Authenticity is one of the most crucial, but also most contested concepts in literary and cultural studies. Hollowed out by postmodernist theory, it paradoxically enough persists as an important backdrop for the discussion of literature, film, and the visual arts. The essays in this volume explore perspectives on authenticity and case studies dealing with 'the authentic'. They thereby seek to show how the paradoxical persistence of authenticity in contemporary critical discourse can be turned into a fruitful point of departure for an analysis of literary texts, but also films, and the visual arts.

Julia Straub is a senior lecturer in North American Literature at the University of Berne (Switzerland). Her research interests are the reception of Dante in English literature, transatlantic mobility in the eighteenth century and melodrama.