Born on 3rd january 1939, Rüdiger Ahrens read English, French, Philosophy and Pedagogy at the Universities of Göttingen, Erlangen, and Dijon. After a period as assistant professor at the University of Hannover, he taught as a full professor of English at the University of Trier in the 1970s. In 1980, he went to the University of Würzburg where he still teaches today and holds a chair of English Cultural Studies. He also held various visiting professorships at the Universities of Cambridge (UK), Tokyo, Nanchang, and Beijing. Rüdiger Ahrens has always been interested in the cultural functions of literature, which is documented in the impressive multiplicity of works he wrote and edited. His critical writings - from his dissertation on the moralistic function of the essays of Francis Bacon to his studies of Shakespeare or his more recent publications on contemporary British drama or on the New English Literatures - are infused with a keen spirit of inquiry that probes not only the forms of literary texts, but also their place within the cultural systems that produced them. This is also why Rüdiger Ahrens has reflected extensively on questions of literary theory as well as on the functions of teaching literature in intercultural classrooms. The articles collected in this Festschrift can only cover part of the wide field of studies represented by the work of Rüdiger Ahrens, but they manage to enter into a fruitful dialogue with many of the central concerns of this distinguished scholar and academic teacher, and they demonstrate the relevance of his achievement to the state of English studies today.