From a diachronic point of view, two linguistic contributions deal with grammaticalization and iconicity and with metaphorical aspects of compounding. The other two linguistic papers are related to the present. One offers a critique of perceptual dialectology and the other is concerned with recent developments in computer cartography. The contributions in the domains of literary and cultural studies demonstrate the wide extension of the field of enquiry and of current methods. Historically, they reach from the Old English period to the present day, and systematically, from new approaches in the interpretation of particular works through overviews over the regional validity of modes of literary aesthetics to recent innovations in literary theory and narratology.

The Editors: Herbert Grabes is Emeritus Professor of English at the University of Gießen (Germany). His main areas of research are sixteenth- and seventeenth-century English literature, modern American literature, and literary theory. Wolfgang Viereck is Emeritus Professor of English Linguistics and Medieval English Literature at the University of Bamberg (Germany). He has published widely in the following areas: the history of English, regional and social variation of English world-wide, and contact linguistics.