The Gift and the Return: Deconstructing Mary Shelley's Lodore

Derrida Today ◽  
2011 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 44-58
Author(s):  
Graham Allen
Keyword(s):  
Sexual Difference ◽  
Mary Shelley ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Related Concept ◽  
The Gift

This paper begins with Barbara Johnson's examination of the erasure of sexual difference within the Yale school, and in particular her comments upon the work of Mary Shelley. Taking up hints in her statements about the relation between Mary Shelley's work and deconstruction, I suggest a reading of Mary Shelley's penultimate novel, Lodore, in relation to Derrida's Given Time. Lodore, which traditionally appeared a rather conservative novel to Mary Shelley's critics, has a number of parallels in its plot to the logic of the gift as set out in Derrida's text. It also, however, allows us to begin to think through the related concept of the return, so crucial to both of the Shelley's thinking and writing. The essay analyses Lodore in relation to Derrida's account of the impossibility of the gift, in order, eventually, to move towards some comments about sexual difference, the novel, the gift and the return.

METAPHORIC REPRESENTATION OF THE CONCEPT “CREATIVE PROCESS” IN V. NABOKOV’S NOVEL “THE GIFT”

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yuliya Golovnyova ◽  
Albina Novikova
Keyword(s):  
Creative Process ◽  
Theoretical Basis ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Artistic Creation ◽  
The Gift

Descriptions of the process of artistic creation take an outstanding place in V. Nabokov’s works and abound both in conventional and creative metaphors. In this article we analyze metaphoric representation of the concept “creative process” in V. Nabokov’s novel “The Gift”. The theoretical basis of research is the descriptor theory of metaphor by A.N. Baranov. The article reveals the most frequent metaphorical models of creative process in the novel and the areas of its metaphoric conceptualization.

Mary Shelley and the Conception of the Monstrous Vegan

2021 ◽  
pp. 31-60
Author(s):  
Emelia Quinn
Keyword(s):  
Golden Age ◽  
Visual Recognition ◽  
Mary Shelley ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Close Attention ◽  
Literary Authorship

Chapter 1 argues that Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818) marks the origins of the ‘monstrous vegan’ trope. The chapter establishes the vegetarian contexts influencing Shelley’s novel before outlining the principal defining traits of the monstrous vegan. First, the monster’s refusal to eat meat is evidenced and explored in relation to Romantic vegetarianism. Second, his hybrid physiognomy, composed of remnants from the slaughterhouse and charnel house, allows for close attention to acts of visual recognition throughout the novel. Third, the creature’s birth outside of the confines of heterosexual reproduction is explored in relation to his challenge to reproductive futurities, with vegetarianism seen to offer a circular return to a Golden Age of humankind. Finally, the creature’s relation to literary authorship establishes that monstrous vegans bring to the fore the difficulty of inscribing ethical identities onto bodies.

Frankenstein, Gender, and Mother Nature

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anne K. Mellor
Keyword(s):  
Division Of Labor ◽  
19Th Century ◽  
Mary Shelley ◽  
Modern Science ◽  
Natural Order ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Mother Nature ◽  
Sexual Division ◽  
Sexual Division Of Labor

Why did Mary Shelley create THE myth of modern science on June 16, 1816? This essay explores the autobiographical and scientific origins of Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus, focusing on the ways in which the sexual division of labor in 19th Century Britain shaped the novel. Victor Frankenstein’s project – to have a baby without a woman (and thus eliminate the biological necessity for females) – points to the myriad ways in which the women in the novel, from Elizabeth Lavenza, Caroline Beaufort, and Justine Moritz to the female creature, are de-valued or destroyed. But in Mary’s feminist novel, Mother Nature fights back, killing Victor and transforming his creature into a monster. Shelley’s novel implicitly argues that human beings must co-operate with rather than dominate the natural order of reproduction.

Traumatic Responsibility

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Josephine Johnston
Keyword(s):  
Emotional State ◽  
Mary Shelley ◽  
The Self ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Scientific Curiosity

A rich theme running through Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is responsibility. The novel explores the responsibility that Victor Frankenstein has for the destruction caused by his scientific curiosity, as well as the responsibility that he owes to his creation. Victor Frankenstein’s creature has emotions, desires and dreams that cannot be satisfied by humans. So the creature comes to Victor, first pleading—and then demanding—that he create a female companion with whom he can experience peace and love. While Victor grapples intellectually and practically with the implications of being responsible both for and to the creature, he also experiences responsibility as a devastating physical and emotional state. In this way, Mary Shelley raises a third kind of responsibility—to the self.

scholarly journals The Russian China in the Last D. A. Prigov’s Novel

2020 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 146-165
Author(s):  
E. V. Kapinos
Keyword(s):  
Far East ◽  
Main Task ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Main Character ◽  
The Far East ◽  
The People ◽  
The Gift ◽  
Pass Through ◽  
John Wilkins

The article relates to the last novel by D. A. Prigov “Katya the Chinese” (published in 2007), based on the memories of the writer’s wife, N. G. Burova from Harbin, who was born and grew up in the Russian China and left it in 1950s. The main task of the article is to show what stylistic techniques, plots, motives, subtexts allow to recreate the atmosphere of the Russian China and the generalized image of the East. The narration synthesizes the memories of the people of Harbin and recognizable storylines of D. A. Prigov’s work (such, for example, as a fantastic bestiary). In the subtext of the novel the following works are found: feuilleton by I. Ilf and E. Petrov “Nikudykin the Commtied”, pro- totyped by the “futurist of life” V. Goltsshmidt, who traveled in 1918–1920s with lectures on Siberia and the Far East, V. Nabokov’s novel “The Gift” with his father’s Asian journey (the plot about his father in “The Gift” influenced the plot about the girl’s father in “Katya the Chinese”), the “Chinese” stories by J. L. Borges “The Garden of Forking Paths” and “The Analytical language of John Wilkins”, etc. In Prigov’s narrative, a particular role is played by an autobiographical excerpt about the Tashkent artist A. N. Volkov and an insertion novel about the “Monastery of Flying Cats”, in- tentionally inaccurately stylized by Prigov as a Chinese legend. Many motifs and subtexts of the novel pass through the prism of the child’s consciousness (the “girl’s”, who is the main character of the novel), which gives the image of the Russian East, along with documentary, fantastic features.

scholarly journals Abjection and Sexually Specific Violence in Doris Lessing’s The Cleft

Text Matters ◽  
2014 ◽  
pp. 161-172
Author(s):  
Dorota Filipczak
Keyword(s):  
Collective Identity ◽  
Intellectual Development ◽  
Sexual Difference ◽  
Linear Time ◽  
Julia Kristeva ◽  
Doris Lessing ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Ancient Manuscripts ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Cost

The article applies selected concepts from the writings of Julia Kristeva to the analysis of a novel by Doris Lessing entitled The Cleft. Published in 2007, The Cleft depicts the origin of sexual difference in the human species. Its emergence is fraught with anxiety and sexually specific violence, and invites comparison with the primal separation from the mother and the emancipation of the subject in process at the cost of relegating the maternal to the abject in the writings of Julia Kristeva. Lessing creates an ahistorical community of females (Clefts) from which the male community (Squirts) eventually evolves. The growing awareness of sexual difference dovetails with the emotional and intellectual development, as the nascent human subject gradually enters linear time viewed from perspective by the narrator of the novel, a Roman senator who hoards ancient manuscripts with the story of Clefts and Squirts. The article juxtaposes the ideas of Lessing and Kristeva, who have both cut themselves off from feminism, and have both been inspired by psychoanalysis. Primarily, Lessing’s fictional imaginary can be adequately interpreted in light of Kristeva’s concept of abjection as an element that disturbs the system. My interpretation of abjection is indebted to Pamela Sue Anderson’s reading of Kristeva, notably her contention that violence as a response to sexual difference lies at the heart of collective identity. Finally, the imaginary used by Lessing and Kristeva is shown to have stemmed from the colonial imaginary like the concepts of Freud and Jung.

Bellow's “Indian Givers”: Humboldt's Gift

1981 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 231-238
Author(s):  
Judie Newman
Keyword(s):  
American Indians ◽  
Gift Exchange ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Sociological Analysis ◽  
Gift Giving ◽  
Loss Of Face ◽  
North West ◽  
The North ◽  
Central Activity ◽  
The Gift

Emerson's essay on “Gifts” perceptively highlights the ambivalence felt in gift-giving or receiving, an ambivalence which lies at the heart of Saul Bellow's most recent novel, Humboldt's Gift. The importance of literal gift-giving has been insufficiently recognised as a factor which governs the action of the novel, our understanding of which is enhanced by an examination and application of the sociological analysis of gift-exchange.Gift-exchange has been most extensively studied in relation to the North-West Coast American Indians, notably the Kwakiutl, in whose culture the “potlatch” is a central activity. The term “potlatch” is applied to a variety of gift-giving ceremonies, involving both the giving away of quantities of possessions and their wilful destruction. The whole of a man's worldly goods may be dispersed or destroyed in this fashion, in an attempt to maintain status. To eclipse a rival chief, for example, a man may destroy all his own accumulated wealth. While in theory the “gift” is spontaneous and disinterested, in practice it is based on political or economic self-interest.The gift of property implies an obligation in the recipient which, if not fulfilled, results in his loss of face.

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