Fiction is generally understood to be a fascinating, yet somehow deficient affair, merely derivative of reality. What if we could, instead, come up with an affirmative approach that takes stories seriously in their capacity to bring forth a substance of their own? Iconic texts such as Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and its numerous adaptations stubbornly resist our attempts to classify them as mere representations of reality. Friederike Danebrock shows how these texts insist that we take them seriously as agents and interlocutors in our world- and culture-making activities. Drawing on this analysis, she develops a theory of narrative fiction as a generative practice.
Author(s): Friederike Danebrock
Series: Literary Theory | 5
Edition: 1
Publisher: Transcript Verlag
Year: 2023
Language: English
Commentary: TruePDF
Pages: 293
Tags: Fiction, Narrative, Ontology, New Materialism, Actor-Network-Theory, Literature, Film, Body, Theory of Literature, British Studies, Literary Studies
Cover
Half title
About the Author
Title
Copyright
Dedication
Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Strange(r) Things: Fiction and Frankenstein
“Voodoo Metaphysics”? Towards a New Sense of Make‐Believe
Endlessly Transparent? Frankenstein, Literary Criticism, andtheLogic of Reflection
The Transformation of Stories: Adaptation,Mediation,andtheReal ofIntertextuality
Figures, Repetition, Company: WheretoLookforWhatFrankensteinDoes
Part One: Figures
Narrative Interest and the Body
No Body, no Story…
Difficult Material
Figures
Speak and Be
Truth, Judgment, Fiction
Physicality and Perspective
Narrative Architecture
Voices and Images
Productive Foldings
The Body of Narrative Plot
Contingencies, Technological and Organic
The Substance of Fiction
Part One: Coda
Part Two: Repetition
Sequels: Going Forward, Looking Back
That Was Not the End At All
A Resurrection in Three Parts
Generation without Origin
Traces, Path‐Breakers
Begin and End
Operation in Two Directions
Repeating Repetition: Series and Singularity
Series and Adaptations
Repetition Unbound
Creature No. 3
Making Memories
Tracing the Individual
Repetition, High and Low
Being and Being‐About
Surfaces and Simulacra
Beyond Sovereign Imitation
Part Two: Coda
Part Three: Company
Imperfection and Collaboration
You Will Be You Again
Double Casting I
Ontology of Non‐Self‐Coincidence
Existence as Production
Collaborative Agency
Strange Intimacies: Vulnerability and Liberation
Intimacy Inhibited
Feral Woman
A More Cryptic Feminist Text
Vulnerability and Imagination
Double Casting II
Address and Response
Both Strange and Familiar
Genuine Transformations
Part Three: Coda
To Conclude
“Love Your Monsters”
Works Cited
