Reading seeing

literary form, affect, and the creaturely potential of focalization

Roman Bartosch

pp. 215-238

in: Dominik Ohrem, Roman Bartosch (eds), Beyond the human-animal divide, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2017

Abstract

The chapter analyses creaturely relationality in literary fiction. Literary fiction, it is argued, can be understood as a privileged site for spelling out the experience of the creaturely. In this chapter, however, the analytical focus is not one full texts but on particular scenes and the briefest of humanimal encounters that nevertheless have a fundamental narrative impact. Thus‚ the aim of the chapter is to look at (literary) form in the creation of affect and what is described as short moments of "epiphany" or aesthetic calling in which human and animal meet and exchange gazes as points of entry for creaturely interpretive and affective responses.