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題名 Unsettling the Yoke of Humanity: T. C. Boyle`s Strange Man, Apes, and Dog Woman
作者 Wu, Wei-bon
貢獻者 文山評論:文學與文化
關鍵詞 animality  ;  domesticity  ;  feral  ;  persona-mask  ;  threshold  ;  humanity
日期 2020-06
上傳時間 12-Nov-2020 14:30:59 (UTC+8)
摘要 Through his novella "Wild Child" and a collection of short stories published in the past four decades, T. C. Boyle engages in a train of thought experiments on crossing the threshold between absolute humanity and animality. On one side of the threshold is "humanized man": civilized, socialized, and categorized humans who are purged and cleansed of animality. On the other side is "animalized man": humans affected or shaped by the animality of other species. In "Wild Child" (2010), Boyle reimagines one of the most well-known feral children, Victor, the Wild Boy of Aveyron. Captured as a naked boy running wild in the forest, Victor is brought back to human society but refuses to be domesticated. Boyle`s "Descent of Man" (1974) marks another level of interconnectedness between the human race and another species. The story portrays a woman falling in love with a "humanized" erudite chimpanzee named Konrad, who reappears in "The Ape Lady in Retirement" (1988), in which he is transformed into something between chimp and man. In "Dogology" (2005), the heroine Cynthia literally roams among a pack of dogs. By correlating Boyle`s human-animal stories, this paper aims to demonstrate that the "strange" characters` ferality holds the key to destabilizing anthropogenic essentialism, defying compliant domestication, and breaching the nature/nurture divide.
關聯 文山評論:文學與文化, 13(2), 183-207
資料類型 article
DOI https://doi.org/10.30395/WSR.202006_13(2).0008 
dc.contributor 文山評論:文學與文化
dc.creator (作者) Wu, Wei-bon
dc.date (日期) 2020-06
dc.date.accessioned 12-Nov-2020 14:30:59 (UTC+8)-
dc.date.available 12-Nov-2020 14:30:59 (UTC+8)-
dc.date.issued (上傳時間) 12-Nov-2020 14:30:59 (UTC+8)-
dc.identifier.uri (URI) http://nccur.lib.nccu.edu.tw/handle/140.119/132525-
dc.description.abstract (摘要) Through his novella "Wild Child" and a collection of short stories published in the past four decades, T. C. Boyle engages in a train of thought experiments on crossing the threshold between absolute humanity and animality. On one side of the threshold is "humanized man": civilized, socialized, and categorized humans who are purged and cleansed of animality. On the other side is "animalized man": humans affected or shaped by the animality of other species. In "Wild Child" (2010), Boyle reimagines one of the most well-known feral children, Victor, the Wild Boy of Aveyron. Captured as a naked boy running wild in the forest, Victor is brought back to human society but refuses to be domesticated. Boyle`s "Descent of Man" (1974) marks another level of interconnectedness between the human race and another species. The story portrays a woman falling in love with a "humanized" erudite chimpanzee named Konrad, who reappears in "The Ape Lady in Retirement" (1988), in which he is transformed into something between chimp and man. In "Dogology" (2005), the heroine Cynthia literally roams among a pack of dogs. By correlating Boyle`s human-animal stories, this paper aims to demonstrate that the "strange" characters` ferality holds the key to destabilizing anthropogenic essentialism, defying compliant domestication, and breaching the nature/nurture divide.
dc.format.extent 269950 bytes-
dc.format.mimetype application/pdf-
dc.relation (關聯) 文山評論:文學與文化, 13(2), 183-207
dc.subject (關鍵詞) animality  ;  domesticity  ;  feral  ;  persona-mask  ;  threshold  ;  humanity
dc.title (題名) Unsettling the Yoke of Humanity: T. C. Boyle`s Strange Man, Apes, and Dog Woman
dc.type (資料類型) article
dc.identifier.doi (DOI) 10.30395/WSR.202006_13(2).0008 
dc.doi.uri (DOI) https://doi.org/10.30395/WSR.202006_13(2).0008