Der E-Mail-Roman : Zur Medialisierung des Erzählens in der zeitgenössischen deutsch- und englischsprachigen Literatur

Sammanfattning: It has often been remarked that over the last two decades e-mails have become increasingly integrated into the novel and have thus reshaped not only its structure but also its plots. A number of scholars and critics have called for extensive scientific research into the new genre, which they refer to as the ‘E-Mail-Novel’. This dissertation is a reply to that call and focuses on this newly emerging genre within German- and English-speaking contexts. It does so by analyzing the modifications which e-mails have brought about in the novel on both the story and the discourse levels.In an effort to systematize the intermedial references to the communicative medium of e-mail in the novel, the study draws on categories from the work of Irina Rajewsky and Werner Wolf and reconfigures them according to their aptness for explicating features of the E-Mail-Novel. The intermedial categories developed in this dissertation – i. e., mention, report and imitation – also provide a basis for the analytical description of other interrelations between new media and literature and thus lend themselves to a theorization of the mediatization of narrative. Against this backdrop of different intermedial references, the study develops the idea of a scale for ordering and systematizing the varieties of the genre by simultaneously defining two major groups of e-mail-novels: hybrid and pure forms.Taking into account the historical variability of generic forms, the dissertation shows how the E-Mail-Novel depends on the cultural contexts in which it emerged by pointing out the ways in which the novels draw on contemporary issues. Among these are internet surveillance, the loss of control over the overwhelming amount of acts of virtual communication and the complexity of social relationships established and carried out via e-mail. Thus, the dissertation describes certain topoi and plot structures that can be regarded as paradigmatic for the E-Mail-Novel. In conclusion, the study maps six potential functions that e-mails can fulfill within the novel: on the intratextual level, intermedial references to e-mails can have a dramaturgical, explicative and instrumental potential while, on the extratextual level, they can fulfill representative, discursive and self-reflexive functions.