Metaphor, Animals, Modernism

Beschreibung

“Metaphor, Animals, Modernism offers a powerful rethinking of what it means to respond to literature in the wake of the animal turn. Trejling restores to metaphor its ethical and imaginative force, and shows how we can read more responsibly, with greater attentiveness and vulnerability towards the haunting strangeness of language, which is to say its literarity—or rather, though perhaps it amounts to the same thing, its animality.” 

—Kári Driscoll, Department of Languages, Literature and Communication, Utrecht University, Netherlands 

“Metaphor, Animals, Modernism rightly calls literary animal studies scholars to a new humility, and a new lucidity, about the metaphorical and its relation to animals. Providing a much-needed and compelling corrective to critical anxieties around animal metaphors, this study unfastens the plenitudes within metaphor and its haunting significations. Demonstrating just how untamed and teeming animal metaphors really are, Metaphor, Animals, Modernism deftly reminds readers and theorists of the lavish intricacies of metaphoricity, and thereby opens countless new paths for further work in animal studies.” 

—Carrie Rohman, Department of English, Lafayette College, USA 

Metaphor is of vital concern to the discipline of literary studies as well as the field of animal studies. Drawing on Jacques Derrida’s philosophy and Paul Ricœur’s tropology, this book studies the spectrality of metaphor in relation to animal figures in D.H. Lawrence’s The Rainbow, H.D.’s Asphodel, and Virginia Woolf’s The Waves. The analyses show that metaphor and animals alike can invite literarity—a textual hospitality toward otherness—into a work. In this, Trejling confronts the notion of metaphor as substitutional—a metaphysical idea prevalent in animal studies and the posthumanities. In challenging this perception, Metaphor, Animals, Modernism demonstrates that the spectrality of metaphor can make literature a site where readers can encounter a creature—not to name, tame, or train it, but to speak to it, and to await its response. 

Maria Trejling is Postdoctoral Fellow at Halmstad University, Sweden. Her research explores the modes of reading demanded by literature. She received her PhD from Stockholm University, Sweden, with a dissertation awarded by the Swedish Academy as a laudable work in Literary Studies. 

Metaphor is of vital concern to the discipline of literary studies as well as the field of animal studies. Drawing on Jacques Derrida’s philosophy and Paul Ricœur’s tropology, this book studies the spectrality of metaphor in relation to animal figures in D.H. Lawrence’s The Rainbow, H.D.’s Asphodel, and Virginia Woolf’s The Waves. The analyses show that metaphor and animals alike can invite literarity—a textual hospitality toward otherness—into a work. In this, Trejling confronts the notion of metaphor as substitutional—a metaphysical idea prevalent in animal studies and the posthumanities. In challenging this perception, Metaphor, Animals, Modernism demonstrates that the spectrality of metaphor can make literature a site where readers can encounter a creature—not to name, tame, or train it, but to speak to it, and to await its response.

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Maria Trejling

Themen in »Metaphor, Animals, Modernism«

Literature and Animal Studies Metaphor Zoopoetics Modernism Deconstruction Animal Metaphor Literary Metaphor

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“Metaphor, Animals, Modernism offers a powerful rethinking of what it means to respond to literature in the wake of the animal turn. Trejling restores to metaphor its ethical and imaginative force, and shows how we can read more responsibly, with greater attentiveness and vulnerability towards the haunting strangeness of language, which is to say its literarity—or rather, though perhaps it amounts to the same thing, its animality.” (Kári Driscoll, Assistant Professor, Department of Languages, Literature and Communication, Utrecht University, Netherlands)

“Trejling’s Metaphor, Animals, Modernism is a stunning exploration of the twists and turns that tropes of animality introduce into modernist literature. Taking inspiration from the deconstructive writings of Jacques Derrida, Trejling goes against the grain of animal studies by mounting a far-reaching defense of metaphor. Not only is this oft-derided figure integral to the literary, as she demonstrates in deft readings of D.H. Lawrence, H.D., and Virginia Woolf, but its spectral animal figurations offer powerful sources of otherness to which we would be wise to attend.” (Adam R. Rosenthal, Associate Professor, Department of Global Languages and Cultures, Texas A&M University, USA)

“Allow Metaphor, Animals, Modernism to reintroduce you to territories still frequently taken to be discrete or wholly familiar or even embattled. Enjoy the scholarship of this volume as it elegantly unearths the spectral stakes of metaphor, the strange work of which enriches both animal and literary studies through elaborating their mutual involvement without subduing one to the other.” (Lynn Turner, Reader, School of Art, Goldsmiths, University of London, UK)

“Metaphor, Animals, Modernism rightly calls literary animal studies scholars to a new humility, and a new lucidity, about the metaphorical and its relation to animals. Providing a much-needed and compelling corrective to critical anxieties around animal metaphors, this study unfastens the plenitudes within metaphor and its haunting significations. Demonstrating just how untamed and teeming animal metaphors really are, Metaphor, Animals, Modernism deftly reminds readers and theorists of the lavish intricacies of metaphoricity, and thereby opens countless new paths for further work in animal studies.” (Carrie Rohman, Professor, Department of English, Lafayette College, USA)

“Through engagements with literary texts by D.H. Lawrence, Virginia Woolf, and H.D. (or Hilda Doolittle), Trejling’s book makes an outstanding and important contribution to animal studies by drawing on Jacques Derrida’s adaption of ‘literarity’ and Paul Ricoeur’s notion of metaphor to reveal the ways in which animals haunt literary texts, and so enabling readers to encounter animals differently.” (Nicole Anderson, Professor, School of Communication, Society and Culture, Macquarie University, Australia)

“This beautifully-crafted book invites us beyond the positions we thought we knew in literary animal studies. Through meticulous readings of Lawrence, H. D. and Woolf, Trejling speaks from and for the actuality and autonomy of animals in their renewal of metaphor, the spectral heart of the literary. By turns rigorous and moving, this is an indispensable contribution to modernist studies.” (Jeff Wallace, Professor Emeritus, School of Education & Social Policy, Cardiff Metropolitan University, UK)

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