In the 18th and 19th centuries, a certain genre was popular in Britain: it-narratives. In it-narratives, an animal or an inanimate object like a coin, pin, or banknote is turned into a protagonist – and sometimes a narrator – and followed as it moves across space and time, affecting animate and inanimate agents alike. The last decades have witnessed the emergence of what can be referred to as a ‘new generation’ of it-narratives. Contemporary Anglophone novels exhibit a preoccupation with objects and the material world. Some of them share striking features with traditional it-narratives of the 18th and 19th centuries. Often, one object is the main object which acts as the narrator, guides and structures the story or serves as the axis around which other characters’ stories spin while moving in the world and being given from hand to hand. This study focuses on analysing the role, function and meaning of human-made, mobile objects in these contemporary Anglophone novels and examining what forms the relationship between subjects and objects takes. As humans and objects are connected through stories and storytelling, this book investigates how the relationship between subjects and objects is constituted through stories and storytelling. By discarding a purely human-centric perspective on the world and turning the attention to objects to account for the inanimate, this study wants to make visible the interactions and interdependencies of objects and humans. Doing that, it seeks to contribute to the rethinking and reevaluation of the subject-object relationship in the 21st century.
CONTENTS
1 Introduction: Objects in Literature in the 21st Century: a New Generation of It-Narratives 1
2 Approaches to the Subject-Object Relationship 10
2.1 Defining the Object: Central Terminology 10
2.2 The Nonhuman Turn in the Humanities and Literature 12
2.2.1 Rethinking the Subject-Object Relationship: New Materialism 13
2.2.2 Thing Theory: The Role of Literature in Dealing with Objects 15
2.3 Exploring the Relationship between Subjects and Objects through Material Culture 17
2.3.1 Defining Material Culture 17
2.3.2 The Meaning of Objects: Objects as Signs 18
2.4 Exploring the Relationship between Subjects and Objects through the Analysis of Storytelling 20
2.4.1 Storytelling as a Human Activity: The Connection of Objects and Stories 20
2.4.2 The Narrative Potential of Objects 21
2.5 The Role of Identity Formation in Constituting the Subject-Object Relationship 22
2.5.1 The Narrative Construction of Identity 22
2.5.2 Introducing Narrative Identity 23
2.5.3 How Humans Rely on Objects to Construct Their (Narrative) Identity 25
2.6 The Role of Memory in Constituting the Subject-Object Relationship 25
2.6.1 Cultural Memory 26
2.6.2 Memory and Objects 26
2.7 Objects in Literature 28
2.7.1 Objects in Literature as a Genre: It-Narratives from the 18th to the 20th Century 28
2.7.2 Contemporary It-Narratives 32
3 The Nexus of Objects and Narratives: Life Stories and Identities in Four Contemporary It-Narratives 34
3.1 A Biography of Objects and Subjects: Connecting Object Biography, Identity and a Family’s Life Story in The Hare with Amber Eyes 35
3.1.1 A “History of Touch”: The Role of the Body and the Senses in the Encounter between Humans and Objects 36
3.1.2 “Storied Things”: How the Netsuke Are Connected with Stories and Storytelling 40
3.1.3 The Interconnection between Object Biographies and People’s Life Stories in The Hare with Amber Eyes 42
3.2 The Social Life of a Book: How the Haggadah Contains People’s Hidden Stories in People of the Book 52
3.2.1 The Search for Knowledge: Uncovering the Haggadah’s Story through its Materiality 53
3.2.2 “Too Many Books Burned in the World”: The Haggadah in the Tension between Society and the Individual 55
3.3 A Story of the Self: Objects and Narrative Identity in The History of Love 61
3.3.1 “Destined to Change a Life”: How Leo’s Book The History of Love Connects People’s Fates 62
3.3.2 How Objects Are Used to Create Personal Identity and Family Ties 68
3.3.3 “The Novel of My Life”: Loss, Silence and Imagination in Leo’s Autobiography Words for Everything 71
3.4 Of Accordions and Men: The Commodification of Immigrants and Identity Formation through Objects in Accordion Crimes 79
3.4.1 The Episodic Structure of the Green Accordion’s Biography 79
3.4.2 “You Are a Shoe”: The Immigrant Experience in America 84
3.4.3 Establishing Ethnic Identity through Accordion Music in Accordion Crimes 87
4 Retrospective Narration: The Nexus of Objects and Memory 92
4.1 The Burden of Memories and the Transformative Power of Objects in The Memory Collectors 92
4.1.1 The Affective Capabilities of Objects 93
4.1.2 “There Is a Story in Each Object”: How Objects Are Connected with Memories and Emotions 98
4.1.3 The Power of Objects over People: Hoarding as Addictive Collecting and the “Call of the Scissors” 105
4.1.4 The Transformative Power of Objects and Memories 113
4.2 The Power of Memory and Storytelling: A Story of Loss and Rediscovery in The Keeper of Lost Things 118
4.2.1 “Precious Memories”: The Connection of Objects, Memory and Loss 119
4.2.2 “Lost and Found”: The Nexus of Objects, Storytelling and Memory 123
4.3 Autobiographical Memory through Objects: The Interplay of Memory and Identity in Great House 130
4.3.1 The Burden of Inherited Loss: How the Desk Impacts People’s Lives through its Absence and Presence 131
4.3.2 “The Story of How I Became a Writer”: The Desk’s Role in Nadia’s Life Story 139
5 Object Narration: The Agency of Objects 151
5.1 “The Bowl with Soul”: Subjectivity and Agency of Objects in The Collector Collector 152
5.1.1 “Thinking Ceramic”: The Bowl as It-Narrator and Other Parallels to It-Narratives of the 18th and 19th Centuries 152
5.1.2 The Interweaving of the Inanimate and the Animate World in The Collector Collector 158
5.2 Entangled Lives, Entangled Realities: Blurred Boundaries between Subjects and Objects in Anatomy of a Soldier 164
5.2.1 A Change of Perspective: How Object Narration and Focalisation Uncover the Entangled Realities of Objects and Humans 165
5.2.2 Relational Agency: How Objects and People Act in a Network of Relationships 173
6 Conclusion: The Subject-Object Relationship in 21st-Century It-Narratives – Reciprocal, Vibrant and Entangled 181
Works Cited 191