The Legacy of Frankenstein’s Creature: Monstrosity and Female Grotesque in Mary Shelley, Angela Carter and Jeanette Winterson

This English Literature thesis (European PhD EDGES – Women’s and Gender Studies – 34th cycle) is an investigation into the representation of the monstrous body according to the British writers Mary Shelley, Angela Carter and Jeanette Winterson. The main objective is to observe how the representation of the categories of monstrous, abject and grotesque in Western cultural imagination have been influenced across time and literary genres. In the novels of Shelley, Carter and Winterson, the monstrous subject is configured as an alternative to the anthropocentric ideal embodied by the normative subject, of which Victor Frankenstein is the paradigmatic exponent. Plus, there are places considered anti-topoi within which the monster acquires a situatedness and claims a voice, generating an opposed counter-narrative to the imaginary conveyed by the normative subject. Monstrosity outlined by Shelley in the novels Frankenstein and The Last Man constitutes the starting point of my research, aiming to observe how the discourse of the normative body vs. the anti-normative body intersects with the discourse of the spaces of the centre vs. the spaces of the margin. In Carter's novels The Passion of New Eve and Nights at the Circus, the monstrous female constitutes the embodiment of wills, desires and claims challenging the heteronormative system. The space of otherness in which Carter's monster-woman is confined becomes a possibility of reshaping identity for the Subject, deconstructing the logic of power that moulded her within society. Finally, Winterson creates two monstrous women in Sexing the Cherry and The Passion who move through urban spaces, going from the centre to the margins and testifying to the arbitrariness of the system and its weaknesses. Similarly, in Frankissstein, Winterson recovers Shelley's original novel and transforms it into a parodic and intertextual speculation on the fluidity of identity and the limits of transhumanism.

Humor, desidealização e sublimação na psicanálise

A motivação principal deste artigo é demonstrar que a metapsicologia do humor se oferece, na obra freudiana, como o paradigma a partir do qual se podem compreender as operações em jogo no processo da sublimação. Percebe-se, assim, que a associação entre duas problemáticas sombreadas pela tradição psicanalítica - o humor e a sublimação - contribui para o esclarecimento de ambas. Ao longo do texto são enfatizados o trabalho de desidealização promovido pelo humor, a modalidade identificatória envolvida na sua produção, a referência do humor negro à condição de orfandade que caracteriza o sujeito moderno, bem como a política que acompanha a anunciação do dito humorístico e, mesmo, do Witz (espirituosidade) de modo geral. Finalmente, demonstra-se a filiação do humor ao realismo grotesco, amplamente analisado por Mikhail Bakhtin, indicando como, na enunciação humorística, é preciso considerar a participação da alegria, sua força motriz.

Narrating the guillotine: Punishment technology as myth and symbol

The work of Michel Foucault sees modern penal technology its ann expression of power that operates through and is motivated by a dry instrumental reason. This article draws upon Durkheim and Bakhtin to advance a radically alternative approach. It is suggested that such technology is invested with sacred and profane symbolism and is understood via emotionally charged, dramatically compelling narrative frames. Tensions between official and unauthorized discourses can be understood through a center/periphery model of culture. In an extended case study of the guillotine, it is shown dial the apparatus was initially legitimated as an expression of a sacred revolutionary code. Such a discourse was subsequently destabilized by popular medical debates that raised the specter of pain after decapitation. While inconclusive, these new motifs mobilized Gothic and grotesque themes that confronted the rationalist aesthetics of the guillotine. A situation of Bakhtinian hetoroglossia eventuated. Uncertainty, the uncanny and fable entered a discursive field of increasing complexity.

Spontaneous morphogenetic juvenilization observed in laboratory populations of vector species of Chagas disease (Triatominae)

Reported are observations on spontaneous occurring morphogenetic juvenilization in laboratory populations of vector species of Chagas disease. Two general effects have been observed: arrested development and uncoordinated development. These are manifested by supernumerary nymphs (6th stage), intermediate nymphal-adult stages, badly deformed adults developed from 5th instar nymphs, uncoordinated development manifested by grotesque forms of adults, supernumerary adults unable to complete metamorphosis and complete supernumerary adults produced by 6th stage nymphs. The reoccurrence of insects with identical grades of juvenilization in the population is an indication that this is a genetic trait that might be inherited. The factors responsible for morphogenetic juvenilization cannot be transmitted through the juvenilized insects because they are sterile, than they were transmitted through normal insects probably as a recessive or a group recessive factors. The spontaneous morphogenetic juvenilization observed in laboratory populations has a striking similarity to juvenilizing effects induced by application of juvenile hormone analogues, described in the literature and also obtained in our laboratory in a study to be published. Thus it is suggested that both; the altered phenotypes occurring in wild populations and their "phenocopies" induced by the application of juvenile hormone analogues are products of gene controlled identical reactions.

A ternura do grotesco no encontro de Paula Rego com Adília Lopes

A ruptura em relação à conceptualização clássica de arte, problematizando o conceito de ‘sublime’ - em que se verificou um abaixamento de valores, da eternidade para a corporalidade - leva-nos ao grotesco e sobre o que se entende por arte, belo e, em consequência, pelo seu contrário. Com este artigo, pretende-se saber de que forma é que o grotesco se dissemina nas pinturas de Paula Rego e os escritos de Adília Lopes e se o que a primeira referiu em relação à obra de Adília e às suas próprias produções, usando o epíteto de “grotesco belo” e possuidor de “muita ternura”, é verificável. As postulações principais sobre o grotesco foram produzidas por Mikhail Bakhtin, Wolfgang Kayser e Victor Hugo. Para além das produções de cada uma das criadoras, foi também observado o cruzamento de ambas no livro “Obra”, uma antologia de Adília Lopes, com imagens da autoria de Rego

A linguagem como corpo grotesco e o feminino em Mário de Sá-Carneiro

Dissertação de mestrado em Teoria da Literatura e Literaturas Lusófonas

Boris Vian dans ses poèmes

El artículo se propone mostrar cómo el estudio de los poemas y canciones de Boris Vian sólo cobra sentido mediante un análisis de conjunto. Tras la aparente dispersión de temas y estilos, bajo la apariencia superficial, cómica y en ocasiones incluso grotesca y banal de sus poemas y canciones, se oculta una unidad y una coherencia profundas y minuciosamente calculadas. Para expresarla Vian huye de las limitaciones de la lógica heredada de Aristóteles y opta por utilizar la técnica del collage, yuxtaponiendo una pluralidad de situaciones y acciones en las que lo real se entremezcla con lo imaginario, cuyo resultado final es la representación de una realidad única, indivisible y a la vez relativa y singular en función de cada individuo, en la que los aparentes antagonismos se revelan como elementos complementarios en el proceso de individualización y conocimiento del «yo» interior.

Sonatine II

Digitoitu 13. 8. 2008.

Vala-lauluja (4)

Digitoitu 13. 8. 2008.

Preludeja op. 17 nrot 2, 6, 9, 10, 11, 12, 15 & 23

Digitoitu 13. 8. 2008.

Blomberg-lauluja, op. 49:4

Digitoitu 13. 8. 2008.

Fiesco-alkusoitto

Digitoitu 13. 8. 2008.

Kivikk'aho-lauluja nrot 1, 2, 6, 3, 4, 5

Digitoitu 13. 8. 2008.

Blomberg-lauluja, op. 50:2

Digitoitu 13. 8. 2008.

Blomberg-lauluja, op. 50:3

Digitoitu 13. 8. 2008.