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The focus of fighting tyranny and the justifications of the consecutive wars in fantasy literature for children and young adults play a noteworthy role in the intertwinement of literature and its educational potential. This genre is filled with numerous images of violence, in particular different scenarios of war and its justifications. In the books war constitutes the final battle between good and evil, and thus manifests the protagonists’ ultimate moral decisions between these two forces. The following books constitute the corpus: C. S. Lewis’s The Chronicles of Narnia (1950-56), Susan Cooper’s The Dark Is Rising Sequence (1965-77), Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials (1995-2000), J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series (1997-2007), Christopher Paolini’s Inheritance Cycle (2002-11), Amanda Hemingway’s Sangreal Trilogy (2005-07), and P. C. Cast and Kristin Cast’s House of Night novels (2007-2014). Although not all the books feature wars, all display justifications for war and the imperative to fight tyranny. Located within an intersection of diverse critical theories, my thesis engages literary texts in order to reflect on their capacity to negotiate, challenge, subvert, and perpetuate values and power structures. Motif analysis forms the centre of this analysis. I deploy a varied approach to literary analysis, relying upon literary and cultural theories (especially theories of ideology) to understand the realizations of the different motifs. Through issues of character construction, (political) authority, religion, and the construction of difference, the reader learns much about the culture and values of the respective world. Furthermore, this analysis invites the reader to find parallels between the fabricated world and the real world, and thus transfer what s/he has learned from the texts his/her own world. Engaging in such a reading ensures the drawing of direct connections between the reality constructed in the books on the one hand, and politics, the construction of difference, religion, and just war theory in the reader’s world on the other. The content analysis leads to broader cultural messages, which comprise assumptions about gender, power, ethnicity, religion, and morality. This methodology emphasizes the relevance as well as the complexity of the books and their educative potential, and facilitates the analysis of the books as tools for the defence and perpetuation of Western values and culture.

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In dieser Dissertation werden die Repräsentationen von Kulturtransfer in zeitgenössischen britischen Romanen untersucht (Monica Ali: Brick Lane (2003), Nadeem Aslam: Maps For Lost Lovers (2004), Gautam Malkani: Londonstani (2007) und Maggie Gee: The White Family (2002)). Für die Analyse der Begegnungen und Kulturtransferprozesse werden narratologische Analysekategorien mit denen der Kulturtransferanalyse verknüpft. Neben den textimmanenten Aspekten werden außerdem die Produktions- und Rezeptionskontexte der Romane mitberücksichtigt. Dazu gehören u.a. auch das Buchmarketing und Buchumschlagdesign sowie Rezensionen und öffentliche Reaktionen auf die Romane. Mit diesem Instrumentarium werden z.B. folgende Fragen untersucht: Wie werden Begegnungen und Austauschprozesse repräsentiert und bewertet? Welche Gründe für Aneignung oder Abschottung werden formuliert? In diesem Kontext konzentriert sich die Arbeit auf die Repräsentation von Mediatorinnen und Mediatoren, Kontaktzonen und -situationen, Machtstrukturen sowie Selektions- und Ablehnungsprozesse. Außerdem wird untersucht, mit welchen ästhetischen Mitteln die Austauschprozesse gestaltet werden, beispielsweise durch die Untersuchung der Plotmuster und der Charakterisierungen auf Stereotype hin. und welche Effekte dies bewirkt. Die Analysen haben ergeben, dass Kulturtransfer als erstrebenswert bewertet wird. Gleichzeitig findet aber oft nur Assimilierung statt und kein reziproker Austausch auf Augenhöhe. Die ausgewählten Romane setzen sich vorwiegend mit Hindernissen des interkulturellen Austauschs auseinander. Besonders häufig werden in diesem Kontext Gründe wie mangelnde Bereitschaft, mangelnde Bildung und extremistische (religiöse) Ansichten der Einwandererfamilien angeführt. Die Romane verstetigen Stereotype, die dem Lesepublikum bereits aus vielen Massenmedien vertraut sind, u.a. durch entwicklungsresistente Charaktere, typisiert als ungebildete und unverbesserliche Migranten, die Parallelgesellschaften entwerfen. / This thesis analyses representations of cultural exchange in contemporary British novels in the context of migration and the British literary field. It offers a multilayered approach: the combination of cultural exchange theory and its categories with narratological tools do justice to the aesthetic side of the novels as well as their socio-political and historical contexts that are particularly relevant for novels dealing with migration. Cultural exchange theory analyses appropriation and transformation processes, i.e. how the concepts, cultural practices as well as representations change when they are transferred into a different cultural context. Furthermore, this thesis takes into consideration that all novels exist as material objects within a literary field that is affected by editors, marketing people, reviewers, and other agents. The results support the following theses: Contact and exchange are implicitly and explicitly depicted as something positive, with two of the novels emphasising the virtues of selective appropriation. However, the exchange processes mainly work in one direction only and contact between (British) Asian and (white) British characters is limited. The blame for this is often put on the immigrants and their families. The selected texts focus on obstacles and conflicts in exchange processes without offering solutions to the conflicts. In this context, religion or religious fervour along with a lack of education are most often depicted as the main obstacle for reciprocal cultural exchange. The aesthetic means employed are analysed as well as their effects, e.g. whether form and content reinforce each other or produce contradictions. Finally, the thesis shows which novels deconstruct and contradict existing stereotypes and which ones are complicit in reproducing them. Primary texts: Monica Ali’s Brick Lane (2003), Nadeem Aslam’s Maps for Lost Lovers (2004), Gautam Malkani’s Londonstani (2006) and Maggie Gee’s The White Family (2002).