This study analyses the presence of more-than-human beings, particularly animal figurations, in two works of diverse literary genres, namely: the poem “The albatross”(1861) by Charles Baudelaire and the short story “The house of Asterion”(1947) by Jorge Luis Borges through the lens of theories on the animal turn. Previous studies on both the poem and the short story analyzed the animal (albatross and minotaur) in allegorical or metaphorical terms emphasizing a human-centered perspective.However, this study maps an encounter between voice (human and hybrid) and the more-than-human being beyond rhetorical figures, that is, seeking material and affective sites of contact that speak of a continuum between entities deemed ontologically different. Analyzing the mentioned literary works through Guarramuño`s concept of worlds in common, in both the poem and the short story, we identify that certain aspects of the voice act as a shared space in which the materiality of the more-than-human being encounters the human and in which both beings exhibit a common affective pattern. Subsequently, through Derrida`s idea of distance-closenesswe analyze aspects of the voices that cross the animal-human border, where the language is revealed as a false superiority with respect to other forms of communication beyond the human word. In this respect, the analysis reveals an affective zone where uncertainty marks the encounter between human and animal, bringing closer animal an human domains. Our study revealsthat, both in the poem and the short story, however precarious and limited, the encounter between human voices and animal can be said to go beyond rhetorical figures. Indeed, this encounter reveales in this study as an affective continuum in the relationship between voices and more-than-human beings, which questions the opposition human-animal and therefore the superiority of the human regarding other sentient beings
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:su-190623 |
| Date | January 2019 |
| Creators | Tellini, Oscar Sebastian |
| Publisher | Stockholms universitet, Romanska och klassiska institutionen |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | Spanish |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Student thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
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