The Storied Lives of Non-Human Narrators

Bernaerts, Lars; Caracciolo, Marco; Herman, Luc; Vervaeck, Bart

doi:10.1353/nar.2014.0002

Cited by 79 publications

(43 citation statements)

References 38 publications

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“…However, since the Puma and the other non-human characters are allowed to express their minds at length in direct speech in a common language, we get access to what they feel and think through what they say, and we are invited to empathize. This circumstance, apart from emphasizing the Puma's and other animals' ability to speak (and our ability to understand them) therefore highlights both defamiliarisation and empathy (Bernaerts et al 2014).…”

Section: Talking Animals and Anthropomorphismmentioning

confidence: 98%

“…This intradiegetic narrative in direct speech allows the Puma to express her otherness in a delicate play on estrangement and attachment (or, in the words of Bernaerts et al, defamiliarization and empathy (Bernaerts et al 2014)). Her highly evolved senses, for example, which are characteristic of pumas but not of humans, are described in an elaborate language of similes and metaphors (denoting human sensitivity and intelligence) which helps us understand her and empathize with her, makes her less strange in spite of her otherness.…”

Section: The Pumamentioning

confidence: 99%

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“And in That Moment I Leapt upon His Shoulder”: Non-Human Intradiegetic Narrators in The Wind on the Moon

Danielsson

2017

Humanities

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Non-human narrators, by definition anthropomorphized, fill different functions in literature, and have different effects, not always positive for the species that is utilized, for example to voice a human political concern. However, many animal studies scholars agree that anthropomorphism, while inadequate, may be the best way we have to get to know another species. Animal characters who tell their own, autobiographical, stories are particularly interesting in this regard. Eric Linklater's children's novel The Wind on the Moon (1944), raises posthumanist questions about human-animal differences, similarities and language, especially through its engagement of several non-human intradiegetic narrators. In a novel with surprisingly few other forms of characterization of the non-human characters, their own detailed narratives become a highly significant means of access to their species characteristics, their consciousness, and their needs. In an analysis of these embedded narratives using Genette's theory of narrative levels and functions, as well as intersections of speech act theory and cognitive narratology, this article exposes an otherwise inaccessible dimension of characterization in Linklater's novel. It argues that the embedded narratives, in contrast to crude anthropomorphism, are in fact what enables both a verbalization of the character narrators' otherness, and a connection and comprehension between species. In other words, these non-human narratives constitute what might be called (with Garrard) examples of critical anthropomorphism.

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Section: Talking Animals and Anthropomorphismmentioning

confidence: 98%

Section: The Pumamentioning

confidence: 99%

“And in That Moment I Leapt upon His Shoulder”: Non-Human Intradiegetic Narrators in The Wind on the Moon

Danielsson

2017

Humanities

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“…3 Meanwhile, Bernaerts et al [14] have, for their part, established an important precedent for inquiry into narration by nonhuman agents, laying foundations for a narratology beyond the human more generally. They argue that narratives told by nonhuman narrators engage readers in a dialectic of defamiliarization and empathy-defamiliarizing (at least in some instances) human-centric frames of reference while also promoting empathy with other-than-human ways of being-in-the-world ( [14], pp. 72-74).…”

Section: Approaches To Animal Autobiographymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…However, in describing nonhuman narration as a super-category containing the sub-categories of tales told by animals and the tradition of it-narratives ( [14], pp. 82-88), or narratives presented by inanimate objects [31,32], Bernaerts et al downplay the differences between these two kinds of narrative situations.…”

Section: Approaches To Animal Autobiographymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…91-92). 4 At the same time, because all of their examples are fictional autobiographies, i.e., texts that squarely belong to the genre of fiction, the fundamental hybridity that accrues to autobiography in general, animal autobiography in particular, receives short shrift in Bernaerts et al's [14] discussion. Thus, the co-authors' account both under-generates and over-generates necessary analytic distinctions.…”

Section: Approaches To Animal Autobiographymentioning

confidence: 99%

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Animal Autobiography; Or, Narration beyond the Human

Herman

2016

Humanities

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In engaging with acts of self-narration that cross species lines, creators of animal autobiographies also broach questions about genre, truth status, and the structure as well as the politics of narrative representation. To address these questions, the present article draws not just on scholarship on (animal) autobiography but also on ideas from the fields of linguistic semantics, politeness theory, and discourse analysis, including the "framing and footing" approach that focuses on talk emerging in contexts of face-to-face interaction and that derives most directly from the work of Erving Goffman. On the basis of this research, and using case studies that range from animal riddles to Ceridwen Dovey's Only the Animals (2014), a collection of life stories posthumously narrated by a variety of nonhuman tellers, I profile autobiographical acts that reach beyond the human as ways of speaking for or in behalf of animal others. Some animal autobiographies correlate with acts of telling for which humans themselves remain the principals as well as authors; their animal animators remain relegated to the role of commenting on human institutions, values, practices, and artifacts. Other examples, however, can be read as co-authored acts of narrating in behalf of equally hybrid (or "humanimal") principals. These experiments with narration beyond the human afford solidarity-building projections of other creatures' ways of being-in-the-world-projections that enable a reassessment, in turn, of forms of human being.

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Narrative and Posthumanism/Posthumanist Narratives

Caracciolo

2022

Palgrave Handbook of Critical Posthumanism

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The Storied Lives of Non-Human Narrators

Cited by 79 publications

References 38 publications

“And in That Moment I Leapt upon His Shoulder”: Non-Human Intradiegetic Narrators in The Wind on the Moon

“And in That Moment I Leapt upon His Shoulder”: Non-Human Intradiegetic Narrators in The Wind on the Moon

Animal Autobiography; Or, Narration beyond the Human

Narrative and Posthumanism/Posthumanist Narratives

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