Haunting encounters : the ethics of reading across boundaries of difference / Joanne Lipson Freed.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Freed, Joanne Lipson, 1983- author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Ghosts in literature.

American fiction--21st century--History and criticism.

American fiction.

American fiction--20th century--History and criticism.

Ghost stories--History and criticism.

Ghost stories.

Supernatural in literature.

Commonwealth fiction (English)--21st century--History and criticism.

Commonwealth fiction (English).

Transnationalism in literature.

Difference (Philosophy) in literature.

Memory in literature.

Psychic trauma in literature.

Commonwealth fiction (English)--20th century--History and criticism.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (pages cm)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Ithaca, New York ; London, [England] : Cornell University Press, 2017.

Language Note:

In English.

Summary:

Acts of cross-cultural reading have ethical consequences. In Haunting Encounters, Joanne Lipson Freed traces the narrative strategies through which certain works of fiction forge connections with their readers across boundaries of difference. Freed uses the idea of haunting-an intense, temporary, and transformative encounter that defies rational understanding-as a metaphor for the kinds of ethical relationships that such works cultivate with their readers across boundaries of difference. Freed points out how such works as Toni Morrison's Beloved, Leslie Marmon Silko's Ceremony, and Arundhati Roy's The God of Small Things strike a delicate balance between empathy and alterity. Their engaging narratives, Freed argues, bring unfamiliar characters and distant settings to life for readers who encounter them as "other," but they also highlight the limits of fiction, holding in check the impulse to colonize another's experience with one's own. Haunting Encounters is a sensitive and perceptive application of theory to real-world concerns. It draws together the fields of postcolonial fiction and narrative ethics and suggests original modes of engagement between readers and books that promise new ways of looking at the world.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction

1. Figures of Estrangement

2. Telling the Traumas of History

3. Invisible Victims, Visible Absences

4. Haunting Futures and the Dystopian Imagination

Conclusion

Notes

Bibliography

Index

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (EBC, viewed December 5, 2017).

ISBN:

9781501713828

1501713825

OCLC:

983786521