scholarly journals Animality and Entanglement: The Gothicized “anthropological machine” in Bram Stoker’s short fiction

Author(s):  
Vincent Pacheco ◽  

This paper closely reads what constitutes the “non-human” vis-à-vis animality in Bram Stoker’s often overlooked short stories, namely The Squaw and The Burial of the Rats. The Squaw is a tale about an American who murders a kitten in cold blood, and in turn, the mother grotesquely avenges her kitten. The anxiety of interspecies relationship is evident in this text, and I argue that this anxiety allows what Giorgio Agamben calls the “anthropological machine” (a system which excludes animals from the zone of livable human life) to operate. The same can be said in The Burial of the Rats where the inability to articulate a boundary between animality and humanity becomes the same thing that pervasively haunts the characters in the story. Here, the vermin and the humans become “relationally entangled” as Donna Haraway puts it and I argue that the notion of entanglement here is precisely what makes the “anthropological machine” gothic in the stories. I also suggest that what makes the representations of animals horrific is the possibility that the caesura between man and animal is non-existent.

2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 135-148 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elke D’hoker

In a context of manmade global warming, ecological destruction and species extinction, posthumanist scholars have advocated moving beyond the anthropocentrism that determines western thinking in favour of an embedded and embodied interspecies relationality. If these remain fairly abstract notions in the work of critics such as Donna Haraway and Rosi Braidotti, contemporary short fiction provides many interesting examples of these alternative forms of being and becoming. The short story seems especially suited to exploring this decentring of the human subject, given its own status as a liminal, ‘minor’ or ‘humble’ genre and its long tradition of exploring human–animal relations in animal stories. This article demonstrates how contemporary short stories by Lauren Groff, Claire-Louise Bennett, Sarah Hall, Sara Baume and Louise Ehrdrich stage a profoundly biocentric perspective by moving beyond animal stories’ traditional modes of the fabular and the figural towards a realistic depiction of our creaturely existence in experiences that may be at once empowering and terrifying.


2004 ◽  
Vol 37 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 39-48
Author(s):  
Nataša Intihar Klančar

The article focuses on Slovene reactions to Truman Capote's writing. It takes into consideration both his early and his later work. The former (as e. g. Other Voices, Other Rooms and A Tree of Night and Other Stories) earned him recognition as a talented young author whose fame rested on stylistically accomplished short stories, while the latter (as e. g. In Cold Blood) praised him mainly as the father of the so-called "non-fiction" novel. It is somehow hard to believe that his openly acknowledged homosexuality still represents an intriguing enough theme for Slovene literary crities to comment on,and thus a very recent article on the subject is dealt with as well.


Jurnal KATA ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 89
Author(s):  
Nanny Sri Lestari

<p>Sebuah peristiwa, dalam kehidupan manusia, dapat menjadi inspirasi bagi penulisan sebuah cerita. Pengarang, sebagai bagian dari masyarakatnya, mengangkat relung-relung kehidupan manusia, ke dalam sebuah cerita. Namun harus dipahami, bahwa pengalaman pengarang dalam kehidupannya sehari-hari, juga mempengaruhi subjek yang ditulisnya. Saat ini tidak dapat dipungkiri lagi, bahwa teknologi komunikasi yang sangat canggih, telah mempengaruhi perkembangan karya sastra. Media penulisan karya sastra, tidak lagi melalui media cetak seperti kertas tetapi sudah melalui peralatan modern yang sesuai jamannya. Namun demikian ragam karya sastra prosa, seperti cerita pendek, justru mampu mengisi ruang media kommunikasi tersebut. Dua orang pengarang, yang menulis cerita pendek di media masa, berusaha mengangkat isu tentang lingkungan. Isu yang diangkat, lebih menekankan kepada masalah lingkungan alam dengan mengangkat isu tentang pohon sebagai bagian dari kehidupan manusia. Tujuan penelitian ini, untuk menelusuri struktur cerita pendek yang mengangkat isu lingkungan dalam jalinan ceritanya. Untuk memenuhi tujuan penelitian, langkah awal dari penelitian ini, adalah melakukan pendekatan struktur cerita, yang kemudian dikaitkan dengan pencarian makna cerita tersebut. Sering sekali di balik sebuah cerita ada pesan yang ingin disampaikan kepada masyarakat pembacanya. Bentuk pesan tersebut tersirat, dalam jalinan struktur cerita pendek tersebut. Pesan yang disampaikan, dalam kedua cerita pendek tersebut,  adalah pesan tentang lingkungan alam, yang  saat ini tidak pernah diperhatikan oleh masyarakat. Dengan alasan, kebutuhan ekonomi yang sangat dominan.</p><p><em>An event, in human life, can be an inspiration for writing a story. The author, as a part of his society, lifts the niches of human life, into a story. But it must be understood, that the author's experience in everyday life, also affects the subject he wrote.</em><em> </em><em>Today it is undeniable, that highly sophisticated communication technology, has influenced the development of literary works. Media writing literature, no longer through print media such as paper but have been through modern equipment that fit his era.</em><em> </em><em>However, the variety of prose literary works, such as short stories, is able to fill the media space communications. Two authors, who write short stories in the mass media, try to raise issues about the environment. Issues raised, more emphasis on the issue of the natural environment by raising the issue, about the tree as part of human life. The purpose of this research, is to trace the structure of short stories, which raised environmental issues in the composition of the story. To fulfill the purpose of research, the first step of this research, is to approach the structure of the story, which is then linked with the search for the meaning of the story. Very often, behind a story, there is a message to be conveyed to the readers. The form of the message is implied, in the composition of the short story structure. The message conveyed, in both short stories, is a message about the natural environment, which today is never noticed by society. The message conveyed, in both short stories, is a message about the natural environment, which today is never noticed by society.</em></p>


English Today ◽  
2019 ◽  
pp. 1-7
Author(s):  
Gang Sui

When delivering a speech at a meeting of the Writers’ Congress, Ernest Hemingway said as a fiction writer: A writer's problem does not change. He himself changes, but his problem remains the same. It is always how to write truly and having found what is true, to project it in such a way that it becomes part of the experience of the person who reads it. (1937) Does this statement still ring true today? If it does, what approach should and can be taken for Chinese university students to write ‘truly’ during their fiction writing workshops in English when they know what they try to accomplish is indeed something fictional or self-evidently ‘untrue’? What characterises the main thematic and stylistic elements of Chinese students’ short stories written in English as creative outcomes?


The paper investigates Eudora Welty’s concept of animosity towards women in her fiction. Her novels and short stories portray rape, sexual exhibitionism, sexual threats and brutality as inhuman experiences that sarcastically result in a vicious conversion of indignity and humiliation to the female sufferer instead of the male perpetrators. Welty suggests that this context creates a sense of intolerance which acts as a destroyer of women’s identity and sense of self. In this paper, the researchers attempt to reveal the mechanisms that subvert women’s sense of identity in a world usually controlled by men. Welty’s vision, in this sense, is that the social consciousness of the woman does not only evolve from the personal consciousness, but also intricately interacts with it. Welty’s works that are central to this study include Delta Wedding, The Robber Bridegroom, and the short fiction, including The Whole World Knows and Sir Rabbit.


2019 ◽  
Vol 2 (8) ◽  
pp. 241-248
Author(s):  
Faiha Fakhari Mousa Alkayed

The paper presents a discussion of three selected short stories written by Leo Tolstoy namely: “God Sees the Truth but Wait, Three Questions, and What Men Live By”. Thus, the aim of this paper is to reveal the social consciousness as appeared in such literary kind because awareness plays an important role in people's lives and all our lives are built on the awareness of things. However, it has been noticed that this work of Leo Tolstoy mirrors awareness of traditional and modern values and have thematic varieties, deep insight into human realities and characters. The stories of Leo Tolstoy represent an authentic and real picture of human life which considered being a convincing story.


1999 ◽  
Vol 93 (1) ◽  
pp. 116
Author(s):  
Ellen O'Gorman ◽  
Shadi Bartsch
Keyword(s):  

2018 ◽  
Vol 10 (9) ◽  
pp. 2218-2239 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fidel Botero-Castro ◽  
Marie-Ka Tilak ◽  
Fabienne Justy ◽  
François Catzeflis ◽  
Frédéric Delsuc ◽  
...  

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