Representing Vulnerabilities in Contemporary Literature
Representing Vulnerabilities in Contemporary Literature

Author: Miriam Fernández-Santiago

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2022-12-01

Total Pages: 216

ISBN-13: 1000827984

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Representing Vulnerabilities in Contemporary Literature includes a collection of essays exploring the ways in which recent literary representations of vulnerability may problematize its visibilization from an ethical and aesthetic perspective. Recent technological and scientific developments have accentuated human vulnerability in many and different ways at a cross-national, and even cross-species level. Disability, technological, and ecological vulnerabilities are new foci of interest that add up to gender, precarity and trauma, among others, as forms of vulnerability in this volume. The literary visualization of these vulnerabilities might help raise social awareness of one’s own vulnerabilities as well as those of others so as to bring about global solidarity based on affinity and affect. However, the literary representation of forms of vulnerability might also deepen stigmatization phenomena and trivialize the spectacularization of vulnerability by blunting readers’ affective response towards those products that strive to hold their attention and interest in an information-saturated, global entertainment market.

Embodied VulnerAbilities in Literature and Film
Embodied VulnerAbilities in Literature and Film

Author: Cristina M. Gámez-Fernández

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2023-09-14

Total Pages: 213

ISBN-13: 1000956172

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Embodied VulnerAbilities in Literature and Film includes a collection of essays exploring the ways in which recent literary and filmic representations of vulnerability depict embodied forms of vulnerability across languages, media, genres, countries, and traditions in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. The volume gathers 12 chapters penned by scholars from Japan, the USA, Canada, and Spain which look into the representation of vulnerability in human bodies and subjectivities. Not only is the array of genres covered in this volume significant— from narrative, drama, poetry, (auto)documentary, or film— in fiction and nonfiction, but also the varied cultural and linguistic coordinates of the literary and filmic texts scrutinized—from the USA, Canada, Spain, France, the Middle East, to Japan. Readers who decide to open the cover of this volume will benefit from becoming familiar with a relatively old topic— that of vulnerability— from a new perspective, so that they can consider the great potential of this critical concept anew.

The Poetics and Ethics of (Un-)Grievability in Contemporary Anglophone Fiction
The Poetics and Ethics of (Un-)Grievability in Contemporary Anglophone Fiction

Author: Susana Onega

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2022-12-27

Total Pages: 252

ISBN-13: 1000750264

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

The working hypothesis of the book is that, since the 1990s, an increasing number of Anglophone fictions are responding to the new ethical and political demands arising out of the facts of war, exclusion, climate change, contagion, posthumanism and other central issues of our post-trauma age by adapting the conventions of traditional forms of expressing grievability, such as elegy, testimony or (pseudo-)autobiography. Situating themselves in the wake of Judith Butler’s work on (un-)grievablability, the essays collected in this volume seek to cast new light on these issues by delving into the socio-cultural constructions of grievability and other types of vulnerabilities, invisibilities and inaudibilities linked with the neglect and/or abuse of non-normative individuals and submerged groups that have been framed as disposable, exploitable and/or unmournable by such determinant factors as sex, gender, ethnic origin, health, etc., thereby refining and displacing the category of subalternity associated with the poetics of postmodernism.

The Ethics of (In-)Attention in Contemporary Anglophone Narrative
The Ethics of (In-)Attention in Contemporary Anglophone Narrative

Author: Jean-Michel Ganteau

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2024-09-12

Total Pages: 252

ISBN-13: 104012710X

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

This volume argues that contemporary narratives evince a great deal of resilience by promoting an ecology of attention based on poetic options that develop an ethics of the particularist type. The contributors draw on critical and theoretical literature hailing from various fields: including psychology and sociology, but more prominently phenomenology, political philosophy, analytical philosophy (essentially Ordinary Language Philosophy), alongside the Ethics of Care and Vulnerability. This volume is designed as an innovative contribution to the nascent field of the study of attention in literary criticism, an area that is full of potential. Its scope is wide, as it embraces a great deal of the Anglophone world, with Britain, Ireland, the USA, but also Australia and even Malta. Its chapters focus on well-established authors, like Kazuo Ishiguro (whose work is revisited here in a completely new light) or more confidential ones like Melissa Harrison or Sarah Moss.

The Poetics and Ethics of Attention in Contemporary British Narrative
The Poetics and Ethics of Attention in Contemporary British Narrative

Author: Jean-Michel Ganteau

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2022-12-27

Total Pages: 204

ISBN-13: 100083204X

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

This book uses attention as a prism through which to interrogate the literary text. It starts from analyses of the changes that the mediasphere and communication technologies have brought for the contemporary subject, submitting him/her to the tyranny of a new attention economy. My point is that the contemporary novel and memoir resist such influences and evince a great deal of resilience by promoting an “ecology of attention” (Citton) based on poetic options whose pragmatic effect is to develop an ethics of the particularist type. To do this, I draw on critical and theoretical literature hailing from various fields: psychology, but also more prominently phenomenology, political philosophy, and analytical philosophy (essentially Ordinary Language Philosophy), alongside the ethics of care and vulnerability. By using a selection of fictional and non-fictional narratives, I address such issues as social invisibilities, climate change, AI and cognitive disability and end up drafting a poetics of attention.

Olga Tokarczuk
Olga Tokarczuk

Author: Lidia Wiśniewska

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2023-03-14

Total Pages: 152

ISBN-13: 1000841286

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Filling a significant gap in contemporary criticism of recent prose fiction, this book offers a provocative analysis of the work of Nobel Laureate Olga Tokarczuk, situating her output in comparative contexts. The chapters making up the volume range from myth-critical focused readings to interdisciplinary and intercultural perspectives. Tokarczuk’s fiction is explored as mythopoeic and heterotopian experimentation, as well as being read alongside other arts and other authors of various national and linguistic backgrounds. This wide-ranging collection is the first monograph on Tokarczuk in English.

At Home with Ivan Vladislavić
At Home with Ivan Vladislavić

Author: Gerald Gaylard

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2023-03-31

Total Pages: 179

ISBN-13: 1000854094

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

At Home With Ivan Vladislavić is the first comprehensive analysis of the works of Ivan Vladislavić. Bringing a flaneur’s "internal GPS" to postcolonial Johannesburg, Vladislavić established a critical sense of home via an intimate knowledge of geography and history. This sense of belonging can have positive ecological effects as we tend to protect what we know. The flaneur’s deep word hoard also helped him to develop a minimalist style, which was not only a means of living sustainably in the city, but in its humour and close attention to detail a way to make greening the city more of a joy than a duty. In this way, Vladislavić created a culture of sustainability. Introduction and Chapter 6 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF at http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons [Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND)] 4.0 license.

Posthumanity in the Anthropocene
Posthumanity in the Anthropocene

Author: Esther Muñoz-González

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2023-04-20

Total Pages: 211

ISBN-13: 1000866262

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

In this book, Margaret Atwood’s dystopian novels—The Handmaid’s Tale, the MaddAddam trilogy, The Heart Goes Last, and The Testaments—are analyzed from the perspective provided by the combined views of the construction of the posthuman subject in its interactions with science and technology, and the Anthropocene as a cultural field of enquiry. Posthumanist critical concerns try to dismantle anthropocentric notions of the human and defend the need for a closer relationship between humanity and the environment. Supported by the exemplification of the generic characteristics of the cli-fi genre, this book discusses the effects of climate change, at the individual level, and as a collective threat that can lead to a "world without us." Moreover, Margaret Atwood is herself the constant object of extensive academic interest and Posthuman theory is widely taught, researched, and explored in almost every intellectual field. This book is aimed at worldwide readers, not only those interested in Margaret Atwood’s oeuvre, but also those interested in the debate between critical posthumanism and transhumanism, together with the ethical implications of living in the Anthropocene era regarding our daily lives and practices. It will be especially attractive for academics: university teachers, postgraduates, researchers, and college students in general.

Ecocritical Explorations of the Climate Crisis
Ecocritical Explorations of the Climate Crisis

Author: Janet M. Wilson

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2024-11-21

Total Pages: 259

ISBN-13: 1040230237

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Ecocritical Explorations of the Climate Crisis expands postcolonial precarity studies by addressing the current climate crisis and threats to the habitability of the planet from a range of ecocritical and environmental perspectives. The collection uses planetary thought-action praxis that acknowledges the interconnectedness of all forms of life in addressing the socioecological issues facing humanity: accelerating climate change, over-exploitation of natural resources, and the Global North–South divide. With reference to contemporary cultural productions, such praxis seeks to examine the ideas, images, and narratives that either represent or impede potential disasters like the so-called sixth extinction of the planet, that inspire the dismantling of carbon democracies arising in the wake of neoliberalism, and that address rising inequality with precarious conditions in the transition to renewable energy. The different chapters explore literary and visual representations of planetary precarity, identifying crisis-responsive genres and cultural formats, and assessing approaches to environment-re/making that call for repair, recovery and sustainability. In imagining future habitability, they deploy diverse critical frameworks such as queer utopias, zero-waste lifestyles, alternative ecologies, and adaptations to the uninhabitable. The collection tackles problems of global vulnerability and examines precarity as a condition of resilience and resistance through collective actions and solidarities and innovative constructions of the planet’s survival as a shared home. It engages with current postcolonial debates, uses intersectional methodologies, and introduces contemporary literary, visual concepts, and narrative types.

Analyzing Literature-to-Film Adaptations
Analyzing Literature-to-Film Adaptations

Author: Mary H. Snyder

Publisher: A&C Black

Published: 2011-01-20

Total Pages: 322

ISBN-13: 1441168184

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

"This is a wise and wonderful book, which among other things provides a novelist's eloquent insider's perspective on the transformation of one of her books into a film. Thirty years ago Stanley Cavell published The World Viewed: Reflections on the Ontology of Film, which opened up an intellectual highway between philosophy and cinema. Now at long last Mary Snyder's book accomplishes a parallel clearing of the way between film making, the art of the novel, and literary and critical theory Every page is bubbling with creative, theoretical, and pedagogical insights. Her intertextual readings of a score of literature-to-film adaptations are priceless in themselves. I only wish that the title of the book had been taken from her chapter, `The Fascination Never Ends'." Michael Payne, Professor of English Emeritus, Bucknell University Critical questions specific to film adaptations need to be not only developed but established. These questions, or approaches, must be accessible to students, including those students who are not yet educationally sophisticated enough to digest purely theoretical material. Analyzing Literature-to-Film Adaptations: A Novelist's Exploration and Guide demonstrates an exploration into film adaptation from a novelist's perspective, comprising a study of literary creation as well as the process/product of adaptation and moving into the author's collaboration with a screenwriter, which ultimately becomes a journey to understand and identify the implications of literature-to-film adaptation and the complexities and problems it raises. Drawing from both classic and contemporary film adaptations (Frankenstein, The Hours, The Constant Gardener, Children of Men, The Lovely Bones, Away from Her), the book puts forth an understanding of film and film analysis, as well as addresses literary analysis. The crux of the book, however, lies in its introduction to an academic means for critical analysis of film adaptations.