Volume 13, 2021 Number 1: General Issue under Continuous Mode Number 2: Special Articles on Health Humanities and General Articles Volume 12, 2020 Number 1: General Issue under Continuous Mode Number 2: General Issue under Continuous Mode Number 3: Special Collection on “India and Travel Narratives”, guest-edited by Ms. Somdatta Mandal, PhD Number 4: General Issue under Continuous Mode Number 5: 1st RIOC Conference Issue Number 6: Special Articles on Health Humanities and General Articles Volume 11, 2019 Number 1: (Special Issue on Human Rights and Literature, guest-edited by Prof. Pramod K. Nayar) Number 2: General Issue Number 3: General Issue Volume 10, 2018 Number 1: (Special Issue on “Interrogating Cultural Translation: Literature and Fine Arts in Translation and Adaptation”, in collaboration with the Department of English, Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham) Number 2: (On Frankenstein 200, 1818-2018 and the General Areas) Number 3: (General Issue) All Issues>> Of Crows and Humans: The Affective Economy of Mourning and Grieving
This paper aims to examine the representation of animals in Max Porter’s Grief is the Thing with Feathers (2015), a multi-awarded novel about an academic’s struggles on coping with the grief of losing his wife. Previous scholarship on Grief is the Thing with Feathers focuses on an anthropocentric approach to grief and melancholia. However, I argue these emotions can be approached through an examination of the Crow, a fantastical talking bird who makes itself known during the funeral, against the human protagonists of the novel. My approach focuses on how the Crow manages to facilitate what Sara Ahmed calls an “affective economy” which aids the human characters to process their emotions. I critically analyze in this paper how the novel blurs the boundary that separates the human and beasts through its representation of animal emotion. I speculate on how the moments of encounter between the crow and humans emphasize the acts of touching and smelling as a mode to cope with melancholia and grief. Lastly, I look at how its hybridization of prose and poetry performatively imitates affective and emotional responses to personal loss.