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Books by Gero Guttzeit

The Figures of Edgar Allan Poe is the first study to address the rhetorical dimensions of Poe’s t... more The Figures of Edgar Allan Poe is the first study to address the rhetorical dimensions of Poe’s textual and discursive practices. It argues that Poe is a figure and figurer of the emergence of the modern understanding of literature in the early nineteenth century that resulted from the birth of the romantic author and the so-called ‘death of rhetoric’. Building on accounts of Poe as a skilled navigator of American antebellum print culture, Gero Guttzeit reinterprets Poe as representative of the vital role that transatlantic rhetoric played in antebellum literature. He investigates rhetorical figures of the author in Poe’s critical writings, tales, poems, and lectures to give a new account of Poe’s significance for antebellum literary culture. In so doing, he also proposes a general rhetorical theory of theoretical, poetical, and performative figures of the author. Beyond Poe studies, the book intervenes in current debates on the romantic origins of the modern author and demonstrates that rhetorical theory offers new ways of exploring authorship beyond the nineteenth century.

Special Topic Journal Issues by Gero Guttzeit

Zeitschrift für Anglistik und Amerikanistik, 2024

Introduction to Contemporary Literature and Social Invisibility. Special issue of Zeitschrift für... more Introduction to Contemporary Literature and Social Invisibility. Special issue of Zeitschrift für Anglistik und Amerikanistik

Anglistik: International Journal of English Studies, 2019

Anglophone literature of the 19th century abounds in monsters that continue to horrify even in th... more Anglophone literature of the 19th century abounds in monsters that continue to horrify even in the present: vampires, mummies, doppelgangers, ghosts, and zombies as well as Frankenstein's monster, Moby-Dick, the Jabberwock, Helen Vaughan, and the Invisible Man. This issue of Anglistik remaps this monstrous abundance in light of the thriving field of monster studies.

Anglistik, 2019

Delineates a practice of monstrous reading and highlights some of its implications for literary a... more Delineates a practice of monstrous reading and highlights some of its implications for literary and cultural studies

This special issue seeks to explore the evolution of authorship across the long eighteenth centur... more This special issue seeks to explore the evolution of authorship across the long eighteenth century. The gradual development of a remunerative literary marketplace – driven by an expanding, economically viable periodical press as well as by authors’ greater abilities to leverage new copyright regimes – led to a process of professionalization that was fundamentally at odds with the traditional ideal of leisured authorship. The eighteenth-century economic realities of professional writers shaped competing conceptions of literary authorship. The stereotypes of the suffering Grub Street hack and of the Romantic genius represent two extremes, but situated and often alternating between these poles, a host of options presented themselves to those who would earn their living by writing.

Papers by Gero Guttzeit

African American Review, Mar 1, 2023

This paper analyzes a selection of covers of scholarly books from the field of surveillance stud... more This paper analyzes a selection of covers of scholarly books from the field of
surveillance studies. Reading these book covers on their own as paratextual text-im-
age combinations, we seek to illuminate a seemingly marginal field of the contem-
porary representation of surveillance. Foregrounding the motifs of cameras, eyes,
and surveilled bodies, we point out some of the complex ways in which subjectivity
and in/visibility interact on book covers in the age of dataveillance.

Internationale Zeitschrift für Kulturkomparatistik, 2022

Article in German. English abstract: “Compound Invisible Objects”: Moral Constitution, Literary C... more Article in German. English abstract:
“Compound Invisible Objects”: Moral Constitution, Literary Character and the Gyges Problem in Adam Smith and Eliza Haywood
A diachronic approach to the relationship between literature and philosophy since antiquity needs to include the field of rhetoric, regardless of whether it appears as a link or a disruption. This article discusses fundamental questions of rhetoric, philosophy, and poetics in the example of invisible characters and their moral qualities in antiquity and the mid-18th century. Plato’s mythical literary version of the Gyges legend in the “Republic” conceives of the invisible character as an illustration of the morally depraved nature of humans. In the following, I shall not trace this “Gyges problem” in the terms of influence studies but rather with an awareness of the ubiquity of ancient knowledge in philosophy and literature of the 18th century. I shall situate Adam Smith’s oft-discussed metaphor of the invisible hand in the context of his lectures on rhetoric, which were instrumental in founding the tradition of the Scottish New Rhetoric. I shall argue that invisibility forms a central element of Smith’s definition of character. The manifold implications of such a conception of invisible characters will then be illustrated using the example of Eliza Haywood’s “The Invisible Spy” (1755) and her conception of authorial ethos. Thus, the metaphor of invisibility proves itself to be of transhistorical relevance for the relationship

Handbook of the American Short Story

Forum for Modern Language Studies

This paper discusses early nineteenth-century authorship through an analysis of transgressive, do... more This paper discusses early nineteenth-century authorship through an analysis of transgressive, double and fragmented monsters in Gothic novels and tales. Relying on the concept of ‘figures of the author’, I read monsters such as the vampire, the doppelganger and the cyborg as Gothic refigurations of Romantic authorship. In analysing Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818) and Edgar Allan Poe’s ‘Ligeia’ (1838) and ‘The Man that Was Used Up’ (1839), I examine how the characteristic othering of bodies, such as occurs in the Gothic monster, comes to be representative of the dangers that Gothic writing, in its monstrous and mechanical popularity, posed to the dominant idea of the Romantic author and its features such as individuality, originality and organic totality.

The Figures of Edgar Allan Poe is the first study to address the rhetorical dimensions of Poe’s t... more The Figures of Edgar Allan Poe is the first study to address the rhetorical dimensions of Poe’s textual and discursive practices. It argues that Poe is a figure and figurer of the emergence of the modern understanding of literature in the early nineteenth century that resulted from the birth of the romantic author and the so-called ‘death of rhetoric’. Building on accounts of Poe as a skilled navigator of American antebellum print culture, Gero Guttzeit reinterprets Poe as representative of the vital role that transatlantic rhetoric played in antebellum literature. He investigates rhetorical figures of the author in Poe’s critical writings, tales, poems, and lectures to give a new account of Poe’s significance for antebellum literary culture. In so doing, he also proposes a general rhetorical theory of theoretical, poetical, and performative figures of the author. Beyond Poe studies, the book intervenes in current debates on the romantic origins of the modern author and demonstrates that rhetorical theory offers new ways of exploring authorship beyond the nineteenth century.

Zeitschrift für Anglistik und Amerikanistik, 2024

Introduction to Contemporary Literature and Social Invisibility. Special issue of Zeitschrift für... more Introduction to Contemporary Literature and Social Invisibility. Special issue of Zeitschrift für Anglistik und Amerikanistik

Anglistik: International Journal of English Studies, 2019

Anglophone literature of the 19th century abounds in monsters that continue to horrify even in th... more Anglophone literature of the 19th century abounds in monsters that continue to horrify even in the present: vampires, mummies, doppelgangers, ghosts, and zombies as well as Frankenstein's monster, Moby-Dick, the Jabberwock, Helen Vaughan, and the Invisible Man. This issue of Anglistik remaps this monstrous abundance in light of the thriving field of monster studies.

Anglistik, 2019

Delineates a practice of monstrous reading and highlights some of its implications for literary a... more Delineates a practice of monstrous reading and highlights some of its implications for literary and cultural studies

This special issue seeks to explore the evolution of authorship across the long eighteenth centur... more This special issue seeks to explore the evolution of authorship across the long eighteenth century. The gradual development of a remunerative literary marketplace – driven by an expanding, economically viable periodical press as well as by authors’ greater abilities to leverage new copyright regimes – led to a process of professionalization that was fundamentally at odds with the traditional ideal of leisured authorship. The eighteenth-century economic realities of professional writers shaped competing conceptions of literary authorship. The stereotypes of the suffering Grub Street hack and of the Romantic genius represent two extremes, but situated and often alternating between these poles, a host of options presented themselves to those who would earn their living by writing.

African American Review, Mar 1, 2023

This paper analyzes a selection of covers of scholarly books from the field of surveillance stud... more This paper analyzes a selection of covers of scholarly books from the field of
surveillance studies. Reading these book covers on their own as paratextual text-im-
age combinations, we seek to illuminate a seemingly marginal field of the contem-
porary representation of surveillance. Foregrounding the motifs of cameras, eyes,
and surveilled bodies, we point out some of the complex ways in which subjectivity
and in/visibility interact on book covers in the age of dataveillance.

Internationale Zeitschrift für Kulturkomparatistik, 2022

Article in German. English abstract: “Compound Invisible Objects”: Moral Constitution, Literary C... more Article in German. English abstract:
“Compound Invisible Objects”: Moral Constitution, Literary Character and the Gyges Problem in Adam Smith and Eliza Haywood
A diachronic approach to the relationship between literature and philosophy since antiquity needs to include the field of rhetoric, regardless of whether it appears as a link or a disruption. This article discusses fundamental questions of rhetoric, philosophy, and poetics in the example of invisible characters and their moral qualities in antiquity and the mid-18th century. Plato’s mythical literary version of the Gyges legend in the “Republic” conceives of the invisible character as an illustration of the morally depraved nature of humans. In the following, I shall not trace this “Gyges problem” in the terms of influence studies but rather with an awareness of the ubiquity of ancient knowledge in philosophy and literature of the 18th century. I shall situate Adam Smith’s oft-discussed metaphor of the invisible hand in the context of his lectures on rhetoric, which were instrumental in founding the tradition of the Scottish New Rhetoric. I shall argue that invisibility forms a central element of Smith’s definition of character. The manifold implications of such a conception of invisible characters will then be illustrated using the example of Eliza Haywood’s “The Invisible Spy” (1755) and her conception of authorial ethos. Thus, the metaphor of invisibility proves itself to be of transhistorical relevance for the relationship

Handbook of the American Short Story

Forum for Modern Language Studies

This paper discusses early nineteenth-century authorship through an analysis of transgressive, do... more This paper discusses early nineteenth-century authorship through an analysis of transgressive, double and fragmented monsters in Gothic novels and tales. Relying on the concept of ‘figures of the author’, I read monsters such as the vampire, the doppelganger and the cyborg as Gothic refigurations of Romantic authorship. In analysing Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818) and Edgar Allan Poe’s ‘Ligeia’ (1838) and ‘The Man that Was Used Up’ (1839), I examine how the characteristic othering of bodies, such as occurs in the Gothic monster, comes to be representative of the dangers that Gothic writing, in its monstrous and mechanical popularity, posed to the dominant idea of the Romantic author and its features such as individuality, originality and organic totality.

Authorship, 2015

Note on the text: “The Brain-Sucker: Or, the Distress of Authorship” was first published in The B... more Note on the text: “The Brain-Sucker: Or, the Distress of Authorship” was first published in The British Mercury in 1787, in two parts: the first part in “No. I. – May 12 1787”, pp. 14–27, and the continuation in “No. II. – May 26 1787”, pp. 43–48. The British Mercury was reissued in 1788, advertised as A New Edition. This edition survives in three copies. Our copy-text for the present edition is the Bodleian Library copy (shelfmark G Pamph 1192), which is identified with the siglum B in the notes below. This has been collated with Bodleian Library shelfmark Douce M 591 (siglum: D) and British Library shelfmark P.P.3557.mc (siglum: BL).Our choice of B as copy-text is motivated by the fact that occasional changes in spelling and wording indicate that this represents a corrected state, improving some verbal infelicities and also making the text more credible, stylistically, as a farmer’s letter, e.g. by replacing the formal “unpensioned” with the more concrete agricultural “unsown” (15...

German article on Poe's and Godwin's authorial autocommentaries on "The Raven" ... more German article on Poe's and Godwin's authorial autocommentaries on "The Raven" and "Caleb Williams," respectively, centering on the notion of writing backwards

Authorship, 2015

Originally printed in the first issue of The British Mercury in 1787, “The Brain-Sucker: Or, the ... more Originally printed in the first issue of The British Mercury in 1787, “The Brain-Sucker: Or, the Distress of Authorship” is a piece of satirical short fiction that has so far received only little attention in discussions of eighteenth-century print culture and practices of authorship. Probably written by the Scottish radical John Oswald (c. 1760-1793), “The Brain-Sucker” is told in the form of a letter by a farmer who tells an absent friend about his unfortunate son Dick, whose brain has become infected by poetry. This “disorder” leads Dick to London, where he falls prey to a ruthless publisher, known as “the Brain-sucker”, who keeps him like a slave in a Grub Street garret. The farmer then travels to London to save his son from the clutches of the Brain-Sucker. We present the text, for the first time, in a critical edition, collated from the three surviving copies, with textual and explanatory notes. In the accompanying essay, we discuss the text’s context of origin in late eightee...

GERO GUTTZEIT “The One Fixed Point in a Changing Age”: Watson, the Narrating Instance, and the Sh... more GERO GUTTZEIT “The One Fixed Point in a Changing Age”: Watson, the Narrating Instance, and the Sherlock Holmes Narratives

This edition makes available unpublished letters exchanged between British writer, critic, and cu... more This edition makes available unpublished letters exchanged between British writer, critic, and curator Laurence Binyon (1869–1943) and Belgian poet-critic Olivier-Georges Destree (1867–1919), written mostly in English and French, but also incorporating other languages. (Robert) Laurence Binyon is best known today as the poet who wrote the poem "For the Fallen," stanzas of which have been recited at commemorations for war victims from its initial publication in 1914 to the present day. Binyon’s scholarship was deeply rooted in the late Victorian period; Frederick Morel asserts that he "has always been considered a traditional nineteenth century poet" yet presents him as a "pivotal figure for the modernist movement in Britain." [1] His importance for modernist poetic networks is visible, for instance, in his connection to Ezra Pound, whom he introduced to Wyndham Lewis. [2] Olivier-Georges Destree, brother of socialist politician Jules Destree, was connec...

Études britanniques contemporaines

This article proposes a critical mapping of invisible characters in narrative fiction that accent... more This article proposes a critical mapping of invisible characters in narrative fiction that accentuates the complex relationship between literary and social invisibility. It argues that the emerging field of invisibility studies needs to come to terms with the motifs and forms of invisibility as they appear in literary history before and after the critical juncture of Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man (1952), also drawing on H.G. Wells’s The Invisible Man (1897) and Virginia Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway (1925) as primary examples. It maintains that invisible characters emerge in a literary field structured by 1) the socio-political opposition between power and powerlessness; 2) the continuum of realist and non-realist genres; and 3) the form of narration as such, particularly in what narratologists define as focalisation. In such fashion, an analysis of literary ‘unseeing’ in the sense developed in China Miéville’s novel The City & The City (2009) will enable a deeper understanding of social invisibilisation.

Yearbook of Research in English and American Literature, 2021

Études britanniques contemporaines, 2021

This article proposes a critical mapping of invisible characters in narrative fiction that accent... more This article proposes a critical mapping of invisible characters in narrative fiction that accentuates the complex relationship between literary and social invisibility. It argues that the emerging field of invisibility studies needs to come to terms with the motifs and forms of invisibility as they appear in literary history before and after the critical juncture of Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man (1952), also drawing on H.G. Wells’s The Invisible Man (1897) and Virginia Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway (1925) as primary examples. It maintains that invisible characters emerge in a literary field structured by 1) the socio-political opposition between power and powerlessness; 2) the continuum of realist and non-realist genres; and 3) the form of narration as such, particularly in what narratologists define as focalisation. In such fashion, an analysis of literary ‘unseeing’ in the sense developed in China Miéville’s novel The City & The City (2009) will enable a deeper understanding of social invisibilisation.

Handbook of English Renaissance Literature

Medial Bodies between Fiction and Faction

Fear and Fantasy in a Global World, 2015

The Figures of Edgar Allan Poe

Poe’s poems and critical writings had numerous points of contact with what has variously been des... more Poe’s poems and critical writings had numerous points of contact with what has variously been described as the antebellum “culture of eloquence” (Warren 1999) or “oratorical culture” (Clark and Halloran 1993), e. g. the first book publication of “The Raven” in George Vandenhoff’s A Plain System of Elocution (1845), Poe’s comments on lecturing and acting in the pages of the Broadway Journal (82, 89-90, 105, 175, 177, 184, 193, 215, 235, 335, 339), the commission of “Ulalume” by elocution professor Cotesworth P. Bronson (Poe Log, 704), and Poe’s own poetical recitations up to his final lecture on “The Poetic Principle” on September 24th, 1849, in Richmond (Poe Log, 841).
This paper examines the most representative cultural, poetical, and theoretical interrelations between antebellum eloquence and Poe’s poetry. Based on the assumption that antebellum poetry in general was “oratorical and occasional” (Wolosky 2010, 53), I shall argue that – in the time of the romantic opposition to rhetorical poetry (Mill [1833] 1981) – it was to elocutionary theories, discourses, and practices that Poe responded, partially affirming and partially subverting them in poems such as “Ulalume,” his recitations of his own and other authors’ poetry, and his critical theories, for instance, in “The Rationale of Verse.” My focus will be on the question how the notion that Poe’s compositions “require actual performance” by the reader (McGann 2013, 871) becomes explicable in terms of antebellum eloquence, ultimately suggesting some of the ways in which Poe’s connections to rhetorical culture are essential in “remapping” antebellum print culture (Kennedy and McGann 2013).

Edited by Christian Meyer and Felix Girke, The Rhetorical Emergence of Culture is the fourth volu... more Edited by Christian Meyer and Felix Girke, The Rhetorical Emergence of Culture is the fourth volume in the interdisciplinary series Studies in Rhetoric and Culture, which has fostered the dialogue between rhetoric and anthropology since 2009. Arranged into three sections on intersubjectivity, emergence, and agency, fifteen articles examine the cultural foundations of rhetoric and the rhetorical foundations of culture. Contributors hail mainly from anthropology and rhetoric, but also from communication studies, cognitive studies, linguistics, and philology. Hence the topics range from the ancient ideal of the orator and early modern Jesuit rhetoric in Goa to Internet forums for Russian migrants to the United States and the connections between architecture and public speech in New Guinea. Whilst some of the contributions are kept very general and others are in the main designed for specialists, the volume represents an important building block in bridging anthropological and rhetorica...

For the series of "Blackwell Companions to Literature and Culture", editors Charles J. ... more For the series of "Blackwell Companions to Literature and Culture", editors Charles J. Rzepka and Lee Horsley offer A Companion to Crime Fiction (2010), an essay collection aimed at undergraduate and graduate students. The 47 contributions to the volume focus on the British-American genres of detective and crime fiction and are written by literary and film critics as well as practitioners in the fields. Covering the period from the origins of crime fiction in the eighteenth century up to the present day, the detailed essays in the Companion are based on a variety of theoretical approaches and methodologies ranging from formal criticism to race, class, and gender studies as well as more encyclopaedic approaches. Despite a few terminological shortcomings, such as the inconsistent narratological distinction between detective and crime fiction, the volume constitutes a recommendable introduction, which might also help to further the scholarly discussion of the genre.

A Companion to Crime Fiction (2010), herausgegeben von Charles J. Rzepka und Lee Horsley, ist ein... more A Companion to Crime Fiction (2010), herausgegeben von Charles J. Rzepka und Lee Horsley, ist ein einführender Sammelband für Studierende und Promovierende aus der Reihe "Blackwell Companions to Literature and Culture". Die 47 Aufsätze des Bandes behandeln die britisch-amerikanischen Genres der Detektiv- und Kriminalliteratur und sind von Literatur- und Filmwissenschaftlern sowie Schriftstellern und Filmschaffenden verfasst. Die detailreichen Beiträge des Companion umfassen die Zeit von den Ursprüngen der Kriminalliteratur im 18. Jahrhundert bis zum heutigen Tag und basieren auf vielfältigen theoretischen Ansätzen und Methodiken, wie z. B. formal-narratologischen Herangehensweisen, race, class, and gender studies, sowie enzyklopädischen Betrachtungsweisen. Trotz einzelner terminologischer Mängel, deren kritikwürdigste die inkonsequente narratologische Abgrenzung von Detektiv- und Kriminalliteratur ist, stellt der Band eine empfehlenswerte Einführung dar, welche zudem die w...

The Rhetorical Emergence of Culture, herausgegeben von Christian Meyer und Felix Girke, ist der v... more The Rhetorical Emergence of Culture, herausgegeben von Christian Meyer und Felix Girke, ist der vierte Band in der interdisziplinären Reihe Studies in Rhetoric and Culture, die seit 2009 Rhetorik und Anthropologie in einen Dialog bringt. In drei Abschnitten zu Intersubjektivität, Emergenz und Agency untersuchen fünfzehn Aufsätze die kulturellen Grundlagen von Rhetorik und die rhetorischen Grundlagen der Emergenz von Kultur. Die Beiträger stammen vornehmlich aus der Anthropologie und Rhetorikforschung, aber auch aus Kommunikations- und Kognitionswissenschaft,  Linguistik und Philologie; entsprechend reichen die einzelnen Themen vom antiken Rednerbegriff über frühneuzeitliche Jesuiten-Rhetorik in Goa bis zu russischen Migrantenforen im Internet und den Verbindungen von Architektur und öffentlicher Rede in Neu-Guinea. Auch wenn einige der Beiträge sehr allgemein gehalten und manche hauptsächlich für Spezialisten geschrieben sind, ist der Band ein wichtiger Baustein im Brückenschla...

German review of Ben De Bruyn's monograph on Wolfgang Iser

FAZ, 14 September 2014

Warum wir uns gegen den Überwachungskapitalismus von Big Data mit aller Macht wehren müssen – ein... more Warum wir uns gegen den Überwachungskapitalismus von Big Data mit aller Macht wehren müssen – eine Kampfansage.

In: Friedrich der Große in Europa. Geschichte einer wechselvollen Beziehung. Eds. Bernd Sösemann and Gregor Vogt-Spira. 2012. Vol. 1. 159-178., 2012

German translation of Christopher Clark's article on Frederick the Great as historiographer

The fall issue of Authorship: Articles Appropriation: Towards a Sociotechnical History of Author... more The fall issue of Authorship:

Articles
Appropriation: Towards a Sociotechnical History of Authorship
Adriaan van der Weel

Writer by Trade: James Ralph’s Claims to Authorship
William Thomas Mari

An “imperfect” Model of Authorship in Dorothy Wordsworth’s Grasmere Journal
Heather Meek

The Public, the Press, and Celebrities in The Return of Sherlock Holmes
Thomas Vranken

Reviews
Review: Sayad, Cecilia. Performing Authorship: Self-Inscription and Corporeality in the Cinema (London: Tauris, 2013)
Gerd Bayer