Concentric: Studies in English Literature and Linguistics

Permanent URI for this collectionhttp://rportal.lib.ntnu.edu.tw/handle/20.500.12235/219

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    (英語學系, 2017-03-??) Gry Ulstein
    This paper investigates and compares language and imagery used by contemporary ecocritics in order to argue that the Anthropocene discourse contains significant parallels to cosmic horror discourse and (new) weird literature. While monsters from the traditional, Lovecraftian weird lend themselves well to Anthropocene allegory due to the coinciding fear affect in both discourses, the new weird genre experiments with ways to move beyond cosmic fear, thereby reimagining the human position in the context of the Anthropocene. Jeff VanderMeer’s trilogy The Southern Reach (2014) presents an alien system of assimilation and ecological mutation into which the characters are launched. It does this in a manner that brings into question human hierarchical coexistence with nonhumans while also exposing the ineffectiveness of current existential norms. This paper argues that new weird stories such as VanderMeer’s are able to rework and dispel the fearful paralysis of cosmic horror found in Lovecraft’s literature and of Anthropocene monsters in ecocritical debate. The Southern Reach and the new weird welcome the monstrous as kin rather than enemy.
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    The Horror of Dasein:Reading Steele’s “The Days Between”
    (英語學系, 2011-03-??) Chia Yi Lee
    “The Days Between” is a story that appears as the second chapter of the novel Coyote, written by American science fiction writer Allen Steele. It tells of a man, Gillis, who lives all alone on a spaceship for 32 years—the other crew members being in an extended state of deep sleep or biostasis—and then dies in a random accident, 198 years before the ship will arrive at the planet Coyote. This paper begins from a Heideggerian interpretation of Gillis’sexistential condition, and then argues that Gillis’s unique existence presents a challenge to Heidegger’s grounding assumption of a being-in that constitutes both Dasein and its world. In the conclusion, the potential role of science fiction as a literary genre is discussed in relation to Heidegger’s own thinking about technology and art, with the suggestion that science fiction may be needed today for its power, a saving one likely, to elicit a responsible response to the pervasive technological instrumentalization.