Apophrades, Adonais, and the return of the Shelleys

This chapter returns to Harold Bloom’s theory of the anxiety of influence, and in particular his notion of apophrades. It does so in the context of a reading of P. B. Shelley’s elegy to John Keats, Adonais. The chapter argues that Bloom’s version of apophrades elides the uncanniness possessed by the original Greek concept; an uncanniness exploited within Shelleys’ own poetry

Mary Shelley's letter to Maria Gisborne

This paper focuses on Mary Shelley’s letter to her friend Maria Gisborne. In this letter Mary Shelley describes the last days of her husband P. B. Shelley and does so in ways which emphasise a certain set of gothic and uncanny events. The paper argues that such uncanny events are part of both writers concern with metalepsis, a figure which involves or at least invokes the reversal of time and space. The paper formed part of a special memorial edition of La Questione Romantica, which honoured the life and work of the editor of Mary Shelley’s letters, Professor Betty T. Bennett

Dickens extra-illustrated: heads and scenes in monthly parts (The Case of Nicholas Nickleby)

As a practice that interleaves extraneous materials within the pages of a book, extra-illustration unbinds the volume form and undermines the autonomy of the literary and of the act of reading. I concentrate on Charles Dickens's The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby (1838-39) and sets of extra-illustrations by Peter Palette (pseud, for Thomas Onwhyn) and Miss La Creevy (pseud, for Kenny Meadows). Taking advantage of the material and temporal aspects of serialization, these extra-illustrations rearticulate the act of reading in a way that emphasizes the place of Victorian literature in a culture of viewing and collecting

Narrative Empathy, Vulnerability and Ethics of Care in William Trevor’s Fiction

This essay engages with the relationship between ethics and literature. To this end, it addresses the theoretical framework of narrative empathy as illustrative of the supposed ethical power of literary writing. Using a corpus of William Trevor’s fiction, Reading Turgenev (1991) and Love and Summer (2009) as case study, the essay suggests that Trevor’ use of metafictional devices (metalepses and the disnarrated), temporal disarray and multifocal perspectives tends to complicate the general assumption of empathy as necessarily easy and spontaneous. These formal strategies of literary representation manifest the underlying manipulative nature of narrative empathy, confronting readers with the ethical effects of empathy. In so doing, Trevor’s fiction edges towards the aesthetics of vulnerability in that it entails an ethics of reading and writing that reminds the reader of the darkest sides of human existence

James 3:13-4:10 and the Language of Envy in Proverbs 3:21-35

Although a few interpreters have noted in passing the numerous verbal links between James 3:13–4:10 and LXX Prov 3:21–35, James’ passage is regularly read as a polemic against jealousy that is most at home within Hellenistic moral literature. This paper argues that the literary and thematic coherence of James 3:13–4:10 derives not primarily from the Hellenistic topos on envy (so Luke Timothy Johnson) but from metaleptic interplay with Prov 3:21–35. That is, the explicit appeal to “the scripture” in James 4:5 and the citation of Prov 3:34 in James 4:6 indicate that the tropes usually interpreted against the backdrop of Hellenistic moral literature (friendship, violence, etc.) resonate more naturally within the “cave” of Proverbs 3. Like many passages in sapiential literature (e.g., Prov 14:1, 19; 4Q416 2ii11; 4Q418 8,12; Wis 1:9-12; Sir 9:1-11), Jas 3:13-4:10 foregrounds the language of “jealousy” to expose the tragedy of bad ζῆ��ος. In trying to locate parallels to James’ usage in Hellenistic writings, interpreters have failed to appreciate how the movement from ζῆ��ος in James 3:14, 16, and 4:2 to φθόνος in 4:5 simply resonates with a description found already in Isocrates: an envious person (φθόνος) is one whose good emulation (ζῆ��ος) has degenerated into jealous imitation because of unfulfilled desires. More significant than the particular semantic choices, then, is that James’ usage mimics the way Prov 3:31 links קנאה/ζῆ��ος with the neglect of the needy, distorted friendship, and emulating the ways of evil/violent people (Prov 3:27, 29, 31). Using this wisdom motif from Prov 3:21–35 as the interpretive lens for James 3:13–4:10 lends further support to a growing consensus about the notorious interpretive crux in James 4:5; namely, (1) that the formula in 4:5 does not introduce a citation of an unknown text, and (2) that it is the human spirit (rather than God’s) that is characterized by “envy” (φθόνος)

Metalepsis and Mental Castration: Doki Doki Literature Club As the Cerebral Monstrous-Feminine

Doki Doki Literature Club! is a horror visual novel masquerading as a dating simulation game. Behind the thin veneer of pretty girls in tiny skirts and tight uniforms lurk horrors, glitches, and metaleptic events that take the player’s battle for agency beyond mere point-and-click interactions. This fight breaches containment to the level of the physical, as the player must literally wrestle for control with an in-game character who has commandeered their entire computer system. Players are led to believe that they are making the decisions that further the plot, but come to learn that in this world, there is no such thing as free will. In a genre where choice is the only thing that matters, the choices in Doki Doki are subverted to serve the ends of the game and not the player. Under the guise of the kawaii aesthetic and the gender bias inherent in bishōjo games, Doki Doki delivers a horrific encounter with something beyond even the monstrous feminine: the terror of powerlessness in the face of a woman with unfettered power. By exploring Doki Doki Literature Club!’s violation of the separation between levels of reality, this paper will reveal the visual novel to be a masterwork of cerebral feminine horror and feminist gaming

Her voice has life: the myth of echo in psychoanalysis and deconstruction, and the acoustic vision of a new subjectivity

Taking seriously Ovid’s claim that Echo’s voice has life, this thesis examines the use of the myth of Echo and Narcissus, as presented in Ovid’s Metamorphoses, in 20th century literature, philosophy, and psychoanalysis, especially as to how it pertains to the creation of the human subject. I argue in favor of John Hollander’s restoration of the trope of metalepsis, and show how that trope is connected to a variety of topics, including, but not limited to, the imagery of echo in Mark Z. Danielewski’s novel House of Leaves; how the myth relates to the Freudian notions of primary and secondary narcissism; Jacques Lacan’s attempts to incorporate psychoanalysis into the history of philosophy, vis-à-vis Hegel’s dialectical method; the relation between subjectivity and love in both Freud and Jacques Derrida’s works; and how echo operates within the discourse of écriture feminine. Finally, I end the thesis with a critical reading of the film It’s All Gone, Pete Tong, and a brief discussion on treatment of the female voice today