Although canon-formation is, as Lecker suggests, a product of rhetoric and textual choices of critics, it is also a product of economic forces, political conflicts, and cultural expectations of coherence, “order,” and unitary explanation. Conditioned by some or all of these, an essay ostensibly skeptical of canons, as this one appears to be, can find itself nevertheless contributing to the thing it questions. In attempting to attribute the formation of a single national canon to a specific period , to a (...) specific and allegedly homogeneous group of actors , and to a specific social phenomenon , Lecker’s essay becomes another constructor of canonical text and theory. Behind its arguments that a canon suddenly came into being are fairly precise assumptions not only about “Canadian critics” but also about what constitutes canonicity, and about the relative legitimacy of canonicity claims. “At the end of World War II, Canadian literature was not taught as an independent subject in Canadian schools. There was no canon,” his essay begins . Is a school curriculum the only possible context for the attainment of literary “legitimacy”? Can there be no canon if a literature has no curriculum, education publishers, or “academic critics,” or if it has not been institutionalized as an “independent” subject? Frank Davey, chair of the department of English at York University, is the author of From There to Here: A Guide to English Canadian Literature Since 1960 , Surviving the Paraphrase , Margaret Atwood: A Feminist Poetics , and Reading Canadian Reading . He is also the editor of Open Letter and the on-line magazine Swiftcurrent. He is currently working on a study of nationalist ideologies in Canadian fiction entitled National Arguments. (shrink)

In this paper, I defend fictional creationism, the view that fictional objects are abstract artifacts, from the objection that the apparent truth of fictional negative existentials, such as “Sherlock Holmes does not exist,” poses a serious problem for creationism. I develop a sophisticated version of the pragmatic approach by focusing on the inconsistent referential intentions of ordinary speakers: the upshot would be that creationism is no worse —perhaps even in a better position— than anti-realism, even if we restrict our linguistic (...) data to fictional negative existentials. (shrink)

Fictions evoke imagery, and their value consists partly in that achievement. This paper offers analysis of this neglected topic. Section 2 identifies relevant philosophical background. Section 3 offers a working definition of imagery. Section 4 identifies empirical work on visual imagery. Sections 5 and 6 criticize imagery essentialism, through the lens of genuine fictional narratives. This outcome, though, is not wholly critical. The expressed spirit of imagery essentialism is to encourage philosophers to ‘put the image back into the imagination’. The (...) weakened conclusion is that while an image is not essential to imagining, it should be returned to our theories of imagination. (shrink)

John Woods' The Logic of Fiction, now thirty-five years old, is a ground-breaking event in the establishment of the semantics of fiction as a stand-alone research programme in the philosophies of language and logic. There is now a large literature about these matters, but Woods' book retains a striking freshness, and still serves as a convincing template of the treatment options for the field's key problems. The book now appears in a second edition with a new Foreword by (...) Nicholas Griffin and an extended bibliography covering the period 1969-2009. As Griffin notes in his Foreword, it is "surprising on looking back to discover how little was written on the semantics of fiction before John Woods' The Logic of Fiction was published in 1974. The surprise is the greater because Woods' book appeared after almost a quarter century of fierce philosophical debate about reference Fictional discourse, one would have thought, would be an important testing ground for philosophical theories of referential expressions and one, moreover, in which the standard theories would likely be tested to destruction. " " One of the great merits of Woods' book is that it takes seriously the wide-ranging demands that fiction imposes on logic and semantics, and does not try to force fiction into some pre-conceived logical mould. but thanks to Woods' pioneering efforts, we are much closer to one now than we were when he set out to write his book. His book was not the last word on the logic of fiction; it was much more important: it was nearly the first." NICHOLAS GRIFFIN is Canada Research Chair in Philosophy at McMaster University. Recent publications include Russell vs Meinong: The Legacy of "On Denoting," edited with Dale Jacquette. JOHN WOODS is Director of the Abductive Systems Group at the University of British Columbia and Charles S. Peirce Visiting Professor of Logic in the Group on Logic and Computational Science, King's College London. He has two forthcoming books on fiction - an edited volume, Fictions and Models: New Essays, and a research monograph, Sherlock's Member: New Perspectives on the Semantics of Fiction, both to appear in 2010. (shrink)

This thesis is the first major study of censorship of and in English Canadian literature. While there are several reasons scholars have focused on censorship in Europe and the United States, it is the ascendancy in quality and quantity of Canadian writing leading to its further use in institutions where censorship takes place---such as schools and libraries---that necessitates a study of censorship in Canadian literature now. This rise in censorship has prompted Canadian authors increasingly to write (...) about the subject. In this thesis I study censorship issues raised both explicitly md implicitly by Timothy Findley, Margaret Atwood, Margaret Laurence, Beatrice Culleton and Marlene Nourbese Philip. All of these writers have been subjected to censorship attacks and have responded to these attacks and grappled with the philosophical implications of censorship in their fiction and non-fiction. My investigation of censorship in these texts sheds new light on the works of literature themselves, but the literary texts also suggest a new way of looking at censorship. Each of my chapters offers arguments challenging the traditional Enlightenment model of censorship as an oppressive government practice against its citizens, a definition resulting in the mistaken views that censorship has been largely eradicated in the West and that, when it does surface, it is to be condemned on principle. This view can be contrasted with a "constructivist" model of censorship as the delegitimation of expression by social forces. My findings support a definition which draws on both models wherein censorship is the exclusion of some discourse as the result of a judgment by an authoritative agent based on some ideological predisposition. The key word in this definition is "judgment" which, when recognized as the primary activity in censorship, must change the way we approach censorship controversies. For if censorship is the exercise of judgment, and judgment is enmeshed in the fabric of human endeavour, then censorship is inevitable in our society. Since censorship is inevitable, I conclude, we should stop arguing about whether censorship itself is a desirable practice and begin to find ways to make censorship practices more reasonable or more "just.". (shrink)

Quantified modal logic and propositional attitudes have long been regarded as sites susceptible to referential opacity — that curious affliction first diagnosed by Quine. In this paper I suggest a way of alleviating the symptoms of referential opacity as they manifest themselves in fictional contexts, contexts in which we are confronted by discourse about fiction. Indeed, a case might be made against Quine that it is fictional, rather than quotational, contexts which are the referentially opaque contexts par excellence. For (...) whether we take a Fregean line on the matter and consider the obliquity of fictional terms as due to shift of reference, or a Quinean line and consider their opacity as due to failure of reference, their non-standard occurrence is clear and avowed. Moreover, as the non-standardness or non-vulgarity of terms in fictional contexts is by design and not due to some mere accident of orthography, they seem in many ways to be both more interesting and potentially more revealing. (shrink)

_Purpose_ of the research is to study the originality of interpretation of death in the lyrics of Ukrainian diaspora in Canada in the context of the opposition "foreign land – motherland", based on its existential development in philosophical anthropology and culture of the last two centuries. Its implementation presupposes, first of all, analysis of the forms of development and disclosure of the death motif by figurative and artistic means. _Theoretical basis__._ The author uses the well-founded tradition of interpreting the death (...) motif in philosophical literature of the last centuries, i.e. non-classical and modern philosophical thought. _Originality._ The present study is an attempt at systematization of the notions of death in Ukrainian poetry in Canada in the second half of the 20th century. It is based on the study of artistic texts and the worldview of Ukrainian emigrants. Appeal to the fiction of the Ukrainian Diaspora allows illustrating the originality of philosophical understanding of death in the context of the national culture. _Conclusions_. Reference to Ukrainian-Canadian poetry allows expanding the space of philosophical understanding of death in the form of figurative fiction. Concretizing the character of their interpretation of the motif of death, it is necessary to focus attention on its two basic forms of manifestation: existential, associated with living abroad, and sacrificial death for the benefit of the homeland. Thus, the motif of death occupies a significant place in the lyrics of representatives of the Ukrainian diaspora. The concept of human death is closely connected with the concept of life, which is concretized through their meaningful comprehension. This is a matter of interpretation of despair and loneliness motifs, as well as the illumination of the images of a foreign land, which is one of the features of emigrant literature in general. (shrink)

Canadian children’s literature rarely depicts characters labelled with intellectual disabilities, yet when it does it often remains mired in stereotypes that recycle prevalent myths and misconceptions. Even as more recent literature attempts to push back against such stereotypes, it nevertheless predominantly remains caught in these dangerous representational repertoires. This article offers a brief history of Canadian literary depictions of intellectual disability and a critique of the Canadian publishing spheres. Through a critical analysis of Lorna Schultz Nicholson’s book (...) Fragile Bones, we discuss the limits of representation of intellectual disability in children’s fiction. We also offer a critique of the ableist publishing climate in Canada and suggest that structural barriers prevent disabled writers from entering the literary marketplace on an equal playing field. These barriers to publishing lead to the vast underrepresentation of disabled authors and the misrepresentation of disability in general and intellectual disability in particular in Canadian children’s literature. (shrink)

The notion of utopia in Quebec culture has been a formal and thematic constant since the origins of its literature and indeed French Canadian history. From the discovery and cartography of the so-called New World, as documented in the early colonial travel writings of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, to twenty-first-century science fiction, both reactionary and revolutionary texts have pervaded the ideological landscape of Quebec, markedly inspired by political and religious struggles.1 The texts that constitute this diverse science-fictional (...) body of work often create a hybrid genre through a simultaneously utopian and uchronian—or alternate historical—approach. While appearing on the surface to be limited... (shrink)

Canadian novelist Rudy Wiebe's award-winning memoir, of this earth: A Mennonite Boyhood in the Boreal Forest, invites readers into a warm subjective realm in which a meditative Wiebe recounts his growing-up years from birth to age thirteen. As self-reflexive "rememberer," Wiebe explores the sensate freshness of a boy's ways of seeing, touching, and, not least, hearing the world. The young Wiebe lives with his parents and siblings and neighbours in an emotionally warm Christian community of 1920s immigrants to Canada (...) who have fled from the Soviet Union in the wake of the 1917 Revolution and who struggle for economic survival in a remote corner of rural Saskatchewan during the 1930s and 1940s. But Wiebe's memoir of childhood is not only autobiography and social history; it is also a linguistic text that subtly invites readers to look beyond its textual boundaries to his earlier work. In particular, it has the effect of carrying alert readers back to the setting—at least physically and geographically if not altogether socially and culturally—of Wiebe's first novel, Peace Shall Destroy Many. That early novel was a caustic work notoriously controversial especially among Mennonite readers in Canada when it appeared almost a half-century ago. The 2006 memoir—with intertextual allusion—invites readers to recall especially one layer of that early novel barely noticed by readers, a layer eclipsed and partially hidden by the dominant narrative. Specifically, it invites readers to see the virtually sinless and prelapsarian world of the idealistic young Hal Wiens whose idyllic life in the fictional spaces of Peace Shall Destroy Many goes unnoticed because it is so very much in the shadow of the doubts and tensions that inform the much larger world of his spiritually troubled older brother, nineteen-year old Thom Wiens. The memoir pushes readers into re-thinking the reception of that novel, and into finding anew beneath its severe and satiric treatment of the austere adult world the linguistic and spiritual joy of life given shape in the playful perceptions of the young Hal. The memoir becomes a stimulus for a transformational re-reading of the novel. This essay explores the two works in light of each other and of conventions that govern the two respective genres. It attempts, also, to account for the reading strategies that Wiebe's 2006 memoir proposes to readers of his first novel, and for key influences informing the two respective works. (shrink)

In this paper, a theory of the contents of fictional names — names of fictional people, places, etc. — will be developed.1 The fundamental datum that must be addressed by such a theory is that fictional names are, in an important sense, empty: the entities to which they putatively refer do not exist.2 Nevertheless, they make substantial contributions to the truth conditions of sentences in which they occur. Not only do such sentences have truth conditions, sentences differing only in the (...) fictional names they contain differ in their truth conditions. It is, after all, commonplace to note such things as, for example, thatBilbo Baggins is a hobbitis true, andSherlock Holmes is a hobbitis false, while acknowledging at .. (shrink)

The capacity of a work of fictional literature to elicit emotional responses is part of what is valuable about it, and having emotional responses is part of appreciating it. These claims are not very controversial; perhaps they are even common sense. But philosophy rushes in where common sense fears to tread, raising questions and looking for explanations.Are the emotions we have in appreciating fictional works of art, what I call art emotions, of the same sort as those which occur in (...) ‘real life’? Which emotions are appropriate to the work, and why: what justifies having one emotion rather than another? And why should we think emotionally responding to fiction is desirable, something which should be respected and encouraged, rather than looked at as a little weird or a waste of time? (shrink)

Fictional realism is the view that creatures of fiction exist. Mythical realism is the view that creatures of myth and mistaken theories exist. Call the combined view “Ecumenical Realism.” We critically evaluate three arguments for Ecumenical Realism and argue they are unsound because fictional storytelling differs from mistaken theorizing in important ways. We think these considerations support a more conservative view, “Sectarian Realism,” which results from subtracting “creatures of mistaken theorizing” from Ecumenical Realism. We close by considering an important (...) challenge to Sectarian Realism involving immigrants in fiction. (shrink)

The article focuses on the eponymous protagonist of Isobel Gunn, a Canadian feminist historical novel by Audrey Thomas, published in 1999. Based on a real story, the novel fictionalizes the life of an Orcadian woman who made her transit from the Orkney Islands to the Canadian north in male disguise, and was only identified as a woman when she went into labour. The article juxtaposes the novel against its poetic antecedent The Ballad of Isabel Gunn, published by Stephen (...) Scobie in 1983. In the article Gunn’s fate as a unique transvestite m in the Canadian north is compared to the fate of famous transvestite saint Joan of Arc. Though removed from each another historically and geographically, both women are shown to have suffered similar consequences as a result of violating the biblical taboo on cross-dressing. Isobel’s sudden change of status from a young male colonizer to the defenseless colonized is seen in the context of managing the female resources by colonial authorities. At the same time, the fact that Isobel allows herself to be deprived of her son is analyzed in the light of insights on the maternal by Julia Kristeva and Luce Irigaray. The absence of the mother and the ensuing condition of her offspring’s orphanhood are shown as a consequence of reducing the position of the mother to that of an imperial servant, the fruit of whose body can be freely used and abused by the male imperial authority. (shrink)

It is commonly said that some standards, such as morality, are ‘normatively authoritative’ in a way that other standards, such as etiquette, are not; standards like etiquette are said to be ‘not really normative’. Skeptics deny the very possibility of normative authority, and take claims like ‘etiquette is not really normative’ to be either empty or confused. I offer a different route to defeat skeptics about authority: instead of focusing on what makes standards like morality special, we should focus on (...) what makes standards like etiquette ‘not really normative’. I defend a fictionalist theory on which etiquette is ‘not really normative’ in roughly the same way that Sherlock is ‘not really a detective’, and show that fictionalism about some normative standards helps us explain the possibility of normative authority. (shrink)

In this paper I argue against Divers and Miller's 'Lightness of Being' objection to Hale and Wright's neo-Fregean Platonism. According to the 'Lightness of Being' objection, the neo-Fregean Platonist makes existence too cheap: the same principles which allow her to argue that numbers exist also allow her to claim that fictional objects exist. I claim that this is no objection at all" the neo-Fregean Platonist should think that fictional characters exist. However, the pluralist approach to truth developed by WQright in (...) 'Truth and Objectivity' allows us to salvage our intuitions about the metaphysicial lightweightness of fictional characters: truth for discourse about fictional characters fails to exert 'Cognityive Command', whereas truth about arithmetic does. (shrink)

"Alternative Selves" and Authority in the Fiction of Jane Urquhart The article engages with "alternative selves," a concept found in The Stone Carvers by a Canadian writer, Jane Urquhart. Her fiction is first seen in the context of selected texts by Lucy Maud Montgomery, Margaret Laurence and Alice Munro, who explore the clash between female characters' conventional roles and their "secret" selves. My analysis was inspired by Pamela Sue Anderson's A Feminist Philosophy of Religion, which stresses the (...) need for "reinventing ourselves as other" in the face of biased beliefs and dominant epistemology. In particular, my article refers to Anderson's concern with Kant's imaginary from The Critique of Pure Reason, where "the territory of pure understanding" is projected on the island, while desire, chaos and death are identified with the sea. Seen through the prism of a feminist reading of the philosophical imaginary, the sea becomes the female beyond. Urquhart's three novels: Away, The Stone Carvers and A Map of Glass dissolve the opposition between Kantian island and water, by showing how reason is invaded by desire and death, and how the female protagonist embodies the elements that have been repressed. Urquhart's fiction, which is "landscape driven," provides the image of a dynamic relationship between the qualities that form a static binary opposition in Kantian discourse. Mary in Away, Klara in The Stone Carvers and Sylvia in A Map of Glass all subvert the dominant epistemology by following their desire, which becomes "a positive energy" and not "a deviation from a good rational norm," to refer to another concept by Anderson. Urquhart's Mary, Klara and Sylvia have to contend with power vested in collective beliefs and stereotypical construction of femininity. By venturing into the liminal zone beyond the territory of "pure understanding," the three protagonists regain their voices and discover their authority. The article ends with the analysis of a Homeric intertext in A Map of Glass, where Sylvia identifies with Odysseus "lashed to mast" so that he would not respond to the call of the siren song. Reading Homer's passage on the siren song, one realizes that the use of the Kantian imaginary turns Ithaca into the island of truth, and the sea into the stormy beyond, identified with desire, death and femaleness. While the Odyssey suppresses the dangerous message of the siren song, Urquhart's fiction rewrites it and reclaims it as positive inspiration for the female protagonist. (shrink)

Ethics and Affects in the Fiction of Alice Munro explores the representation of embodied ethics and affects in Alice Munro's writing. The collection illustrates how Munro's short stories powerfully intersect with important theoretical trends in literary studies, including affect studies, ethical criticism, age studies, disability studies, animal studies, and posthumanism. These essays offer us an Alice Munro who is not the kindly Canadian icon reinforcing small-town verities who was celebrated and perpetuated in acts of national pedagogy with her (...) Nobel Prize win; they ponder, instead, an edgier, messier Munro whose fictions of affective and ethical perplexities disturb rather than comfort. In Munro's fiction, unruly embodiments and affects interfere with normative identity and humanist conventions of the human based on reason and rationality, destabilizing prevailing gender and sexual politics, ethical responsibilities, and affective economies. As these essays make clear, Munro's fiction reminds us of the consequences of everyday affects and the extraordinary ordinariness of the ethical encounters we engage again and again. (shrink)

What is the source of the hardness of the logical must? What does the necessity of mathematical and logical inference consist in? If I am plotting the curve y = x2 and assume that x = 2 I must conclude that y = 4; no other consequence can be drawn. What is the nature of this ‘must'?Understanding Wittgenstein's answer to this question is essential to understanding his later philosophy. The question of the nature of logical or mathematical necessity is as (...) fundamental for the Investigations as it obviously was for the Tractatus. Barry Stroud's article “Wittgenstein and Logical Necessity” certainly is still one of the most illuminating and important of the papers dealing with this question. (shrink)

We develop and defend a novel interpretation of mainstream Marvel Comics—an interpretation we call the Fictional Journalism Interpretation. We then show how this interpretation of Marvel comics (i) challenges standard accounts of the manner in which fictional truths are generated by fictions and (ii) provides us with novel, interesting, and in some cases simpler explanations of, and understandings of, phenomena within these comics that are hard to deal with adequately on more traditional accounts, including both contradictions in the fiction (...) and various metafictional storytelling strategies. We conclude by defending the view from a number of objections. (shrink)

This essay employs strategies drawn from the emergent field of everyday aesthetics to explore the pleasures of reading Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe and Samuel Richardson’s Sir Charles Grandison. As a fictional paradigm, Crusoe has been a paradoxical inspiration, inviting critique as a seductive representative of colonial power, on the one hand, and eliciting admiration for his ability to provoke meaningful artistic and intellectual engagement from a diverse group of writers and thinkers, on the other hand. To many ordinary readers, he (...) has proved company worth keeping as a source of inspiration and personal pleasure primarily through his aesthetic approach to the structuring of everyday life. The fiction of Samuel Richardson continues the focus on the everyday, placing even greater emphasis on the relationship between the ethical and the aesthetic. In his final novel, Sir Charles Grandison, pleasure can scarce be felt without some commentary outlining the contours of moral significance, and the very act of moral reasoning is demonstrably affective for characters and readers alike. The essay ends with consideration of the power of literature, especially the realistic novel, to shape the ordinary lives of everyday readers. (shrink)

"Wilderness" is a concept which has undergone a radical change in recent years. Owing to the scale of global destruction of the wilderness and its various ecosystems, the idea of wilderness has been transformed from its original negative sense as an Other into a matter of public concern. This as replaced the understanding of "wilderness " not only as a place but as a category closely linked with the development of buman culture. As the result of human practice and representation, (...) nature is thus also political Models and concepts of nature in the creative arts can be indicative of a certain culture's relationship with nature, as they communicate prevailing ideologies. This is particularly pertinent to concepts of nature in Canada where wilderness includes vast tracts of forests, lakes and an Arctic North, which has led to a distinctively Canadian relationship between Canadians and their natural environment. The change in the literary representations of interactions between humankind and environment in Canadian fiction - from the "double vision" resulting from the view of the wilderness both as a threatening Other and free space; to the view of threatened nature as a means of identification; and, finally, as a post-modem place of transgression and possibility - invites questions about both the semiotic threshold between nature and culture, and about the function of boundaries in the constitution of identity. (shrink)

Canadian video game developer BioWare’s critically acclaimed Mass Effect video game series has been called the most important science fiction universe of a generation. Whether or not one is inclined to agree, it cannot be denied that Mass Effect matters. It matters not only because of its brilliant narrative and the difficult questions it asks, but also because, as bioethicist Kyle Munkittrick writes, it reflects society as a whole. Mass Effect is a sci-fi epic in the truest sense, (...) spanning over years and across hundreds of planets tucked away in the darkest corners of the galaxy, populated with dozens of species with their own histories, beliefs, cultures, and technologies. Academics and dedicated fans have explored the numerous facets of the game, from its philosophy to time and temporality, fandom ethnographies, and ethics. This article proposes to explore the boundaries of alien sex and the desire for alien others as represented in sci-fi role playing games, and their reinterpretation by fans. Science fiction role playing games in particular enable the production of sexual modalities outside of the constraints of heterosexual norms. Alien sex, animal sex, or monstrous sex are common tropes in fantasy and sci-fi media—the vampire, the werewolf, and monstrous non/in-humans are eroticized and construed conduits of a mainly female sexual desire. However, the example I would like to approach is slightly more radical, both in terms of execution and in terms of media audience response: examples of “alien sex” as illustrated in the Mass Effect video game series, whose canonical representation of alien-human romances invite some interesting questions about either the potential exacerbation, or the rendering-unintelligible of sexual difference, as well as about cross-species desire and about the ontology of the natural and the artificial. (shrink)

Traditionally, analytic philosophers writing on aesthetics have given short shrift to nature. The last thirty years, however, have seen a steady growth of interest in this area. The essays and books now available cover central philosophical issues concerning the nature of the aesthetic and the existence of norms for aesthetic judgement. They also intersect with important issues in environmental philosophy. More recent contributions have opened up new topics, such as the relationship between natural sound and music, the beauty of animals, (...) and the aesthetics of gardens. Using these materials, it is now easy to include a module on the aesthetics of nature as one part of an introductory course on aesthetics, or even to design an entire upper-level undergraduate or graduate seminar around the topic. Author Recommends: Don Mannison, 'Comments Stimulated by Reinhardt's Remarks: A Prolegomenon to a Human Chauvinistic Aesthetic'. Environmental Philosophy. Eds. Don Mannison, Michael McRobbie, and Richard Routley (Canberra: Australian National University, 1980), 212–16. Readers coming fresh to contemporary debates may find the lack of attention to natural beauty in twentieth-century philosophy somewhat puzzling. This paper, which defends the view that nature cannot be aesthetically appreciated as such, presents this attitude in a particularly pure form. Ronald Hepburn, 'Contemporary Aesthetics and the Neglect of Natural Beauty'. British Analytical Philosophy. Eds. Bernard Williams and Alan Montefiore (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1966), 285–310. Reprinted in The Aesthetics of Natural Environments. Eds. Allen Carlson and Arnold Berleant (Peterborough, Ontario: Broadview Press, 2004). This seminal essay marks the beginning of contemporary discussion of the aesthetics of nature. Many of its ideas and themes continue to reverberate in contemporary debates. Allen Carlson, Aesthetics and the Environment: The Appreciation of Nature, Art and Architecture (London: Routledge, 2000). This volume is a collection of Carlson's influential essays on environmental aesthetics. Chapters 4 and 5, 'Appreciation and the Natural Environment' and 'Nature, Aesthetic Judgment, and Objectivity', set the agenda for much subsequent discussion in the aesthetics of nature. Chapter 6, 'Nature and Positive Aesthetics', develops and defends the controversial idea that nature, unlike art, is always aesthetically good. Arnold Berleant, 'The Aesthetics of Art and Nature'. Landscape, Natural Beauty and the Arts. Eds. Salim Kemal and Ivan Gaskell (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 228–43. Reprinted in The Aesthetics of Natural Environments. Eds. Allen Carlson and Arnold Berleant (Peterborough, Ontario: Broadview Press, 2004). In this paper, Berleant presents his influential idea of an 'engaged aesthetics' for nature. Yuriko Saito, 'The Aesthetics of Unscenic Nature'. Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 56 (1998): 101–11. This article develops Saito's idea that ethical considerations play a critical role in the aesthetics of nature, and presents a novel argument for Positive Aesthetics for nature. Malcolm Budd, The Aesthetic Appreciation of Nature: Essays on the Aesthetics of Nature (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002). This book collects Budd's papers on the aesthetics of nature, which contain important criticisms of Carlson's natural environmental model and the notion of Positive Aesthetics for nature. Noël Carroll, 'On Being Moved by Nature: Between Religion and Natural History'. Landscape, Natural Beauty and the Arts. Eds. Salim Kemal and Ivan Gaskell (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 244–66. Reprinted in The Aesthetics of Natural Environments. Eds. Allen Carlson and Arnold Berleant (Peterborough, Ontario: Broadview Press, 2004). This paper argues for the importance of aesthetic appreciation that emphasizes emotional responses to nature. A philosophically sophisticated and influential treatment by a leading aesthetician. Ned Hettinger, 'Allen Carlson's Environmental Aesthetics and Protection of the Environment'. Environmental Ethics 27 (2005): 57–76. In this essay, an environmental philosopher gives careful and thorough consideration to the place of aesthetic considerations in environmental protection, focusing on Carlson's work. John Andrew Fisher, 'What the Hills are Alive With: In Defense of the Sounds of Nature'. Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 56 (1998): 167–79. Reprinted in The Aesthetics of Natural Environments. Eds. Allen Carlson and Arnold Berleant (Peterborough, Ontario: Broadview Press, 2004). Most discussions of nature aesthetics focus on visual experiences; this essay is the first philosophical study of the aesthetics of natural sounds. A nuanced and original paper. Allen Carlson and Arnold Berleant. 'Introduction: The Aesthetics of Nature'. The Aesthetics of Natural Environments. Eds. Allen Carlson and Arnold Berleant (Peterborough, Ontario: Broadview Press, 2004), 11–42. A comprehensive review of the literature, this essay contains the best available bibliography on the subject. Online Materials: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/environmental-aesthetics/ Environmental Aesthetics: Allen Carlson's entry in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. http://www.aesthetics-online.org/articles/index.php?articles_id=17 Teaching Environmental Aesthetics: Allen Carlson's article on the American Society for Aesthetics Web site. http://www.uqtr.uquebec.ca/AE/Vol_6/ Volume 6 of AE: Canadian Aesthetics Journal /Revue canadienne d'esthetique: Papers by Thomas Heyd and Ira Newman on Allen Carlson's book Aesthetics and the Environment, along with a response from Carlson. http://www.contempaesthetics.org/newvolume/pages/article.php?articleID=400 Paradoxes and Puzzles: Appreciating Gardens and Urban Nature: An essay by Stephanie Ross in the online journal Contemporary Aesthetics. Sample Syllabus for a three-week module in an undergraduate aesthetics course: This three week module can easily be adapted to fit shorter available class time or reduced reading expectations for students. A lighter two-week module, for instance, would drop the Hepburn reading and do either the Carroll essay or the Saito essay, but not both. Note that all readings for this module are reprinted in Allen Carlson and Arnold Berleant (eds.), The Aesthetics of Natural Environments (Peterborough, Ontario: Broadview Press, 2004). Week 1: Introduction Reading: Ronald Hepburn, 'Contemporary Aesthetics and the Neglect of Natural Beauty'. British Analytical Philosophy. Eds. Bernard Williams and Alan Montefiore (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1966), 285–310. Discussion of Hepburn's essay will allow the instructor to bring out the distinctive issues and themes of the aesthetics of nature. Week 2: Objectivity or Subjectivity? Readings: Allen Carlson, 'Appreciation and the Natural Environment'. Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 37 (1979): 267–76. Arnold Berleant, 'The Aesthetics of Art and Nature'. Landscape, Natural Beauty and the Arts. Eds. Salim Kemal and Ivan Gaskell (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 228–43. This section covers two very different approaches to thinking about the aesthetic appreciation of nature. Consideration of these provides an opportunity for students to reflect on nature's relationship to art, and on the character of aesthetic experience itself. Week 3: Pluralistic Approaches Readings: Yuriko Saito, 'Appreciating Nature on its Own Terms'. Environmental Ethics 20 (1998): 135–49. Noël Carroll, 'On Being Moved by Nature: Between Religion and Natural History'. Landscape, Natural Beauty and the Arts. Eds. Salim Kemal and Ivan Gaskell (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 244–66. This section considers approaches that are motivated by perceived limitations of the two approaches mentioned above. In discussing these, students will focus on the significance, for the aesthetics of nature, of emotion and also of broader ethical considerations. Sample Syllabus for an upper-level undergraduate or graduate seminar: Books on Syllabus: Glenn Parsons, Aesthetics and Nature [AN] (London: Continuum Press, forthcoming November 2008). Allen Carlson, Aesthetics and the Environment: The Appreciation of Nature, Art and Architecture [AE] (London: Routledge, 2000). Allen Carlson and Arnold Berleant (eds.), The Aesthetics of Natural Environments [ANE] (Peterborough, Ontario: Broadview Press, 2004). Week 1: Introduction Parsons, AN, ch. 1. Allen Carlson, 'Environmental Aesthetics'. The Routledge Companion to Aesthetics. Eds. Berys Gaut and Dominic Lopes (London: Routledge, 2001), 423–36. Don Mannison, 'Comments Stimulated by Reinhardt's Remarks: A Prolegomenon to a Human Chauvinistic Aesthetic'. Environmental Philosophy. Eds. Don Mannison, Michael McRobbie, and Richard Routley (Canberra: Australian National University, 1980), 212–16. Ronald Hepburn, 'Contemporary Aesthetics and the Neglect of Natural Beauty'. British Analytical Philosophy. Eds. Bernard Williams and Alan Montefiore (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1966), 285–310. Reprinted in ANE. Week 2: Imagination Parsons, AN, ch. 2. Thomas Heyd, 'Aesthetic Appreciation and the Many Stories About Nature'. British Journal of Aesthetics 41 (2001): 125–37. Reprinted in ANE. Emily Brady, 'Imagination and the Aesthetic Appreciation of Nature'. Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 56 (1998): 139–47. Reprinted in ANE. Marcia Eaton, 'Fact and Fiction in the Aesthetic Appreciation of Nature'. Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 56 (1998): 149–56. Reprinted in ANE. Week 3: Formalism Parsons, AN, ch. 3. Carlson, 'Formal Qualities and the Natural Environment', AE, ch. 3. Allen Carlson, 'On the Possibility of Quantifying Scenic Beauty'. Landscape Planning 4 (1977): 131–72. Ira Newman, 'Reflections on Allen Carlson's Aesthetics and the Environment'. AE: Canadian Aesthetics Journal /Revue canadienne d'esthetique 6 (2001) http://www.uqtr.uquebec.ca/AE/Vol_6/Carlson/newman.html>. Nick Zangwill, 'Formal Natural Beauty'. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 21 (2001): 209–24. Week 4: Science and Nature Aesthetics Parsons, AN, ch. 4. Aldo Leopold, 'Country'. A Sand County Almanac, with Essays on Conservation from Round River (New York, NY: Ballantine Books, 1966), 177–80. Carlson, 'Appreciation and the Natural Environment', AE, ch. 4. Carlson, 'Nature, Aesthetic Judgment, and Objectivity', AE, ch. 5. Glenn Parsons, 'The Aesthetics of Nature'. Philosophy Compass 2 (2007): 358–72. Week 5: Positive Aesthetics Carlson, 'Nature and Positive Aesthetics', AE, ch. 6. Eugene Hargrove, Foundations of Environmental Ethics (Denton, TX: Environmental Ethics Books, 1996), ch. 6. Yuriko Saito, 'The Aesthetics of Unscenic Nature'. Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 56 (1998): 101–11. Malcolm Budd, 'The Aesthetics of Nature'. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 100 (2000): 137–57. Glenn Parsons, 'Nature Appreciation, Science and Positive Aesthetics'. British Journal of Aesthetics 42 (2002): 279–95. Week 6: Animals Edmund Burke, A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful. Ed. James T. Boulton (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1968 [1757]), Pt. III, sec. VI. Holmes Rolston III, 'Beauty and the Beast: Aesthetic Experience of Wildlife'. Valuing Wildlife: Economic and Social Perspectives. Eds. Daniel J. Decker and Gary R. Goff (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1987), 187–96. Glenn Parsons, 'The Aesthetic Value of Animals'. Environmental Ethics 27 (2007): 151–69. Week 7: Pluralism Parsons, AN, ch. 5. Noël Carroll, 'On Being Moved by Nature: Between Religion and Natural History'. Landscape, Natural Beauty and the Arts. Eds. Salim Kemal and Ivan Gaskell (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 244–66. Reprinted in ANE. Yuriko Saito, 'Appreciating Nature on its Own Terms'. Environmental Ethics 20 (1998): 135–49. Reprinted in ANE. Ronald Hepburn, 'Nature Humanized: Nature Respected'. Environmental Values 7 (1998): 267–79. Ronald Hepburn, 'Trivial and Serious in Aesthetic Appreciation of Nature'. Landscape, Natural Beauty and the Arts. Eds. Salim Kemal and Ivan Gaskell (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 65–80. Glenn Parsons and Allen Carlson, 'New Formalism and the Aesthetic Appreciation of Nature'. Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 62 (2004): 363–76. Week 8: Engagement Parsons, AN, ch. 6. Arnold Berleant, 'The Aesthetics of Art and Nature'. Landscape, Natural Beauty and the Arts. Eds. Salim Kemal and Ivan Gaskell (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 228–43. Reprinted in ANE. Cheryl Foster, 'The Narrative and the Ambient in Environmental Aesthetics'. Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 56 (1998): 127–37. Reprinted in ANE. Allen Carlson, 'Aesthetics and Engagement'. British Journal of Aesthetics 33 (1993): 220–27. Week 9: The Sublime Immanuel Kant, Critique of the Power of Judgment. Trans. P. Guyer and E. Matthews (Cambridge University Press, 2000 [1790]). Excerpts from sections 23–9. Edmund Burke, A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful. Ed. James T. Boulton (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1968 [1757]). Excerpts from Pt. II, sections 1–8. Ronald Hepburn, 'The Concept of the Sublime: Has it any Relevance for Philosophy Today?'. Dialectics and Humanism 15 (1988): 137–55. Stan Godlovitch, 'Icebreakers: Environmentalism and Natural Aesthetics'. Journal of Applied Philosophy 11 (1994): 15–30. Reprinted in ANE. Malcolm Budd, 'Delight in the Natural World: Kant on the Aesthetic Appreciation of Nature. Part I: The Sublime in Nature'. British Journal of Aesthetics 38 (1998): 233–50. Week 10: Aesthetic Preservation Parsons, AN, ch. 7. Janna Thompson, 'Aesthetics and the Value of Nature'. Environmental Ethics 17 (1995): 291–305. Holmes Rolston III, 'From Beauty to Duty: Aesthetics of Nature and Environmental Ethics'. Environment and the Arts: Perspectives on Environmental Aesthetics. Ed. Arnold Berleant (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2002), 127–41. Ned Hettinger, 'Allen Carlson's Environmental Aesthetics and Protection of the Environment'. Environmental Ethics 27 (2005): 57–76. Keekok Lee, 'Beauty for Ever?'. Environmental Values 4 (1995): 213–25. Week 11: Gardens Parsons, AN, ch. 8. Mara Miller, The Garden as an Art (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1993), ch. 1. Mara Miller, 'Gardens as Works of Art: The Problem of Uniqueness'. British Journal of Aesthetics 26 (1986): 252–6. Stephanie Ross, What Gardens Mean (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1998), chs. 1, 7. Tom Leddy, 'Gardens in an Expanded Field'. British Journal of Aesthetics 28 (1988): 327–40. David Cooper, 'In Praise of Gardens'. British Journal of Aesthetics 43 (2003): 101–13. Week 12: Art in Nature Parsons, AN, ch. 9. Carlson, 'Is Environmental Art an Aesthetic Affront to Nature?', AE, ch. 10. Sheila Lintott, 'Ethically Evaluating Land Art: Is It Worth It?'. Ethics, Place & Environment 10 (2007): 263–77. Emily Brady, 'Aesthetic Regard for Nature in Environmental and Land Art'. Ethics, Place & Environment 10 (2007): 287–300. Focus Questions1. Are there any important differences between the aesthetic appreciation of art and the aesthetic appreciation of nature? If so, what are they?2. Is preserving nature for its aesthetic value a coherent idea?3. What is the ugliest natural thing or place you can think of? How might proponents of Positive Aesthetics for nature deal with your example?4. Does the concept of the sublime have any significance for our contemporary experience of nature? If it does, what relation does it bear to our aesthetic appreciation of nature?5. Watch Rivers and Tides (2001), the documentary film about the British environmental artist Andy Goldsworthy. Ethically speaking, how do you think we ought to regard his art-making? (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Grand Manner Aesthetics in LandscapeFrom Canvas to CelluloidEmily E. Auger (bio)Popular films about the environment and related human and material resource issues, particularly colonialism, tend to enhance the appeal of their subject matter by aesthetically transforming it according to audience preferences and tastes. Such mediating strategies are perhaps too familiar to contemporary artists of all types who would prefer to work beyond the limits of what their readers or (...) viewers are prepared to tolerate as entertainment, but the particular emphases and accommodations made by film artists to convey messages about the environment are little changed from those strategies used by painters over the past three centuries to a similar end. The methods by which environmental issues are aestheticized in late-twentieth-century film is directly and historically related to those established for grand manner painters by Nicholas Poussin (1594-1665) and taught at the French academy from the seventeenth through the nineteenth centuries. That these fundamentals were part of the training of artists who would be willing and able to enhance the glory of Louis XIV's absolutist monarchy seems not to have undermined the popular enthusiasm their association with the "classical" past generated outside of France. Thus, the grand manner ideal was repeated, elaborated, and adapted by subsequent British and American artists, teachers, and aestheticians, both amateur and professional, including Joshua Reynolds (1723-92), president of the British academy; theoretician Edmund Burke (1729-97); and such American painters as Benjamin West (1738-1820), Thomas Cole (1801-48), Frederic Church (1826-1900), and Albert Bierstadt (1830-1902).Examples of filmic adaptations of grand manner aesthetics considered here include English director John Boorman's The Emerald Forest (1985) and Anglo-French director Roland Joffé's The Mission (1986), both British productions; Kevin Costner's Dances with Wolves (1990) and John McTiernan's [End Page 96] Medicine Man (1992), both American productions with American directors; and Australian director Bruce Beresford's Black Robe (1991), a Canadian/Australian production based on Irish-born, Canadian novelist Brian Moore's best-selling novel of the same title (1985). While it might be argued that these films merely show the adaptation of academy-based grand manner ideals and principles to new imperialist interests, this article demonstrates how they educate and draw public sympathy to global environmental concerns, albeit with reference to a recognizably Western aesthetic tradition. Thus, the interest of this study to educators and students of the visual arts is twofold: first, it demonstrates the continued adaptation and application of aesthetic principles originally developed in the seventeenth century to a technology-based medium; and second, it shows how those aesthetic principles are currently applied in film to direct and modulate public opinion on matters well beyond the domain of pure or theoretical aesthetics.The grand manner aesthetic, first defined with reference to seventeenth-century painting and still apparent in twentieth-century film, is largely attributable to Poussin since he was an artist who wrote—and wrote well—about his understanding of artistic quality and priorities. He was deeply committed to classicism; he thought the elements of a painting should be idealized rather than realistic and particularized, that those elements should be clearly delineated in a linear manner, that exotic subjects and excessive color should be avoided as both appeal too much to the senses and not enough to the mind, and that figures should always predominate over landscape. Poussin's ideals became the model for students training at the French Academy, an institution officially formed in 1648 under the direct control of the government. Aspiring academicians were exhorted to produce images that were usually composites of the better, and sometimes imagined, aspects of the appearance, character, and deeds of the fictional and historical people, events, and locations that were their subjects. They were never allowed to forgot the hierarchy of value that placed genre painting forever below history painting, yet it cannot have escaped their notice that a certain number of well-executed examples of the lowly still life, domestic interior, and picturesque landscape on the exhibition walls made the "grandness" of more ambitious works more apparent by contrast.The French Academy soon became the envy of foreign upper-level bureaucrats cognizant... (shrink)

In the contemporary postmodern era, the boundaries that once rigidly separated well-established genres have become more fluid, resulting in what scholars Raffaella Baccolini and Tom Moylan call ‘genre-blurring’. This phenomenon of incorporating elements from diverse genres represents a challenge to dominant ideologies and expands the possibilities within fictional texts. The dystopian fiction written by feminist writers towards the end of the twentieth century and beyond significantly exemplifies this form of hybrid textuality. In doing so, these writers seek to renovate (...) the dystopian genre by making it both formally and politically oppositional. This article aims to explore Midnight Robber (2000), a feminist dystopian novel by Nalo Hopkinson, a Jamaican–Canadian writer, to illustrate how the author manipulates the generic boundaries of science fiction, fantasy and mythology. By amalgamating Afro-Caribbean religious and cultural beliefs, mythical creatures and traditional knowledge systems with a technologically advanced future world, Hopkinson challenges the essentially White, Eurocentric model of dystopian fiction. The article will also examine how, as an Afrofuturist writer, Hopkinson attempts to challenge and subvert the patriarchal discourse of dystopian fiction, traditionally dominated by White male writers, through a strong Black female character, Tan-Tan, who seeks to resist the patriarchal structures governing her, and finally succeeds in emerging as a female leader figure. For this purpose, Barbara Creed’s insights into the monstrous-feminine are explored, introducing novelty into the discourse of feminist dystopia. (shrink)

I know that my view offends those who would prefer a noncentrist, or antifederalist, notion of Canadian literature. Davey has repeatedly expressed such a preference in his own criticism. It similarly offends those who believe that new critical voices are beginning to change our perceptions of the canon. I recognize these voices and grant that they may eventually alter our values. So far, very little has changed. It is this assertion that troubles Davey and prompts his central objection: my (...) concept of the canon is unitary, centralist, conservative, monolithic, distorted, and misleading. It is all of these, insofar as it represents my attempt to describe the concept as it has been transmitted in works of Canadian criticism that promote the idea of coherence by arguing the validity of tradition, influence, pattern, or literary solidarity among authors in different eras. Such criticism imagines a unified view of Canadian literature as the reflection of a unified country. It projects a dream of what Northrop Frye called “the peaceable kingdom.”1 In my essay, I emphasize the fictiveness of this dream. Yet this is the fiction that seems to have inspired most Canadian criticism. Although Davey might object to the expression of this dream, the objection doesn’t come to terms with my assertion that the dream of national unity remains the driving force behind the literary and critical values we seek out and support. This force is not rational or empirical, as Davey would have us believe. It is a matter of faith. We create the canon in order to embody a vision of something larger we want to sustain. Robert Lecker is professor of English at McGill University. He is the author of several critical studies, including On the Line , Robert Kroetsch , and An Other I , and coeditor of Essays on Canadian Writing, the multi-volume Canadian Writers and Their Works , and the eight-volume Annotated Bibliography of Canada’s Major Authors . Lecker is currently preparing a collection of essays on the Canadian canon. (shrink)

Then newly elected Labor Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, made a historic statement of “Sorry” for past injustices to Australian Indigenous peoples at the opening of the 2008 federal parliament. In the long-standing absence of a constitutional ‘foundational principle’ to shape positive federal initiatives in this context, there has been speculation that the emphatic Sorry Statement may presage formal constitutional recognition. The debate is long overdue in a nation that only overturned the legal fiction of terra nullius and recognised native (...) title to lan with the High Court’s decision in Mabo in 1992. This article explores the implications of the Sorry Statement in the context of reparations for the generations removed from their families under assimilation policies (known since the Bringing Them Home Inquiry as the Stolen Generations). We draw out the utility of recent human rights statutes—such as the Human Rights Act 2004 (ACT)—as a mechanism for facilitating justice, including compensation for past wrongs. Our primary concern here is whether existing legal processes in Australia hold further capacity to provide reparation for Australian Indigenous peoples or whether their potential in that regard is already exhausted. We compare common law and statutory developments in other international jurisdictions, such as Canada, as an indication of what can be achieved by the law to facilitate better legal, economic and social outcomes for Indigenous peoples. The year 2008 also saw Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper express his apology to residential school victims in the Canadian Parliament, providing thematic and symbolic echoes across these two former colonies, which, despite remaining under the British monarchy, both forge their own path into the future, while confronting their own unique colonial past. We suggest that the momentum provided by the recent public apology and statement of “Sorry” by the newly elected Australian Prime Minister must not be lost. This symbolic utterance as a first act of the 2008 parliamentary year stood in stark contrast to the long-standing recalcitrance of the former Prime Minister John Howard on the matter of a formal apology. Rather than a return to a law enforcement-inspired “three strikes and you’re out” approach, Australia stands poised for an overdue constitutional and human rights-inspired “three ‘sorries’ and you’re in”. (shrink)

Erin Wunker is a feminist killjoy, and she thinks you should be one, too. Following in the tradition of Sara Ahmed (the originator of the concept "feminist killjoy"), Wunker brings memoir, theory, literary criticism, pop culture, and feminist thinking together in this collection of essays that take up Ahmed's project as a multi-faceted lens through which to read the world from a feminist point of view. Neither totemic nor complete, the non-fiction essays that make up Notes from a Feminist (...) Killjoy: Essays on Everyday Life attempt to think publicly about why we need feminism, and especially why we need the figure of the feminist killjoy, now. From the complicated practices of being a mother and a feminist, to building friendship amongst women as a community-building and -sustaining project, to writing that addresses rape culture from the Canadian context and beyond, Notes from a Feminist Killjoy: Essays on Everyday Life invites the reader into a conversation about gender, feminism, and living in our inequitable world. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This article contributes to a better understanding of dystopia’s practical aims by offering a critical defense of what Gregory Claeys calls the “Atwood Principle.” Derived from the writings of Canadian author Margaret Atwood, it establishes a yardstick for separating speculative fiction from science fiction. I argue that, rather than elevating it to the status of a genre definer, the Atwood Principle should be vindicated in terms of a heuristic device for contextually identifying the central mechanism underpinning (...) dystopias: warning through extrapolation. The real challenge, then, is how to make sense of the complex functioning of extrapolation. Instead of viewing it in mechanistic terms, my suggestion is to envisage extrapolation as a dynamic process involving both realism and estrangement. I illustrate this through a contrast between two kinds of stories about the current climate emergency: cautionary and post-cautionary tales of the Anthropocene. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Sophie, Greta, Cuiyuan, and Feminist DesireStories by Ding Ling, Alice Munro, and Eileen ChangYuhui Bao (bio) and Ian Dennis (bio)Desire has a history and, for a literary criticism inflected by mimetic theory, novelistic prose fiction offers a privileged view of its unfolding. We study novelistic fiction, as opposed to various romance genres, to grasp that history, for what its authors have been able to see, understand, and (...) dramatize—this is the procedural model, indeed the authority established by René Girard and that has largely governed such criticism thereafter.1 But of the three short fictions we consider here—two Chinese and one Canadian—only two are fully novelistic in character, in that they attempt to describe and diagnose—rather than merely express—emergent and changing desires. Students of Girard, of course, recognize here the distinction between the romanesque and romantique. to which one might add the understandings of genre developed by a number of other theorists.2However, we might also concede that all fictions are invariably and to some degree romantic—some desire, necessarily mediated, is always operative, in writers and readers alike, before or even as it is demystified, if indeed it is. Furthermore, a passionate fictional commitment to that which Girard boldly [End Page 131] designated the mensonge romantique may actually reveal or clarify, at least for later readers, that which the author seeks half- or unconsciously to conceal. It is with this possibility in mind that we propose to consider our other subject fiction, "Miss Sophie's Diary" (莎菲女士的日记 sha fei nv shi de ri ji; 1927) by the pioneering Chinese woman writer Ding Ling (丁玲 ding ling).3 "Miss Sophie's Diary," to be clear, is no simple romance; it is at least hybrid, and in its brave if perhaps only partially successful pursuit of the truth of desire, subtly revelatory. Miss Sophie (莎菲 sha fei), chronically ill with tuberculosis and half-separated from a human world she both longs for and despises, with her aggrieved sense of superiority and desperate, shameful longing for those she passionately feels to be her inferiors, with her loquacious rationalizing and constant, perverse reversals of attitude, is a kind of Dostoyevskian "underground woman," afflicted as well with a touch of the "nausea" later made prestigious by J.-P. Sartre.4 She is clearly a harbinger of her own culture's precipitation into the world of internally mediated, indeed, metaphysical desire, what we might also call the market world, the modernity Girard credits the great European novelists from Stendhal onward with diagnosing. This story has long been described as an unprecedented and "frank" revelation "of a Chinese woman's sexual feelings and contempt for conventional views," expressing an "outspoken and unrelenting individualism."5 At the same time, it has been seen as a product of the fatally compromised and ultimately unsuccessful May Fourth literary movement,6 and not necessarily representative of its author's overall fictional production. From an orthodox Girardian critical perspective, however, the crucial interpretative question might be the degree to which Ding Ling is aware of the sources of the newly enfranchised desires her heroine wrestles with, or, as we might also put it, the degree of separation between the author's understanding and that of Miss Sophie. But such a question is perhaps easily enough answered. Ding Ling clearly does not share Girard's "novelistic" perspective on the operation of desire. But from our current perspective, does her best-known work nonetheless offer, however imperfectly, certain now-recognizable insights into historical processes of desire that our other two writers more fully realize?"Miss Sophie's Diary" is famous in China for the delicacy, depth, and explicitness with which those bold and passionate sexual desires of Sophie are exposed, even as such desires are (perhaps reassuringly) defeated, or at least revealed as illusory. Clearly the story reflects a period of cultural and personal crisis. "I was extremely confused at that time," she wrote in a later phase of self-critique. "On one hand, I was radically rebellious, believing blindly in social revolution; on the other hand, I indulged myself in a petty bourgeoisie sense, departing from revolution, so I was trapped in loneliness, struggle and misery [End... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Gendered Geographies across Time IBeatriz Hermida Ramos and Miguel Sebastián-MartínEarly Researchers' Seminar for Science and Speculative Fiction, University of Salamanca, Spain, 03 06 2023The first Early Researchers' Seminar for Science and Speculative Fiction: Gendered Geographies across Time showcased the many and diverse approaches to speculative fiction (SF) currently being pursued within the University of Salamanca's English Department, which in a matter of years has become an (...) unexpected hotbed of aspiring SF scholars. A graduate student–led initiative organized by Paula Barba Guerrero (University of Salamanca), the seminar comprised six sessions that took place in spring 2023. The series opened with a keynote by Miriam Borham Puyal (University of Salamanca), followed by five more panels throughout the semester. Open to the public and organized in a hybrid format, the event positioned itself as a welcoming, non-commodified space for the exchange of ideas. To that end, the shared philosophy of the speakers was usually to deliver accessible talks, written not exclusively for established researchers and early career researchers (ECRs), but also catering to graduate and undergraduate populations. Questions ranged, therefore, from the most specialized to the most general—though questions such as "What is SF?" or "What is Utopia?" that might sound "basic" are not taken as such, and these led to the most intensive conversations among the diverse audience. [End Page 299]In the keynote lecture, titled "From Shelley to Braidotti: Posthuman Maternity in Netflix's I Am Mother," Borham Puyal traced a feminist genealogy of the streaming platform's latest speculative thriller by connecting it to Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (1818). Puyal's talk occurred on International Women's Day and, in keeping with the overall seminar subtitle, "Gendered Geographies across Time," the speaker explored such topics as gendered corporealities, vulnerable bodies, and reproductive justice in a technological world. Through the lens of Rosi Braidotti's notion of posthumanism, Puyal investigated I Am Mother's (2019) alternative modes of maternity, belonging, and relationality; the speaker also reflected on the potential of speculative fiction and media to question and to imagine alternatives futures in response to our less-than-perfect present. Puyal's talk sparked a vibrant debate regarding precarity, surrogacy, and the fight for legal control over women and trans* people's bodies. Established professors, ECRs and undergraduate students alike debated the meanings of feminist speculation and posthumanism, particularly the nature of posthuman bodies. The audience responded enthusiastically to the nonhierarchical format of the discussion, which established the seminar—with five events yet to come—as a venue welcoming to everyone, regardless of their academic status or their familiarity with science and speculative fiction.The themes of posthuman perspectives and corporealities reappeared in "Beyond the Human: Posthuman and Ecocritical Perspectives," a panel taking place the following week. Lidia María Cuadrado Payeras (University of Salamanca), and Ana Tejero Marín (University of Salamanca) discussed a set of North American speculative novels that bring together the environmental humanities and posthumanist philosophy, transitioning from the topics of the opening keynote into those of the first thematic cluster. Cuadrado Payeras opened with a methodological discussion on genre and form, drawing from the works of both Braidotti and Margaret Atwood to argue for a queer approach to science fiction, fantasy, and speculative fiction, positioning these categories as porous rather than rigid and separate. Then, Cuadrado Payeras turned to contemporary Canadian authors to explore the nature/technology dyad and its relation to posthumanism. Moving the conversation toward the environmental humanities and the role of capitalism in the current climate crisis, Tejero Marín's talk addressed themes of worldbuilding, ecofeminism, and the Anthropocene in US-American science fiction. Afterward, she analyzed gendered conceptions of the earth and the nonhuman in N. K. Jemisin's Broken Earth trilogy (2015–17), focusing on how the vengeful [End Page 300] Father Earth of Jemisin's work subverts traditional associations between femininity and nature. The first panel ended with a lively discussion, during which both speakers had the opportunity to discuss the necessity of understanding the environmental humanities and posthumanism in dialogue with one another, and the necessity of emphasizing the potential of contemporary stories to help us rethink our relationship... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Girardian Event and the Literary EventThe Scapegoat and Revelation in Alice Munro's "Runaway"Joakim Wrethed (bio)My critics constantly accuse me of switching back and forth between the representation and the reality of what is being represented. Readers who have been following the text attentively will understand that I do not deserve the reproach or, if I do, we all deserve it equally because we affirm the existence of real (...) victims behind the almost mythological texts of medieval persecutors.—René Girard, The Scapegoat, 57Girardian philosophical and theological thinking is founded on events: mainly the two generic events of mimetic desire and the purifying sacrifice. However, in addition, there is more nuanced cognition of evental structures that becomes highlighted, particularly when engaging with literary texts through Girardian concepts. It is my intent here to probe deeply into Girard's evental layers through the analytic encounter with Alice Munro's short story "Runaway," which clearly indicates the existence of "real victims" in the sense Girard describes it in the epigraph just shown, even though obviously Munro's victims are moved into the context of our times through the use of [End Page 53] literature as a form of myth-making. We shall more closely examine the literary event as such and what it may mean in Munro's work, but then also bring relevant insights back into Girard's evental framework to ponder some conceptual timbres in his thinking about the scapegoat and revelation. In the Canadian author's short story we therefore focus on these interrelated topics of revelation and scapegoating in order to analyze them in close connection with Girard. The central claim is that Girard uses founding events to ground the generic aspects of the theory, but in addition the argument suggests that the engagement with Munro's short story reveals that the literary event "overflows" any theoretical appropriation of evental structures. Thus, the cognition of the event displays a hermeneutical circle that moves events back into narrativity, myth, and religion, out of which Girard once derived his central ideas.There are mainly three different aspects that need to be outlined here from the beginning, which constitute an organizing structure that is useful when exposing Munro's fiction to close analysis, namely, Christian revelation, anthropological revelation, and the capacity of events to generate new meaning through the underlying phenomenon of eventfulness. According to Bernard Perret, Girard has two central principles attached to his usage of the concept of "revelation":When he speaks of "Christian revelation," he gives this term its usual theological meaning: that of a self-revelation by God giving access to truths that human reason is unable to discover through its own forces. In addition to this first meaning, Girard on many occasions uses the word "revelation"—or "unveiling," which is almost synonymous—in the sense of a discovery giving access to a rational understanding of anthropological facts.1This seemingly incompatible usage will be an important distinction when we move into the realm of contemporary fiction. Moreover, Girard also adds yet another aspect of the event that needs to be taken into consideration as well, and this is the third characteristic referred to above. Perret stresses that Girard and Christianity as a whole state "that all human existence is characterized by events creative of new meanings."2 This last claim fits the dominion of creative fiction in a fertile way. As we shall see when we approach Munro's rather complex short story, we will have to engage with issues that are in line with Girard's theological thinking, but also with elements that problematize certain aspects of these phenomena. It should be mentioned that the Girard scholar Perret is mainly used in this analysis, since he provides a clear focus on aspects [End Page 54] of Girardian thinking that are particularly relevant. There are references directly to Girard's writing mainly in the notes.In order to set up a meaningful dialogue, we need to first ponder the literary event per se, partly since it is such a broad term but also since not all literary events can be seen as revelatory in the theological sense. I here outline a set... (shrink)

When we are invited to imagine an unacceptable moral proposition to be true in fiction, we feel resistance when we try to imagine it. Despite this, it is nonetheless possible to suppose that the proposition is true. In this paper, I argue that existing accounts of imaginative resistance are unable to explain why only attempts to imagine the truth of moral propositions cause resistance. My suggestion is that imagination, unlike supposition, involves mental imagery and imaginative resistance arises when imagery (...) that one has formed does not match unacceptable propositions. (shrink)

On the report model of appreciating fiction, one imagines learning about a fictional world through a report: reading or viewing someone’s account or listening to them tell their story. On the transparency model, one simply imagines the things that are fictional in the story, without imagining anything about how that information is acquired. It is argued that the transparency model is the default, in literature and cinema, but in comics, it is the report model that is the default.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Ethics, Theory and the NovelLeon SuretteEthics, Theory and the Novel, by David Parker; x & 218 pp. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994, $54.95.David Parker’s stated purpose in Ethics, Theory and the Novel is to ground the value of “canonical works” of literature in the “ethical interest,” which each of them embodies in the meditation and exploration of “the clashes of moral value” (p. 38). He is self-consciously responding (...) to the strictures of neo-Marxism, feminism, and deconstruction which allegedly see “the canon simply as the repository of conservative values” and therefore reject it (p. 51). In order to demonstrate this capacity of imaginative literature Parker provides ethical analyses of scenes in George Eliot’s Middlemarch, Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina, and D. H. Lawrence’s The White Peacock, Women in Love, and Lady Chatterley’s Lover. The book divides into two projects, since Parker also argues for the pertinence of ethics itself quite apart from the value of imaginative literature as a repository of serious ethical thought. Part one makes the theoretical case, and part two applies the theory.For the theory he takes as his champions Martha Nussbaum, Iris Murdoch, the late Australian critic, S. L. Golberg, and the Canadian political scientist, Charles Taylor. From Nussbaum he derives the claim that “literature can be moral philosophy” (p. 34). From Taylor he takes a triadic schema of Western [End Page 247] culture: Judeo-Christian-Kantian, Liberal-Enlightenment-rational, and Romantic-irrational-egoistic (p. 20) as the sources of our ethical thinking. Murdoch and Goldberg are deployed as predecessors in his own practice of ethical analysis of literary works. Parker’s claim is that imaginative literature exhibits the dynamic tensions of these conflicting ethical discourses.Parker’s discussion is intelligent and well-informed. His position is, in my view, perfectly defensible—indeed traditional. That said, this book seems to be as much a symptom of the malaise afflicting literary criticism as a cure. To this reader the theoretical portion is not faithful to any of his champions, but is a dog’s breakfast of “theoretical” postures gathered from Derrida, Cavell, de Man, Rorty, Foucault, and Frederic Jameson—as well as from those named above. The problem is not that Parker misunderstands or misrepresents their thought, but rather that he treats theoretical discourse as a flea market from which he can assemble pre-owned furniture for his own residence.The practice of literary criticism encourages such rummaging among other people’s belongings. It is appropriate for commentators on a literary work of art to select from previous commentary those observations and insights they regard as sound, and to reject or ignore those viewed as unsound. Nonetheless it is difficult to understand how a discourse which finds one leg in Marxist discourse, a second in Freudian, a third in phenomenological, and a fourth in Heideggerean or Derridean discourse can be expected to stand four square.Ethics, Theory and the Novel can be defended as an exercise in bricolage—and quite an impressive one in its own way. Like the handyman, Parker has cobbled together an ethicist criticism out of what is available or ready-at-hand in other discourses. But—as with many a home project—one can still see its flea market provenance. In his critical analysis of the novels, Parker shows himself to be a careful and perceptive reader. But I must confess that his ethical analyses seemed very like old-fashioned moral analysis of character motivation. I would not disagree with his claim that “an ethical vocabulary... is essential to the full understanding of the created fictional situation” (p. 191). However, his argument for a dialogic plurivocity in the ethical discourse of Western fiction is one that has been previously put by Mikhail Bakhtin from within Marxism. It is, I think, a serious oversight that Bakhtin is never mentioned—even though Parker’s position is distinguishable from Bakhtin’s in that his dialogue is between perennial ethical schemata and Bakhtin’s is between hegemonic and subversive discourses.Leon SuretteUniversity of Western OntarioCopyright © 1996 The Johns Hopkins University Press... (shrink)

Apocalyptic fictions abound in contemporary culture, multiplying end-of-the-world fantasies of environmental collapse. Meanwhile, efforts toward global sustainability extrapolate from deep-past trends to predict and manage deep-future scenarios. These narratives converge in “eco-eschatologies,” which work as phantasms that construct our identities, our understanding of the world, and our sense of responsibility in the present. I critique ecoeschatology’s reliance on an interpretation of deep time that treats every temporal moment as interchangeable and projects the future as a chronological extension of the past. (...) This enacts what Jean-Luc Nancy calls the “catastrophe of equivalence” by domesticating the future and obscuring the incommensurability of what resists substitution, conversion, or exchange. By contrast, the renewal of our responsibility toward the future, without apocalypse or apotheosis, requires an intuition of deep time that respects the singular anachronicity of the present and refuses the framing of existence against a background of annihilation. (shrink)

This fictional case study examines a person’s right to privacy, including the protection of their name, voice, and image, in the event that they decide to work at the same establishment where they and/or their relatives receive mental health-related therapeutic care.