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Human Uniqueness: You’re Special, just like Everyone Else

January 16, 2018

comparing, death, identity, life, musings, society, success

Ah, human uniqueness… What a funny fallacy. The human experience consists of a series of contradictions. How many times have you wanted to be left alone, secretly wishing you would be nevertheless not? And how many times have you done something fully aware of the fact that it would lead to unpleasant results?

How many times have you wanted to feel the center of attention, at the same time feeling excessively self-conscious, loathing all the attention you’re after all getting? Humans love being deluded, and they adore fooling themselves.

It might be a coping mechanism, I am not qualified to say. But perhaps this is the most valid argument for human uniqueness: no other creature must be so capable at containing so contradicting ideas in their consciousness.

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Authorial Intention and the Chaos of Meaning

January 9, 2018

Literature

comparing, creativity, literature, meaning, subjectivity, writing

Authorial intention must be among the most perverse – yes, perverse – things in connection with literary criticism. By the term “authorial intention” we mean, self-evidently, what the author’s intention was when writing a certain piece of work.

In other words, authorial intention refers to expressing a meaning the writer intended. For many people, there really isn’t any mystery: Writer A wrote book B, therefore the meaning expressed in book B is what writer A intended. However, as we will see in more detail further below, this is an excessively simplistic approach.

Problems begin once we realize that there never really is only one reader. Again, this might appear as self-evident, but it is important to emphasize the repercussions: Are we really certain that reader C and reader D have interpreted book B in the same (or even similar) manner?

Indeed, even the same reader can have two different responses to the same book on a subsequent reading. Think of a book you loved as a teenager – let’s assume, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. Think of the second time you read that book, perhaps years later. Some things didn’t feel as interesting, while others you discovered for the first time. You had two readerly responses, being one individual, for the same book.

authorial intention, chaos, meaning — Chaos, meaning, and authorial intention. What’s the connection?

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Differences between Gothic and Horror (and Science Fiction)

January 7, 2018

Criticism

academia, comparing, criticism, Gothic, horror, science fiction

Categorizing a work of fiction might initially seem like an easy task. There doesn’t seem to be anything complicated about, say, Stephen King’s The Shining. It is a horror novel; just as Bram Stoker’s Dracula belongs to the Gothic genre (kind of; more about it in a moment), or C. L. Moore’s “Vintage Season” to the science fiction genre. But there is a vast number of works that seem to be awkwardly placed in the no-man’s-land between genres. What would, then, be the differences between Gothic and horror fiction? Or Gothic and science fiction?

The question might initially seem pointless to you. Surely, one might say, the differences between Gothic and science fiction novels are huge. However, that’s not true. As Brian Aldiss has argued, science fiction is “characteristically cast in the Gothic or post-Gothic mode” (1986, 25). In other words, both science fiction and the Gothic deep down use similar conventions and are predicated on similar fears.

Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, one of the most famous works of the Gothic canon, is also considered to be the first science fiction novel – and for good reason. How would you categorize Frankenstein? Is it a Gothic novel, a horror novel, or a science fiction novel? And why?

differences between Gothic, horror, science fiction — Science fiction, Gothic, horror, steampunk, fantasy… What’s going on?

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