELLA’s philosophy, this symposium pays attention to: - Language as the means both through which readers access texts and react to texts. - How literature and languages (understood both as means of communication and as aesthetic-stylistic approaches to narratives) contribute to not only educating the mind in a narrow sense, but also the heart – that is, the deeply embodied, enactive, socially embedded, and affective nature of the human mind-body (Colombetti 2014).

• Igl, Natalia (2023). Bewegung und Stillstand: Rechte Gewalt bei May Ayim, Olivia Wenzel, Mithu Sanyal und Fatma Aydemir. Show summary

  1992 bringt May Ayim in ihrem Gedicht deutschland im herbst das wiederkehrende Muster rechter Gewalttaten mit der Formel „erst zuerst dann wieder“ auf den Punkt. In den Versen „es ist nicht wahr / daß es nicht wahr ist / so war es“ werden zugleich die stets wiederkehrende gesellschaftliche Ignoranz und Empathie-Verweigerung fassbar, denen sich die Opfer rechten Terrors gegenübersehen. Von Ayims in Lyrik gefasster Gegenwehr gegen das Schweigen und Verharmlosen lässt sich ein Bogen zu den aktuellen Romanen 1000 serpentinen angst (2020) von Olivia Wenzel, Identitti (2021) von Mithu Sanyal und Dschinns (2022) von Fatma Aydemir schlagen. Betrachtet man die Romane aus der Perspektive einer postmigrantischen (deutschsprachigen) Gegenwartsliteratur, so lassen sie sich als Beiträge zu einer überfälligen Justierung verstehen: Rechte Gewalt ist nicht als Rand(gruppen)problem abzutun, weder in noch außerhalb der Literatur. Dieser wichtigen Bewegung im Sinne der Veränderung dominanter Diskurse steht im Erzählen rechter Gewalt ein auffälliges Motiv des Stillstandes gegenüber. So scheint die Zeit in allen drei Romanen oft in mehrerlei Hinsicht angehalten: in der wiederkehrenden Gewalt und Bedrohung, im traumatischen Erinnern, und nicht zuletzt in der sich wiederholenden gesellschaftlichen/politischen/medialen Leugnung dessen, was (geschehen) ist. Zugleich wird in den Romanen von Wenzel, Sanyal und Aydemir rechte Gewalt in einer Weise erzählt, die nicht nur die Verletzungen und Traumata von Opfern in Worte fasst. Vielmehr wird in den Texten das komplexe (innere) Erleben von Figuren narrativ erfahrbar gemacht, deren Identität beileibe nicht in der permanent aufgezwungenen Abwehr und Bewältigung von Rassismus, Diskriminierung und Ausgrenzung aufgeht.

• Igl, Natalia (2022). Extended reading – extended listening? Show summary

  Can you say you read a book when you listened to its audio version? What does voice add to print and paper? And are the habits of audiobook-listeners different from paper-readers? In this workshop, our focus will be on the embodied nature of the printed book as a physical artefact. At the same time it will change the dominant focus on print reading within literary studies by addressing the audiobook as crucial contemporary literary medium. In the first part of the workshop, we investigate what print literature can do thanks to its materiality and mediality; what we as readers do with literature that we encounter in such an ‘embodied’ form. We look at hands-on material some examples of contemporary multimodal literature that foregrounds the book´s materiality, as well as examples of real readers´ habits of ‘extending’ a printed book by adding bookmarks, notes, etc. in the process of reading. In the second part, the notion of the book´s physical nature will be challenged - even the notion of 'reading' in itself. We do this by looking closer at - or rather listening closer to? - audiobooks as literary media. The particular affordances of print versus audiobooks will be mapped out by discussing their respective (un)intended purposes, their media-specific forms of usage and potentials to engage their readers. One of the main questions will be if and how we might find ways to ‘extend’ an audiobook similar to how we do it in case of printed books. Tackling this question will give another hands-on opportunity to ‘hack’ the book as a diverse medium within our digital age.

• Igl, Natalia (2022). Fontanes Impressionen und Essays: Vom Bild zur Bewegtheit, vom Fragment zum Flow .
• Igl, Natalia (2022). Podcast: The Materiality and Multimodality of Literature. Show summary

  What is a multimodal novel? And why is the genre on its return in our digital age? How should we understand the notion of the embodied reader? And why bother about rhythm and rhyme in the 21st century? Books are more than just neutral containers of narratives; they are material, palpable objects, often multimodal in nature. In this podcast, Natalia Igl, associate researcher at LCE and Marie Skłodowska-Curie recent postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Oslo, discusses how and why the material and multimodal aspects of a book, literary journal, or poem affect our readerly experience perhaps more than we suspect. In a conversation with Stijn Vervaet, she explains how a literary work’s multimodality and materiality operates, and how we read with our bodies.

• Igl, Natalia (2022). LCE Concept Video: Material Reading. Show summary

  This video explains how we encounter texts as embodied and embedded artefacts, and how we therefore also read with our bodies.

• Igl, Natalia (2022). Narrative framing strategies of hope and despair: The case of queer affective worldmaking in Alice Oseman's Heartstopper.
• Igl, Natalia (2021). Spiel im Morgengrauen. A: Arthur Schnitzler. ED: 1926/27. . In Schauer, Hendrikje & Lepper, Marcel (Ed.), Night Shift: Ein Wörterbuch um Mitternacht . Works & Nights. ISSN 9783981940640. p. 79–82.
• Igl, Natalia (2019). Kleine Formen: Medialität, Materialität und Kognitive Poetik.
• Igl, Natalia (2019). Reader engagement and the purpose of literature: Commentary on Teresa Cremin, "Building Communities of Engaged Readers".
• Fialho, Olivia & Igl, Natalia (2019). Workshop on Empirical Approaches to Joint Attention and Reader Engagement.
• Igl, Natalia (2019). Readers as Observers: Materiality and Simulated Situations of Joint Attention in Contemporary Multimodal Novels.
• Igl, Natalia (2019). Positioning the Reader as Observer in 1920s/30s Magazine Culture.
• Igl, Natalia (2019). Materiality and simulated situations of joint attention in contemporary multimodal novels. Show summary

  Research on how readers engage with literature has shown that readers can be ‘absorbed’ by and ‘transported’ into storyworlds and fictional spaces. The interplay of textual visualization strategies and mental imagery (see e.g. Kuzmičová 2014) can make readers feel highly engaged by a text and evoke an experience of ‘being there’. Apart from the phenomenon of mental imagery, however, literature can also put readers in a position of actual observers and inter-actors by foregrounding the materiality of printed media, the performative potential of the written text, and the multi-sensory receptivity of the embodied reader. This is the case with the co-called multimodal novels which interestingly experienced a significant rise since the turn of the millennium (see e.g. Gibbons 2012). Cognitive approaches such as Gibbons’ (2012, 2008) shed light on the interplay of multimodality in printed narratives and the reader’s embodied cognition. Coming from a different direction, the recent shift towards a ‘new materialism’ in literary theory equally put emphasis on the ‘embodied’ form of the book as a printed artifact (see e.g. Hayles 2013). Bringing together the materialist and the cognitive perspective, my presentation focuses on the notion of ‘joint attention’ as a highly fruitful but yet underrated addition to the existing analytical tool-kit. The term refers to “the ability to share attention to some object with another person and mutually recognize that the attention is shared” (Tobin 2010: 185). As a basic phenomenon regarding the ways we process and socially interact within our material environment, joint attention also plays a crucial role in how we engage with literature. Vice versa, the phenomenon of joint attention can explain how literary texts utilize our socio-cognitive dispositions to engage us as readers in complex though processes, (self-)observations and emotions. Against this backdrop, my presentation argues for the relevance of looking into (simulated) situations of joint attention in contemporary multimodal novels to understand the ways in which the printed novel as a material and multimodal artifact is functionalized to engage the embodied reader.

• Igl, Natalia (2019). Materializing the Narrative: Multimodal Novels as Test Case for a Media-Ecological Narratology. Show summary

  Today's multimodal novels - that is, novels that integrate images and visual forms into the narration and utilise the pictorial quality of script - emphasize the media-specific possibilities of the printed book. By foregrounding the novel's materiality, they often involve the reader in a meta-reflection on the compositional, material and social practices of writing and reading narratives. "S" by J.J. Abrams and Dough Dorst (2013), for instance, presents itself as a library copy of a fictive author's novel and confronts the reader with different physical documents enclosed as loose inserts as well as marginalia by 'prior readers' starting a dialogue and dispute over the very book. The turn to the materiality of narrative and the foregrounded 'aesthetic of bookishness' (Pressmann 2009) can be seen as a self-confident plea for the printed book in the digital age. Against this backdrop, my talk presents contemporary multimodal novels as a test case for a media-ecological narratology.

• Igl, Natalia (2019). Neue Materialität trifft embodied reader: Die multisensorische Involvierung von Rezipient*innen in multimodalen Gegenwartsromanen. Show summary

  Multimodale Strategien in Romanen sind an sich keine Neuerung des postmodernen Medienzeitalters. Im 21. Jahrhundert hat jedoch das Maß an visueller Ausgestaltungen, das Spiel mit der Ästhetik der ‚Bookishness‘ (Hayles 2013) und die Funktionalisierung von Layout und Typographie für die Narration signifikant zugenommen (vgl. etwa Gibbons 2008). Mit ihren Herausgeberfiktionen und komplexen Ausgestaltung von Rahmen-Binnenstrukturen (vgl. Igl 2019) schließen multimodale Romane der Gegenwart wie Mark Z. Danielewskis "House of Leaves" (2000), J.J. Abrams & Dough Dorsts "S" (2013) und Philipp Weiss’ "Am Weltenrand sitzen die Menschen und lachen" (2018) unter anderem an romantische Erzähl- und Werkstrategien an. Die radikale Materialisierung des Erzählens anhand der Einbettung verschiedener semiotischer Modi und anderer Medien(-ästhetiken) ist nun allerdings vor dem Hintergrund des digitalen Zeitalters zu betrachten, in dem das gedruckte Buch anders als vorhergesagt einen neuen Aufschwung zu erleben scheint (vgl. Plate 2015). In den genannten multimodalen Romanen wird der literarische Text zum einen in seiner Manifestation als sinnlich erfahrbares Artefakt beobachtbar, zum anderen als ein ästhetisches Objekt, dessen spezifische Beschaffenheit im Kontext einer veränderten Medien- und Printkultur zu sehen ist. N. Katherine Hayles bringt die Anforderungen gegenwärtiger “embodied texts“ an die Rezipient*innen auf den Punkt: „Texts that employ their bodies to create narrative complexity must be read not for their words alone but also for the physical involvement readers undertake to access their materialities“ (Hayles 2013, S. 231). Ziel des Vortrags ist es vor diesem Hintergrund, die aktuellen Ansätzen des New Materialism sowie der Performanzforschung, die bereits den Blick auf das komplexe Zusammenspiel von ästhetischer Gestaltung und aisthetischer Wirkung legen, durch eine kognitiv-literaturwissenschaftliche Perspektive zu ergänzen. Unter dem Schlagwort der embodied cognition, in dem die Annahme einer strikten Trennung von Kognition und sinnlicher Erfahrung deutlich verabschiedet ist, beleuchtet die gegenwärtige Kognitionswissenschaft das grundlegende Zusammenspiel von Kognition, Körper und physikalischen wie sozialen Umwelten (vgl. Newen et al. 2018). Das damit korrespondierende Konzept des embodied reader (vgl. etwa Caraccialo et al. 2017) lenkt analog dazu unseren Blick auf das immer schon vorhandene Potential der radikalen multisensorischen Involvierung von Leser*innen. Anhand verschiedener Fallbeispiele stellt der Vortrag entsprechend einen Untersuchungsansatz vor, der die konkreten Strategien und Wirkungsweisen multimodaler Gegenwartsromane unter Einbezug ihrer medienästhetischen Gestaltung und rezeptionsästhetischen Voraussetzungen analysierbar und beschreibbar macht.

• Igl, Natalia (2019). Mapping out literary citizenship in the Weimar Republic periodical "Die literarische Welt". Show summary

  The notion of ‘world literature’ as shaped in the early 19th century can be seen as a key manifestation of the transnational nature and impact of the book. At the beginning of the 20th century, however, the more senior notion of the ‘literary world’ equally gains new attention. The same-titled German periodical "Die literarische Welt" (1925-1933), a weekly literary and cultural review, aims to shape the public sphere during the years of the Weimar Republic by offering a panoramic and non dogmatic perspective on contemporary literature and culture (cf. Philpotts 2005). The goal to interface the local and the global perspective – as well as the contemporary and the historical – constitutes the periodical’s crucial point of departure: The first issue starts with a survey presenting national and international author’s voices on what they owe to the ‘German spirit’ respectively the ‘cosmopolitan idea’. As Reichwein 2016 argues, the characteristic use of the survey as a discursive genre in Die literarische Welt is crucial with regard to its pluralistic objectives. As the paper will outline, the functionalization of the periodical as polyphonous forum of debate together with the explicit notion of the critical and mature reader provides a strategy to map out a decidedly transnational understanding of literary citizenship.

• Igl, Natalia (2018). Readers as observers: Commencing at the frame.
• Igl, Natalia (2018). From the kinetics of 'embodied modernism' to the metamodern play on embodiment in contemporary multimodal novels.

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