Showing papers by "Marco Caracciolo published in 2019"

Metaphorical patterns in Anthropocene fiction

Abstract: This article explores metaphorical language in the strand of contemporary fiction that Trexler discusses under the heading of ‘Anthropocene fiction’ – namely, novels that probe the convergence of h...

Form, Science, and Narrative in the Anthropocene

Abstract: A significant strand of contemporary fiction engages with scientific models that highlight a constitutive interdependency between humanity and material realities such as the climate or the geological history of our planet. This article looks at the ways in which narrative may capture this human-nonhuman interrelation, which occupies the foreground of debates on the so-called Anthropocene. I argue that the formal dimension of scientific knowledge-as manifested by diagrams or metaphors used by scientists-is central to this narrative remediation. I explore two analogical strategies through which narrative may pursue a formal dialogue with science: clusters of metaphorical language and the global structuring of the plot. Rivka Galchen's novel Atmospheric Disturbances (2008), for instance, builds on a visual representation of meteorological patterns in a storm (lifted from an actual scientific paper) to stage the narrator's mental illness. Two other contemporary works (Orfeo by Richard Powers and A Tale for the Time Being by Ruth Ozeki) integrate scientific models through the overall design of the plot. By offering close readings of these novels, I seek to expand work in the area of New Formalism and show how formal choices are crucial to bringing together the human-scale world and more-than-human phenomena.

Narrative bodies and nonhuman transformations

Abstract: In this essay, we identify and discuss three motifs that enable literary narrative to perform a shift from a phenomenological, common-sense understanding of the body to the far more challenging nonhuman corporeality articulated by poststructuralist theorists in dialogue with Deleuze and Guattari's work. We argue that such reconceptualization of the body via narrative form aligns closely with contemporary debates surrounding the Anthropocene and material, as well as nonhuman, turns. We illustrate the three motifs-which we label metamorphosis, blending, and unraveling-through the analysis of passages from contemporary novels that engage, in deeply embodied terms, with environmental issues.