scholarly journals Just like Henry James (Except with Cannibalism): The International Weird in H. P. Lovecraft's ‘The Rats in the Walls’

2021 ◽  
Vol 23 (1) ◽  
pp. 96-110
Author(s):  
Dennis Wilson Wise
Keyword(s):  
Short Story ◽  
Henry James ◽  
Nation States ◽  
Weird Fiction

The early short story ‘The Rats in the Walls’ (1924) is recognized as the best of H. P. Lovecraft's fiction prior to ‘The Call of Cthulhu’, but this story is also non-cosmic and therefore (for some) not truly ‘Lovecraftian’. In conjunction with dense prose and seemingly throwaway references, this view has made ‘Rats’ arguably the most inadequately read of Lovecraft's major works. This article proposes that we read ‘Rats’, Lovecraft's first tale within an unofficial ‘witch cult’ trilogy, as a story of the path not taken in modern weird fiction. Using Henry James's ‘The Jolly Corner’ (1908) as a companion piece, I argue that the international weird forms a major component of Lovecraft's text. Far from portraying horrors merely personal in scope, Lovecraft uses the Delapore family and their geographical dislocations between two distinct nation-states, America and England, to signal what he sees as the historical rise and fall – or evolution and de-evolution – of culture itself.

Towards a Systematic Description of Narrative ‘Point of View’: An Examination of Chatman's theory with an Analysis of ‘The Blind Man’ by D.H. Lawrence

1994 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 125-138 ◽  
Author(s):  
Toru Sasaki
Keyword(s):  
Detailed Analysis ◽  
Short Story ◽  
Henry James ◽  
Critical Discussion ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Systematic Description ◽  
Excellent Model

‘Point of view’ in fiction has been a much debated concept ever since the time of Henry James, but unfortunately this term has never been defined with the required precision. As a result, there has always been some confusion in the critical discussion of this subject. Seymour Chatman (1990), however, has recently addressed himself to the difficult task of clarifying the issue.2 His theory, in my view, offers an excellent model for a systematic description of narrative ‘point of view’. By way of demonstration, I will test the effectiveness of this model through a detailed analysis of the narration of D.H. Lawrence's short story ‘The blind man’.

The Abasement of Mrs. Warren Hope

PMLA ◽  
1963 ◽  
Vol 78 (1) ◽  
pp. 98-102
Author(s):  
Robert L. Gale
Keyword(s):  
Short Story ◽  
Henry James ◽  
Modern Fiction ◽  
The Liar

When in 1934 Edmund Wilson published his brilliant and provocative essay “The Ambiguity of Henry James,” in which he questions the reliability of James's center of revelation in “The Turn of the Screw,” he provided scholars an intriguing method for approaching much modern fiction. It seems to me that, for example, Roy P. Basler's reading of Poe's “Ligeia” as the unbalanced narrator's unwitting admission that he has murdered his second wife through inability to forget his first, and Simon O. Lesser's interpretation of Hawthorne's “My Kinsman, Major Molineux” as a revelation of unconscious reluctance to seek a substitute father both owe much to Mr. Wilson. And so do a host of recent Jamesian critics: for two examples among at least a dozen, Marius Bewley, who regards Oliver Lyon, the central intelligence of “The Liar,” as more culpable than the prevaricating colonel; and William Bysshe Stein, who, far from sympathizing with Pemberton in “The Pupil,” brands him a prude. The temptation to doubt the accuracy of the narrator or the central intelligence of a short story by Henry James is beguiling, fatally so sometimes; but succumbing to the temptress can give pleasure to the reader often and an enriched meaning to many a story.

The Short Story, the New Weird, and the Literary Market

2020 ◽  
Vol 69 (2) ◽  
pp. 109-128
Author(s):  
Raphael Zähringer
Keyword(s):  
Popular Culture ◽  
Short Story ◽  
Academic Work ◽  
Literary Form ◽  
The State ◽  
First Century ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Main Argument ◽  
Weird Fiction ◽  
Literary Market

Abstract The short story is commonly – and very productively – treated in the spirit of critical terms such as marginality and liminality. Quite surprisingly, though, New Weird Fiction, which postulates similar interests in, e.g., formal and aesthetic innovation as well as literary ambition, is primarily associated with the novel. The underlying lack of interest in the New Weird Short Story in both popular culture and academic work is scrutinised in this article. In a first step, it will survey the short story as a liminal form, both formally and aesthetically, and contextualize it by drawing upon the state of the literary market in the twenty-first century. The contribution’s main argument is that the short story has always either been considered to be too ‘popular’ or too ‘literary’ in order to contest the novel as the prevalent literary form. Step two will perform a similar move regarding Weird Fiction, thus highlighting the parallels between the short and the Weird, and the need for more academic attention dedicated to the New Weird short story.

scholarly journals Contours of Resistance: The Postcolonial Female Subject and the Diaspora in the Punjabi Short Story

2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 49-61
Author(s):  
Yubee Gill
Keyword(s):  
Short Story ◽  
Mexican American ◽  
Female Subject ◽  
Essential Feature ◽  
Dominant Culture ◽  
Native Languages ◽  
Diaspora Literature ◽  
Nation States ◽  
Original Group ◽  
Experiences Of Women

Diaspora literature and theory offer significant critiques of traditional ideas regarding nation-states, identities and dominant cultures. While it is true that the literature of the diaspora has been receiving increasing attention as of late, it is worth noting that works written in the diasporans’ native languages are generally not included in wider discussions about the more complex issues related to the diaspora. As an initial corrective for this deficiency, this article explores selected stories in Punjabi, paying special attention to issues relevant to the lives and experiences of women in diaspora. Diasporic conditions, as most of these stories seem to assert, can be painful for women, but even while negotiating within a diverse system of values, many of them eventually discover possibilities for independence and growth. Such personal improvements are attainable due to their newfound economic liberation, but hard-won economic independence comes with a price. The inclusivity implied by identitary hyphens (i.e. Chinese-American; Mexican-American, etc.), so celebrated in diaspora writings in English, are almost as a rule missing in the fictional accounts studied here. In these accounts, an essential feature of diasporic subjectivity is the double sense of “Otherness” strongly felt by people who, having extricated themselves from the cultural demands of their original group, are not unchallenged members of the dominant culture.

scholarly journals The Long and the Short of It: Approaching the (Un-)Representable in China Miéville’s “The Tain” (2002) and “The Condition of New Death” (2014)

2020 ◽  
Vol 69 (2) ◽  
pp. 129-142
Author(s):  
Christoph Reinfandt
Keyword(s):  
Short Story ◽  
Network Theory ◽  
Actor Network Theory ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Actor Network ◽  
Theoretical Approaches ◽  
Weird Fiction ◽  
New Materialisms ◽  
Genre Conventions ◽  
Conceptual Shift

Abstract How can the genre of the short story accommodate the ‘inflationary tendency’ of weird fiction (Carl Freedman)? This article will trace how a very long and a very short story by China Miéville establish their respective weird elements in order to function as ‘placeholders for the unrepresentable’ (China Miéville). As will be shown, “The Tain” frames the weird in an elaborate and intricate narrative construction which is clearly literary while “The Condition of New Death” is basically expository and partly relies on the non-literary genre conventions of the academic report and the manifesto. In both instances, however, there is a reflexive turn which insists on the text itself not only in its representational but also in its performative (telling stories, writing) and material (print, paper, screen) dimensions as a constitutive part of what makes reality real for human beings. The article concludes with a brief placing of the New Weird short story in the wider field of (post-)modern(ist) literature and fiction and in the conceptual shift from deconstruction to more recent theoretical approaches like Actor-Network-Theory and the New Materialisms.

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