Unseeing People: Towards a Clear View of Invisible Characters in Narrative Fiction

This article proposes a critical mapping of invisible characters in narrative fiction that accentuates the complex relationship between literary and social invisibility. It argues that the emerging field of invisibility studies needs to come to terms with the motifs and forms of invisibility as they...

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Autor principal:	Gero Guttzeit
Formato:	article
Lenguaje:	EN FR
Publicado:	Presses Universitaires de la Méditerranée 2021
Materias:	social invisibility literary character narratives of invisibility invisibility studies focalisation silence Arts in general NX1-820 English language PE1-3729 English literature PR1-9680
Acceso en línea:	https://doaj.org/article/a35a4fcf34fb423ab0c365a2848e7291
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id	oai:doaj.org-article:a35a4fcf34fb423ab0c365a2848e7291
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spelling	oai:doaj.org-article:a35a4fcf34fb423ab0c365a2848e72912021-12-02T10:51:54ZUnseeing People: Towards a Clear View of Invisible Characters in Narrative Fiction1168-49172271-544410.4000/ebc.11098https://doaj.org/article/a35a4fcf34fb423ab0c365a2848e72912021-11-01T00:00:00Zhttp://journals.openedition.org/ebc/11098https://doaj.org/toc/1168-4917https://doaj.org/toc/2271-5444This article proposes a critical mapping of invisible characters in narrative fiction that accentuates the complex relationship between literary and social invisibility. It argues that the emerging field of invisibility studies needs to come to terms with the motifs and forms of invisibility as they appear in literary history before and after the critical juncture of Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man (1952), also drawing on H.G. Wells’s The Invisible Man (1897) and Virginia Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway (1925) as primary examples. It maintains that invisible characters emerge in a literary field structured by 1) the socio-political opposition between power and powerlessness; 2) the continuum of realist and non-realist genres; and 3) the form of narration as such, particularly in what narratologists define as focalisation. In such fashion, an analysis of literary ‘unseeing’ in the sense developed in China Miéville’s novel The City & The City (2009) will enable a deeper understanding of social invisibilisation.Gero GuttzeitPresses Universitaires de la Méditerranéearticlesocial invisibilityliterary characternarratives of invisibilityinvisibility studiesfocalisationsilenceArts in generalNX1-820English languagePE1-3729English literaturePR1-9680ENFRÉtudes Britanniques Contemporaines, Vol 61 (2021)
institution	DOAJ
collection	DOAJ
language	EN FR
topic	social invisibility literary character narratives of invisibility invisibility studies focalisation silence Arts in general NX1-820 English language PE1-3729 English literature PR1-9680
spellingShingle	social invisibility literary character narratives of invisibility invisibility studies focalisation silence Arts in general NX1-820 English language PE1-3729 English literature PR1-9680 Gero Guttzeit Unseeing People: Towards a Clear View of Invisible Characters in Narrative Fiction
description	This article proposes a critical mapping of invisible characters in narrative fiction that accentuates the complex relationship between literary and social invisibility. It argues that the emerging field of invisibility studies needs to come to terms with the motifs and forms of invisibility as they appear in literary history before and after the critical juncture of Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man (1952), also drawing on H.G. Wells’s The Invisible Man (1897) and Virginia Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway (1925) as primary examples. It maintains that invisible characters emerge in a literary field structured by 1) the socio-political opposition between power and powerlessness; 2) the continuum of realist and non-realist genres; and 3) the form of narration as such, particularly in what narratologists define as focalisation. In such fashion, an analysis of literary ‘unseeing’ in the sense developed in China Miéville’s novel The City & The City (2009) will enable a deeper understanding of social invisibilisation.
format	article
author	Gero Guttzeit
author_facet	Gero Guttzeit
author_sort	Gero Guttzeit
title	Unseeing People: Towards a Clear View of Invisible Characters in Narrative Fiction
title_short	Unseeing People: Towards a Clear View of Invisible Characters in Narrative Fiction
title_full	Unseeing People: Towards a Clear View of Invisible Characters in Narrative Fiction
title_fullStr	Unseeing People: Towards a Clear View of Invisible Characters in Narrative Fiction
title_full_unstemmed	Unseeing People: Towards a Clear View of Invisible Characters in Narrative Fiction
title_sort	unseeing people: towards a clear view of invisible characters in narrative fiction
publisher	Presses Universitaires de la Méditerranée
publishDate	2021
url	https://doaj.org/article/a35a4fcf34fb423ab0c365a2848e7291
work_keys_str_mv	AT geroguttzeit unseeingpeopletowardsaclearviewofinvisiblecharactersinnarrativefiction
_version_	1718396549134811136

Unseeing People: Towards a Clear View of Invisible Characters in Narrative Fiction

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