Abstract In 1897, congratulating Bram Stoker on the release of Dracula, the writer M. E. Braddon tries to establish precedence for herself by classifying the novel not, as we might expect, as a story of vampirism, but as one of “transfusion”. Taking this designation as its cue, this article recovers examples of what I term “transfusive rejuvenescence fiction”, in which a prolongation of life or restoration of youth is achieved via corporeal transferal. It contextualizes this sub-genre by charting how a revival of interest in blood transfusion’s rejuvenatory promise occurred alongside shifts in the attitudes to age and aging – to old age especially. Contrary to medical writers, who optimistically envisaged transfusion as an integral part of a “sentimental economy” – in which blood is donated out of “fellow-feeling” – transfusive rejuvenescence fiction raises the prospect of bloodborne youthfulness becoming commodified and circulating according to the tenets of the capitalist marketplace. In these fictions, transfusion serves as an evocative and versatile figure for expressing anxieties around the increasingly urgent question of provision for old age and the issues of intergenerational equity implied therein. To prove the argument, this article performs a comparative reading of Braddon’s “Good Lady Ducayne” and H. G. Wells’s “The Story of the Late Mr. Elvesham”, both of 1896. The comparable but distinctive approaches taken by these two short stories means that examining them in tandem provides us with a fuller picture of the contributions that transfusive rejuvenescence fiction made to fin-de-siècle discourses of age and aging.
{"title":"“Old things made new”: Transfusive rejuvenescence in M. E. Braddon’s “Good Lady Ducayne” and H. G. Wells’s “The Story of the Late Mr. Elvesham”","authors":"J. Green","doi":"10.1515/fns-2023-2004","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/fns-2023-2004","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract In 1897, congratulating Bram Stoker on the release of Dracula, the writer M. E. Braddon tries to establish precedence for herself by classifying the novel not, as we might expect, as a story of vampirism, but as one of “transfusion”. Taking this designation as its cue, this article recovers examples of what I term “transfusive rejuvenescence fiction”, in which a prolongation of life or restoration of youth is achieved via corporeal transferal. It contextualizes this sub-genre by charting how a revival of interest in blood transfusion’s rejuvenatory promise occurred alongside shifts in the attitudes to age and aging – to old age especially. Contrary to medical writers, who optimistically envisaged transfusion as an integral part of a “sentimental economy” – in which blood is donated out of “fellow-feeling” – transfusive rejuvenescence fiction raises the prospect of bloodborne youthfulness becoming commodified and circulating according to the tenets of the capitalist marketplace. In these fictions, transfusion serves as an evocative and versatile figure for expressing anxieties around the increasingly urgent question of provision for old age and the issues of intergenerational equity implied therein. To prove the argument, this article performs a comparative reading of Braddon’s “Good Lady Ducayne” and H. G. Wells’s “The Story of the Late Mr. Elvesham”, both of 1896. The comparable but distinctive approaches taken by these two short stories means that examining them in tandem provides us with a fuller picture of the contributions that transfusive rejuvenescence fiction made to fin-de-siècle discourses of age and aging.","PeriodicalId":29849,"journal":{"name":"Frontiers of Narrative Studies","volume":"12 1","pages":"35 - 53"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2023-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"74371338","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract Ursula Le Guin’s novels included in Annals of the Western Shore, published between the years 2004 and 2007, have as protagonists three young characters who, among uprising, rebellion and unfair states, have to find their place in Le Guin’s the Western Shore world. The three protagonists share a gift – the gift of remembering and telling stories – which is transmitted to two of them through an older man from the community where they live. Once the main characters come together at the end of the third novel of the saga, they realise that the only way in which a free and prosperous state can be achieved is through knowledge and the sharing of the stories of both ancestors and new writers. The series, thus, problematizes the concept of wisdom associated with a binary stereotypical image of old age as either attached to loss and decrepitude or to wisdom, particularly in the fantastic mode. In this article, and following Le Guin’s belief in the intrinsic interconnectivity of all things, “organic and inorganic, material and spiritual, object and force – [that] shape and are shaped by each other” (Senior 1996: 104), we aim to explore the value of intergenerational relationships in building a fairer and more prosperous society in Le Guin’s series Annals of the Western Shore. Whereas the young characters and protagonists in each of the three novels need the guidance of older members of their communities to come to terms with their “gifts”, the coming of age of these young protagonists will also question the unfair and destructive beliefs behind the social organisation of the regimes in which they grew up and became adults.
{"title":"The wisdom of intergenerational relationships in Ursula Le Guin’s series Annals of the Western Shore (Gifts, Voices and Powers)","authors":"Maricel Oró-Piqueras, Yuliia Benderska","doi":"10.1515/fns-2023-2007","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/fns-2023-2007","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Ursula Le Guin’s novels included in Annals of the Western Shore, published between the years 2004 and 2007, have as protagonists three young characters who, among uprising, rebellion and unfair states, have to find their place in Le Guin’s the Western Shore world. The three protagonists share a gift – the gift of remembering and telling stories – which is transmitted to two of them through an older man from the community where they live. Once the main characters come together at the end of the third novel of the saga, they realise that the only way in which a free and prosperous state can be achieved is through knowledge and the sharing of the stories of both ancestors and new writers. The series, thus, problematizes the concept of wisdom associated with a binary stereotypical image of old age as either attached to loss and decrepitude or to wisdom, particularly in the fantastic mode. In this article, and following Le Guin’s belief in the intrinsic interconnectivity of all things, “organic and inorganic, material and spiritual, object and force – [that] shape and are shaped by each other” (Senior 1996: 104), we aim to explore the value of intergenerational relationships in building a fairer and more prosperous society in Le Guin’s series Annals of the Western Shore. Whereas the young characters and protagonists in each of the three novels need the guidance of older members of their communities to come to terms with their “gifts”, the coming of age of these young protagonists will also question the unfair and destructive beliefs behind the social organisation of the regimes in which they grew up and became adults.","PeriodicalId":29849,"journal":{"name":"Frontiers of Narrative Studies","volume":"2012 1","pages":"87 - 101"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2023-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"82614048","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract Reading Kazuo Ishiguro’s Klara and the Sun (2021) in this article, we bring the perspectives of aging and posthumanist studies together to explore how the novel helps us to rethink our being and relationality in time beyond the boundaries of the human. In particular, we are interested in the novel’s critique of the anthropocentric privileging of youth and progress in the ways in which we imagine the future. Central to this form of imagination are generational continuity and the symbolism of the child: a new generation as a promise of the future, or rather, a better human future. Nevertheless, this novel does not simply employ the trope of generational futurity; instead, it interrogates and draws attention to the exclusionary way this type of thinking functions. Through its blurring of human and AI “child”, ultimately, Klara and the Sun suggests the dangers and the limits of a generational imagination that seeks to reproduce the same, progressive narrative of the future through the image of the child not “growing up and growing old” (Woodward 2020: 55; italics in original). Our analysis then suggests how fictional speculative modes might both engage with and yet also force us to reflect critically upon that form of future-orientated thinking.
{"title":"Futurity, the life course and aging in Kazuo Ishiguro’s Klara and the Sun","authors":"K. Sako, Sarah Falcus","doi":"10.1515/fns-2023-2009","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/fns-2023-2009","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Reading Kazuo Ishiguro’s Klara and the Sun (2021) in this article, we bring the perspectives of aging and posthumanist studies together to explore how the novel helps us to rethink our being and relationality in time beyond the boundaries of the human. In particular, we are interested in the novel’s critique of the anthropocentric privileging of youth and progress in the ways in which we imagine the future. Central to this form of imagination are generational continuity and the symbolism of the child: a new generation as a promise of the future, or rather, a better human future. Nevertheless, this novel does not simply employ the trope of generational futurity; instead, it interrogates and draws attention to the exclusionary way this type of thinking functions. Through its blurring of human and AI “child”, ultimately, Klara and the Sun suggests the dangers and the limits of a generational imagination that seeks to reproduce the same, progressive narrative of the future through the image of the child not “growing up and growing old” (Woodward 2020: 55; italics in original). Our analysis then suggests how fictional speculative modes might both engage with and yet also force us to reflect critically upon that form of future-orientated thinking.","PeriodicalId":29849,"journal":{"name":"Frontiers of Narrative Studies","volume":"76 1","pages":"121 - 136"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2023-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"88971599","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract This article draws on rhetorical narrative theory and makes a case for Stephen Crane’s employment of the resource voice to communicate the naturalistic theme of “The Monster”. It argues that by modulating voices on different communicative tracks, the author invites us to recognize two pairs of conflicting forces: one of free will and external forces that shows in the causes of Henry’s and Trescott’s heroic acts, and the other of individual agency and collective identity that characterizes the narrative’s engagement with Whilomville. It is my view that the author invites readers to share his naturalistic outlook and refrain from making conclusive ethical judgments on the characters and the community. For readers, attending to the synthesis of tone, style, and values in utterances helps with inferring the author’s rhetorical purposes. To this end, the article also considers Crane’s biographical information and newspaper sketches, calling for the inclusion of contextual and intertextual matters in rhetorical criticism.
{"title":"Unresolved conflicts and suspended ethics: Reading “The Monster” from the perspective of voice","authors":"Meng Kang","doi":"10.1515/fns-2023-2011","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/fns-2023-2011","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This article draws on rhetorical narrative theory and makes a case for Stephen Crane’s employment of the resource voice to communicate the naturalistic theme of “The Monster”. It argues that by modulating voices on different communicative tracks, the author invites us to recognize two pairs of conflicting forces: one of free will and external forces that shows in the causes of Henry’s and Trescott’s heroic acts, and the other of individual agency and collective identity that characterizes the narrative’s engagement with Whilomville. It is my view that the author invites readers to share his naturalistic outlook and refrain from making conclusive ethical judgments on the characters and the community. For readers, attending to the synthesis of tone, style, and values in utterances helps with inferring the author’s rhetorical purposes. To this end, the article also considers Crane’s biographical information and newspaper sketches, calling for the inclusion of contextual and intertextual matters in rhetorical criticism.","PeriodicalId":29849,"journal":{"name":"Frontiers of Narrative Studies","volume":"33 1","pages":"158 - 174"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2023-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"75005210","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract Little Red and Other Stories is a collection of short stories that taps into many different dimensions of older women’s existence, exploring characters who are often bereft or in search of a more meaningful expression of their identity. Divided by physical and non-physical frontiers, gerontological challenges persist as much as the desire to live in spite of internal and external changes. The stories are shaped by mortality and by the subjective and imaginary discourses of culture, with the issues of autonomy, agency, intimacy and well-being remaining at their core. Little Red and Other Stories provides us with a multidirectional perspective on the aging process. It offers stories that see characters move towards a greater experience of agency and relational freedom. The internal interrogations and external interpellations present in the narratives are reinforced by the author’s use of metatextuality, bearing in mind her expertise in folk literature and mythology. She deliberately places her characters in unusual circumstances in order to convince her reader that if crossing of the real/fantastic worlds is possible, it is also possible to cross, or challenge, age definitions. If transgressions are possible on the page, we, too, have the capacity to create our own life-narratives and be agentic in our older age, a time conventionally seen as stagnant, limited and dominated by decline. Indeed, older people, mostly women in Ní Dhuibhne, have an extraordinary capacity to translate their experience into wisdom and possess the necessary stamina to rewrite their stories.
{"title":"Éilís Ní Dhuibhne’s Little Red and Other Stories and gerotranscendence on the page","authors":"Zuzanna Zarebska","doi":"10.1515/fns-2023-2008","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/fns-2023-2008","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Little Red and Other Stories is a collection of short stories that taps into many different dimensions of older women’s existence, exploring characters who are often bereft or in search of a more meaningful expression of their identity. Divided by physical and non-physical frontiers, gerontological challenges persist as much as the desire to live in spite of internal and external changes. The stories are shaped by mortality and by the subjective and imaginary discourses of culture, with the issues of autonomy, agency, intimacy and well-being remaining at their core. Little Red and Other Stories provides us with a multidirectional perspective on the aging process. It offers stories that see characters move towards a greater experience of agency and relational freedom. The internal interrogations and external interpellations present in the narratives are reinforced by the author’s use of metatextuality, bearing in mind her expertise in folk literature and mythology. She deliberately places her characters in unusual circumstances in order to convince her reader that if crossing of the real/fantastic worlds is possible, it is also possible to cross, or challenge, age definitions. If transgressions are possible on the page, we, too, have the capacity to create our own life-narratives and be agentic in our older age, a time conventionally seen as stagnant, limited and dominated by decline. Indeed, older people, mostly women in Ní Dhuibhne, have an extraordinary capacity to translate their experience into wisdom and possess the necessary stamina to rewrite their stories.","PeriodicalId":29849,"journal":{"name":"Frontiers of Narrative Studies","volume":"51 1","pages":"102 - 120"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2023-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"82252573","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract The poetry book Transformations by Anne Sexton consists of seventeen poems based on the versions of fairytales by the Brothers Grimm. Told by Sexton, the tales become sharp comments on American culture, changing characters and action to focus on gender, power systems and medical histories. Analyzing the poems “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs”, “Rapunzel”, and “Rumpelstiltskin”, this article focusses on Sexton’s revelation of the aging and ageism inherent in both the fairytales and contemporary American culture. I am interested in a reading of the poems beyond the confessional approach so common in analyses of Sexton’s poetry, focusing instead on how the characters struggle with beauty expectations, age and gender roles as well as loneliness. Therefore, I have discussed the chosen poems with different communities beyond the academic context with an interest in other approaches and experiences applied in the readings. The voices are woven into the article, adding to the analysis and offering a comment on contemporary reading practices.
{"title":"“Inside many of us / is a small old man” – age/ing in Anne Sexton’s Transformations: A community discussion","authors":"Andrea Zittlau","doi":"10.1515/fns-2023-2005","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/fns-2023-2005","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract The poetry book Transformations by Anne Sexton consists of seventeen poems based on the versions of fairytales by the Brothers Grimm. Told by Sexton, the tales become sharp comments on American culture, changing characters and action to focus on gender, power systems and medical histories. Analyzing the poems “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs”, “Rapunzel”, and “Rumpelstiltskin”, this article focusses on Sexton’s revelation of the aging and ageism inherent in both the fairytales and contemporary American culture. I am interested in a reading of the poems beyond the confessional approach so common in analyses of Sexton’s poetry, focusing instead on how the characters struggle with beauty expectations, age and gender roles as well as loneliness. Therefore, I have discussed the chosen poems with different communities beyond the academic context with an interest in other approaches and experiences applied in the readings. The voices are woven into the article, adding to the analysis and offering a comment on contemporary reading practices.","PeriodicalId":29849,"journal":{"name":"Frontiers of Narrative Studies","volume":"23 1","pages":"54 - 68"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2023-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"81428154","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Introduction: Narratives of ageing in the fantastic mode","authors":"H. Hartung, Sarah Falcus","doi":"10.1515/fns-2023-2002","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/fns-2023-2002","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":29849,"journal":{"name":"Frontiers of Narrative Studies","volume":"117 1","pages":"14 - 19"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2023-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"80461787","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract In addition to transmedial techniques such as metalepses, allegories, or obtrusive narrators, contemporary videogames also use medium-specific forms, including game rules, mechanics, or interfaces, to create metareference. Similarly, metareferential games seem not only concerned with questions of their fictionality but show particular interest in their own technological infrastructure and embeddedness in digital culture. In this article, I propose a systematic approach to analysing metareference in videogames, distinguishing between the gameworld and the game system as the two main layers of communication from which metareference emerges. In a case study of the indie metagame The Magic Circle (Question 2015), I show that the game’s distinctive metareferential style is the result of interactions between what I call diegetic and ludic forms of metareference, and which are produced at the level of the gameworld and the game system, respectively.
{"title":"Rewriting rules, changing worlds: Diegetic and ludic forms of metareference in The Magic Circle","authors":"Theresa Krampe","doi":"10.1515/fns-2023-2010","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/fns-2023-2010","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract In addition to transmedial techniques such as metalepses, allegories, or obtrusive narrators, contemporary videogames also use medium-specific forms, including game rules, mechanics, or interfaces, to create metareference. Similarly, metareferential games seem not only concerned with questions of their fictionality but show particular interest in their own technological infrastructure and embeddedness in digital culture. In this article, I propose a systematic approach to analysing metareference in videogames, distinguishing between the gameworld and the game system as the two main layers of communication from which metareference emerges. In a case study of the indie metagame The Magic Circle (Question 2015), I show that the game’s distinctive metareferential style is the result of interactions between what I call diegetic and ludic forms of metareference, and which are produced at the level of the gameworld and the game system, respectively.","PeriodicalId":29849,"journal":{"name":"Frontiers of Narrative Studies","volume":"34 1","pages":"137 - 157"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2023-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"90242903","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract Seán Hand is Professor of French Studies at the University of Warwick and Deputy Pro-Vice-Chancellor (Europe) of the University of Warwick. His research mainly focuses on literature, ideas and related developments in France and other Western countries from the early twentieth century to the present day. In this wide-ranging interview, Hand points out that there is a competition of intellectual versions of the Anthropocene, such as Capitalocene, Plantationocene and Chthulucene. With regards to the situation of the Anthropocene, he argues that literary and critical studies should move beyond masterful exposition of a work and take up the task of calling attention to our actions, renewing our connection and commitment to the life-web we inhabit, and engaging critically with technologization discussions. Hand also discusses the relationships between the “post-human turn” and the “non-human turn” and suggests that while post-human is connected with a teleological notion of development into a “beyond”, non-human is more grounded in today’s, and yesterday’s, reality. As an analyst of Emmanuel Levinas’s philosophy, he here maintains that while Levinas’s insights on alterity could not be unproblematically applied in dealing with the “Anthropocene”, Levinasian ethics and Anthropocene concerns could produce transformative insights and effects. Lastly, Hand gives inspiring suggestions on the career development of young scholars and emphasizes the importance of doing multi-disciplinary, inter-disciplinary and international studies.
{"title":"Literary and critical encounters with the Anthropocene: An interview with Seán Hand","authors":"Li Zou, S. Hand","doi":"10.1515/fns-2023-2001","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/fns-2023-2001","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Seán Hand is Professor of French Studies at the University of Warwick and Deputy Pro-Vice-Chancellor (Europe) of the University of Warwick. His research mainly focuses on literature, ideas and related developments in France and other Western countries from the early twentieth century to the present day. In this wide-ranging interview, Hand points out that there is a competition of intellectual versions of the Anthropocene, such as Capitalocene, Plantationocene and Chthulucene. With regards to the situation of the Anthropocene, he argues that literary and critical studies should move beyond masterful exposition of a work and take up the task of calling attention to our actions, renewing our connection and commitment to the life-web we inhabit, and engaging critically with technologization discussions. Hand also discusses the relationships between the “post-human turn” and the “non-human turn” and suggests that while post-human is connected with a teleological notion of development into a “beyond”, non-human is more grounded in today’s, and yesterday’s, reality. As an analyst of Emmanuel Levinas’s philosophy, he here maintains that while Levinas’s insights on alterity could not be unproblematically applied in dealing with the “Anthropocene”, Levinasian ethics and Anthropocene concerns could produce transformative insights and effects. Lastly, Hand gives inspiring suggestions on the career development of young scholars and emphasizes the importance of doing multi-disciplinary, inter-disciplinary and international studies.","PeriodicalId":29849,"journal":{"name":"Frontiers of Narrative Studies","volume":"30 1","pages":"1 - 13"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2023-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"88552119","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract Although Susan Hill has become a prolific writer of ghost narratives in the last decades, it was at a particularly momentous stage of her life as a woman writer that she published The Woman in Black (1983), which is considered her first ghost novel. Evoking the Victorian past, The Woman in Black engages intertextually with Victorian novels within the Gothic genre. The character of the Woman in Black comprises features pertaining to different Victorian Gothic archetypes, such as the ghost, the vampire, and the double. Some of the traits pertaining to these literary archetypes echoed Victorian anxieties about aging that are recovered and reinterpreted in Hill’s novel. Furthermore, in analogy with a Gothic romance, the encounter between the narrator as a young man, Arthur Kipps, and a spectral aging woman, the Woman in Black, unleashes the hero’s process of coming of age, which he recollects in his old age as he is writing his narrative. Narratological features pertaining to the Gothic genre, like the use of a frame narrative that blends past and present, underscore the dynamics of aging, since processes of interrupted aging and premature aging disrupt the boundaries that conventionally distinguish life stages. This article approaches Hill’s The Woman in Black as a contemporary ghost novel that evokes and subverts Victorian discourses of aging and gender, at the same time that, from a contemporary perspective, it vindicates the figure of the Victorian fallen woman as an aging mother.
虽然苏珊·希尔在过去的几十年里已经成为了一位多产的鬼魂叙事作家，但她在作为女作家的人生中一个特别重要的阶段发表了《黑衣女人》(1983)，这被认为是她的第一部鬼魂小说。《黑衣女人》唤起了维多利亚时代的过去，与哥特式风格的维多利亚小说相互作用。黑衣女人的性格包含了与不同的维多利亚哥特式原型相关的特征，如鬼魂、吸血鬼和替身。这些文学原型的一些特征与维多利亚时代对衰老的焦虑相呼应，这些特征在希尔的小说中得到了恢复和重新诠释。此外，与哥特式浪漫小说类似，年轻时的叙述者阿瑟·基普斯(Arthur Kipps)与幽灵般的老女人黑衣女人(the woman in Black)之间的相遇，释放了主人公的成年过程，他在晚年写故事时回忆起了这一过程。哥特风格的叙事学特征，比如混合了过去和现在的框架叙事，强调了衰老的动态，因为中断的衰老和过早的衰老过程打破了传统上区分生命阶段的界限。本文将希尔的《黑衣女人》视为一部当代鬼小说，它唤起并颠覆了维多利亚时代关于衰老和性别的话语，同时，从当代的角度来看，它为维多利亚时代堕落的女人作为一个年迈的母亲的形象辩护。
{"title":"“It made her age hard to guess”: Narrating the dynamics of aging and gender through Victorian Gothic archetypes in Susan Hill’s The Woman in Black","authors":"Marta Miquel-Baldellou","doi":"10.1515/fns-2023-2006","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/fns-2023-2006","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Although Susan Hill has become a prolific writer of ghost narratives in the last decades, it was at a particularly momentous stage of her life as a woman writer that she published The Woman in Black (1983), which is considered her first ghost novel. Evoking the Victorian past, The Woman in Black engages intertextually with Victorian novels within the Gothic genre. The character of the Woman in Black comprises features pertaining to different Victorian Gothic archetypes, such as the ghost, the vampire, and the double. Some of the traits pertaining to these literary archetypes echoed Victorian anxieties about aging that are recovered and reinterpreted in Hill’s novel. Furthermore, in analogy with a Gothic romance, the encounter between the narrator as a young man, Arthur Kipps, and a spectral aging woman, the Woman in Black, unleashes the hero’s process of coming of age, which he recollects in his old age as he is writing his narrative. Narratological features pertaining to the Gothic genre, like the use of a frame narrative that blends past and present, underscore the dynamics of aging, since processes of interrupted aging and premature aging disrupt the boundaries that conventionally distinguish life stages. This article approaches Hill’s The Woman in Black as a contemporary ghost novel that evokes and subverts Victorian discourses of aging and gender, at the same time that, from a contemporary perspective, it vindicates the figure of the Victorian fallen woman as an aging mother.","PeriodicalId":29849,"journal":{"name":"Frontiers of Narrative Studies","volume":"1 1","pages":"69 - 86"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2023-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"86446752","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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