Books by Essi Varis
JYU Dissertations 73, 2019
This article-based doctoral dissertation explores how fictional characters unfold and function in... more This article-based doctoral dissertation explores how fictional characters unfold and function in the cognitive interactions and tensions that take place between texts and readers. The focus is on multimodal characters of graphic narratives. Accordingly, the theoretical framework combines some of the central insights of comics studies with various theoretical views on fictional characters and various premises of cognitive narrative studies. The analyzed series were picked from the corpus of DC Comics’ Vertigo imprint, which publishes experimental, intertextual series for adult readers. One of them, Neil Gaiman and J. H. Williams III’s miniseries The Sandman: Overture (2013–2015), was subjected to cognitive comics analysis, the purpose of which was to investigate how the comic’s alien characters inject a sense of nonhuman otherness in the reading experience. The other target text, Mike Carey and Peter Gross’ metafictional series The Unwritten (2009–2015) compares Frankenstein’s monster to fictional characters: both are artificial creations assembled out of diverse materials, but still have a semblance of life and humanity. This analogy constitutes the backbone of the extensive theoretical fusion and speculation performed throughout the work. The Creature’s journey from assorted fragments into a sentient, rebellious being is likened to the developments between structuralist, cognitive and transmedial character theories, for instance. Additionally, Frankenstein’s handiwork and the wanderings of his collage-like creation steer the attention towards the ways characters and their parts are recycled from text to text and from medium to medium. These transtextual processes are shaped both by the commercial interests of the creative industries and by the communities of readers, whose cognitive engagements ultimately grant the characters a spark of life. Based on the case studies conducted in the four articles, the dissertation suggests a new enactivist theory of fictional figures. Characters are experienced as dynamic and life-like because readers enact them as such in their interactions with texts and other readers, and because these textual, social and cultural environments offer possibilities for such cognitive actions. These interpretational processes are profoundly relational, open-ended and subjective, which imbues characters with monstrous paradoxicality and instability: they are both text and cognition, both mimetic and synthetic, both incomplete and forever open to new meanings.
Licentiate's dissertation exploring how literary theories of character could be applied to comics... more Licentiate's dissertation exploring how literary theories of character could be applied to comics and graphic novels. Discusses E.M. Forster's (1927), W.J. Harvey's (1965), Baruch Hochman's (1985) and Aleid Fokkema's (1991) character theories. Includes case studies on Art Spiegelman's "Maus", Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons' "Watchmen", Neil Gaiman et al.'s "The Sandman" and Mike Carey and Pete Gross' "The Unwritten".
Articles by Essi Varis
The article discusses comic book characters as products of experience economy: how have character... more The article discusses comic book characters as products of experience economy: how have characters both facilitated and been affected by the marketing, transmedialization, and fan cultures of comics? It comprises a chapter in an interdisciplinary anthology exploring the connections between different cultural productions and the workings of experience economy.
Framescapes: Graphic Narrative Intertexts (2016, e-book)
It is no secret that comics' formal structure resembles a pastiche: images, words and gaps of dif... more It is no secret that comics' formal structure resembles a pastiche: images, words and gaps of different styles, origins and abstraction levels mix to tell a story that is more than their sum. Is it any wonder, then, that modern, myth-driven graphic novels tend to borrow their content elements – such as characters – from several heterogeneous sources as well? Wolfgang G. Müller's little known but widely applicable theory of interfigurality (1991) shows how literary characters gain depth and resonance by sharing elements with characters in other works. This paper revises his theory and shows how it could also be used in the analysis of comic book characters.
Fantasy comics from Vertigo series like Fables and The Sandman to works like Hellboy or The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen draw their new-found scholarly appeal from their eclectic, literary character galleries. Especially Mike Carey and Peter Gross' The Unwritten (2009–) realizes every type of interfigurality Müller has identified in experimental literature, and even adds alternatives of its own. Close reading of this on-going series underlines that interfigurality is a flexible, transmedial phenomenon: characters of words and pictures can parallel and reuse elements from purely textual characters in imaginative ways. This flexibility, however, renders Müller's name-bound character concept insufficient. As comparing characters to one another – especially transmedially – would not be possible without complex cognitive processes, Müller's structuralistic view implies and should be supplemented with a cognitive basis.
Thus, combined with the cognitive character theories developed by Baruch Hochman (1985) and Aleid Fokkema (1991), Müller's notion of interfigurality becomes a viable analyzing tool for narratives of all kinds. Since comics is a medium of gaps, fragments and "the invisible", its heroes often read like puzzles, and some central pieces can occasionally be found through interfigural speculations.
Conference papers by Essi Varis
IVFAF: Children of the Night - Vampires in Popular Culture conference, 2017
Richie (to his friend Lizzie who is presently crossing two sticks together): What are you doing?
... more Richie (to his friend Lizzie who is presently crossing two sticks together): What are you doing?
Lizzie: I’m working out the rules. Where can I get some garlic?
(Carey & Gross (2011) The Unwritten #20, [19].)
The Unwritten (2010¬-2015), a recent series of Vertigo fantasy comics created by writer Mike Carey and artist Peter Gross, discusses several unresolvable metafictional problems, mostly from the point of view of its self-consciously fictional characters. One of the trickiest, and perhaps the most central to the plot, is the characters’ relations to the work’s many intersecting genre conventions: can the protagonists exploit them, or are they ultimately unable to avoid becoming exploited by them? This peculiar push-and-pull between the characters’ designed, predestined fictional aspect and their willful, mimetic human aspect is made visible especially through two prominent vampire characters. Once the protagonist’s sidekick, Richie Savoy gets bitten, his relation to reality starts shifting: he finds himself a slave to familiar vampiric tropes, including bloodlust and super-sensitivity to sensory stimuli. Despite Savoy’s insistence that vampires do not exist in the storyworld he resides, the bite of this fictional creature seems to have infected him with generic “rules” that invade and control him like a disease, making him “less real” and more prone to certain roles, actions, habits, and dispositions. By contrast, when the antagonist, Count Ambrosio, hunts, it is him who appears to twist the storyworld around him: darkness spreads, and red-eyed wolves and bats come out to set him an appropriate stage. Yet, not even these two cases together have been enough to brand the entire series a ‘vampire comic’. To sum, then, The Unwritten implicitly evokes questions about the dynamics of character, trope, and genre: which motivates which, specifically in the case of vampire narratives?
In my presentation, I will seek possible answers to these questions from narrative theory, transmedia theory, and character theory, including the theoretical constructions of James Phelan and Wolfgang G. Müller. That is, I will use the vampire scenes of The Unwritten comic as prompts to consider critically the interrelations of the vampire genre, the vampire as a stock character, and the popularcultural tropology that ties them together.
Worldcon 75 Academic Track, 2017
Interdisciplinary academic discussion has been gripped by an increasing awareness of its incurabl... more Interdisciplinary academic discussion has been gripped by an increasing awareness of its incurably anthropocentric perception of the world. Although everyone knows from everyday experience the epistemological impossibility of fully understanding a fellow human being – let alone a bat’s experience of being a bat (Nagel 2010) – it seems ever more restrictive and unethical to not even try. More or less sincere attempts at imagining the perspectives of various Others have, of course, always been the aim of fictional narratives in different media. In literary studies, some have expressed skepticism towards literature’s possibilities of portraying genuinely non-human experience, but could comics, with their multimodal expressive arsenal, do any better? Due to their stylized, overtly “made” visuality, graphic narratives have rarely been regarded as objective, transparent windows to the real world. Rather, they seem to lend themselves for crafting and presenting strange, “anti-mimetic” experiences and characters (Fehrle 2011). Indeed, the prominence of fantastical genres and medial experimentation in the tradition of Western comics has molded many classic graphic novels into virtual
embodiments of the interests expressed by unnatural narratologists. According to unnatural narratology, the greatest virtue of fiction is its ability to go beyond what is real, natural, or human, and thus, to expand the readers’ views of the world (Alber et al. 2013). Arguably, many comics from Little Nemo (1905–1926) to The Sandman (1989–1996) have strived to do just that: to leave single, conventional ideas of time, space, and humanity behind.
Neil Gaiman recently penned an unexpected prequel for his cult comic. The Sandman: Overture (2015) – illustrated by J. H. Williams III and colored by Dave Stewart – recounts the mysterious astral catastrophe that had left Dream, the god-like protagonist, exhausted and helpless for the opening act of the main series. The human readers might be surprised to find that this fantastical chain of events, which threatens to end the entire universe, does not involve a single human character. Instead, the comics’ narration employs several, mostly visual techniques to suggest perspectives that are, in one way or another, non-human, alien, or estranging. In my presentation, I examine these techniques and their possible effects on the reader by utilizing cognitive comics analysis and notions of unnatural narratology. To what extent does this comic, made by human hands for human readers, succeed in imagining an apocalypse that is neither caused nor prevented by Homo Sapiens? In which ways can anthropocentric narration be circumvented, and how does it, nevertheless, sneak in through the back door?
ENN5 conference, 2017
*oral presentation at ENN5 in Prague*
They are potential, artificial human analogues. Even thoug... more *oral presentation at ENN5 in Prague*
They are potential, artificial human analogues. Even though they are nearly immortal, they have been constructed and given life by mere mortals. Once they get off their creators’ desks, however, there is little hope of controlling them. It really is rather surprising that Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus (1818, 1831) has not repeatedly been interpreted as an allegory of fictional characters.
The Unwritten (2010–2015), a recent series of Vertigo fantasy comics created by writer Mike Carey and artist Peter Gross does, however, evoke such a parallel through its highly metafictional and intertextual characterizations. In my presentation – based on a soon forthcoming article – I will allow this fantastical reframing of Frankenstein’s creation to prompt a serious theoretical speculation: if critical readings of Frankenstein were superimposed on theories of fictional characters, what connections and disruptions would emerge?
Before, Brian McHale (2005, 67–68) has called his fellow narratologists Frankensteins, who are wont to force irreconcilable views and elements into seemingly sensible shapes and histories. My claim is that readers, in trying to cognitively engage with fictional characters, are inclined to similar contortions: the manifestly non-human mixes with the ideas of human to create something multiple, liminal, and impossible – embodiments of the paradox of fiction.
It seems that narrative theory is used to being haunted by monstrous creations, and thus, in the best case scenario, this analogy between Frankenstein’s creature and fictional characters will not only add another layer to the rich interpretation history of Shelley’s magnum opus but will also usher character theory in new directions. First, it invites novel, shifting perspectives to the complex relations characters have to authors, readers, and each other. Second, examining the famous, collage-like instability of Frankenstein’s monster more closely reveals that the same condition is shared by most fictional characters. Instead of only being seen as stiff, structuralist paradigms of traits, characters should be conceptualized as dynamic constructions that constantly negotiate mimetic humanity and unavoidable artificiality as well as (multi)medial, repeatable bodies and elusive, inferred lives.
Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein; or, the Modern Prometheus (1818) is an amalgam of contradictory disc... more Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein; or, the Modern Prometheus (1818) is an amalgam of contradictory discourses. As the first science fiction novel, it shocked the contemporaries with its secular paradigm. Yet, both Shelley’s and Frankenstein’s creations are steeped in Gothic horror and supernatural romanticism. Although the dramatic imagery of dreams and isolated glaciers suggest fantasy and mystery, Frankenstein’s science is uncannily methodical – so methodical, in fact, that he refuses to reveal any details of his process, lest someone might repeat it. This denial of explanation has launched a frantic search for explanation through popular cultural adaptations. The still-cumulating popular cultural sediments have provided ever-new perspectives to reanimation, which has, however, obscured and destabilized the meanings of the tale even further. Moral panics, visual monstrosities and pulp horror tropes have trampled over Frankenstein’s intentions, fears and methods in popular imagination, turning a tale of education and betterment into a superstitious warning against scientific advancement. In my presentation, I demonstrate that these mismatched tendencies of explanation and mystification are also evident in comics and graphic narratives that recycle the myth, including Frankenstein’s Womb (2009) by Warren Ellis and Marek Oleksicki, and The Heart of the Beast (1998) by Dean Motter, Sean Phillips and Judith Dupré.
Presented at Transmediations! conference in Växjö, Sweden on October 15, 2016.
In what ways could... more Presented at Transmediations! conference in Växjö, Sweden on October 15, 2016.
In what ways could more character-centered approaches challenge and open up transmedia theories - and vise versa?
See the Prezi slides for Works Cited.
Stuff in Finnish by Essi Varis
A short, half-popularized piece on the usage of motifs in Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons' "Watchmen"... more A short, half-popularized piece on the usage of motifs in Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons' "Watchmen". The main argument is that the visual vocabulary of comics allows repeating not only words, phrases, objects and characters, but also colors, panels and even structures like symmetry in a way that reinforces themes and cohesion. Based on a Bachelor's thesis.
Esseistic review of the Finnish translation of Peter Hoeg's Elefantpasserne's Born (2011). (Trans... more Esseistic review of the Finnish translation of Peter Hoeg's Elefantpasserne's Born (2011). (Translation of the novel by Pirkko Talvio-Jaatinen.)
Review of the Finnish translation of David B's L'Ascension du haut mal (2013). (Translation of th... more Review of the Finnish translation of David B's L'Ascension du haut mal (2013). (Translation of the comic by Saara Pääkkönen.)
Review of the Finnish translations of the first two Saga albums (2015) by Brian K. Vaughan & Fion... more Review of the Finnish translations of the first two Saga albums (2015) by Brian K. Vaughan & Fiona Staples. (Translation of the comics by Anssi Koivumäki.)
Review of Finnish translation of Donna Tartt's The Goldfinch (2014). (Translation of the novel by... more Review of Finnish translation of Donna Tartt's The Goldfinch (2014). (Translation of the novel by Hilkka Pekkanen.)
Drafts by Essi Varis
An idea paper for a potential theoretical article. Draws from some of my existing publications an... more An idea paper for a potential theoretical article. Draws from some of my existing publications and past conference papers. Has been through two workshop discussions.
Uploads
Books by Essi Varis
Articles by Essi Varis
Fantasy comics from Vertigo series like Fables and The Sandman to works like Hellboy or The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen draw their new-found scholarly appeal from their eclectic, literary character galleries. Especially Mike Carey and Peter Gross' The Unwritten (2009–) realizes every type of interfigurality Müller has identified in experimental literature, and even adds alternatives of its own. Close reading of this on-going series underlines that interfigurality is a flexible, transmedial phenomenon: characters of words and pictures can parallel and reuse elements from purely textual characters in imaginative ways. This flexibility, however, renders Müller's name-bound character concept insufficient. As comparing characters to one another – especially transmedially – would not be possible without complex cognitive processes, Müller's structuralistic view implies and should be supplemented with a cognitive basis.
Thus, combined with the cognitive character theories developed by Baruch Hochman (1985) and Aleid Fokkema (1991), Müller's notion of interfigurality becomes a viable analyzing tool for narratives of all kinds. Since comics is a medium of gaps, fragments and "the invisible", its heroes often read like puzzles, and some central pieces can occasionally be found through interfigural speculations.
Conference papers by Essi Varis
Lizzie: I’m working out the rules. Where can I get some garlic?
(Carey & Gross (2011) The Unwritten #20, [19].)
The Unwritten (2010¬-2015), a recent series of Vertigo fantasy comics created by writer Mike Carey and artist Peter Gross, discusses several unresolvable metafictional problems, mostly from the point of view of its self-consciously fictional characters. One of the trickiest, and perhaps the most central to the plot, is the characters’ relations to the work’s many intersecting genre conventions: can the protagonists exploit them, or are they ultimately unable to avoid becoming exploited by them? This peculiar push-and-pull between the characters’ designed, predestined fictional aspect and their willful, mimetic human aspect is made visible especially through two prominent vampire characters. Once the protagonist’s sidekick, Richie Savoy gets bitten, his relation to reality starts shifting: he finds himself a slave to familiar vampiric tropes, including bloodlust and super-sensitivity to sensory stimuli. Despite Savoy’s insistence that vampires do not exist in the storyworld he resides, the bite of this fictional creature seems to have infected him with generic “rules” that invade and control him like a disease, making him “less real” and more prone to certain roles, actions, habits, and dispositions. By contrast, when the antagonist, Count Ambrosio, hunts, it is him who appears to twist the storyworld around him: darkness spreads, and red-eyed wolves and bats come out to set him an appropriate stage. Yet, not even these two cases together have been enough to brand the entire series a ‘vampire comic’. To sum, then, The Unwritten implicitly evokes questions about the dynamics of character, trope, and genre: which motivates which, specifically in the case of vampire narratives?
In my presentation, I will seek possible answers to these questions from narrative theory, transmedia theory, and character theory, including the theoretical constructions of James Phelan and Wolfgang G. Müller. That is, I will use the vampire scenes of The Unwritten comic as prompts to consider critically the interrelations of the vampire genre, the vampire as a stock character, and the popularcultural tropology that ties them together.
embodiments of the interests expressed by unnatural narratologists. According to unnatural narratology, the greatest virtue of fiction is its ability to go beyond what is real, natural, or human, and thus, to expand the readers’ views of the world (Alber et al. 2013). Arguably, many comics from Little Nemo (1905–1926) to The Sandman (1989–1996) have strived to do just that: to leave single, conventional ideas of time, space, and humanity behind.
Neil Gaiman recently penned an unexpected prequel for his cult comic. The Sandman: Overture (2015) – illustrated by J. H. Williams III and colored by Dave Stewart – recounts the mysterious astral catastrophe that had left Dream, the god-like protagonist, exhausted and helpless for the opening act of the main series. The human readers might be surprised to find that this fantastical chain of events, which threatens to end the entire universe, does not involve a single human character. Instead, the comics’ narration employs several, mostly visual techniques to suggest perspectives that are, in one way or another, non-human, alien, or estranging. In my presentation, I examine these techniques and their possible effects on the reader by utilizing cognitive comics analysis and notions of unnatural narratology. To what extent does this comic, made by human hands for human readers, succeed in imagining an apocalypse that is neither caused nor prevented by Homo Sapiens? In which ways can anthropocentric narration be circumvented, and how does it, nevertheless, sneak in through the back door?
They are potential, artificial human analogues. Even though they are nearly immortal, they have been constructed and given life by mere mortals. Once they get off their creators’ desks, however, there is little hope of controlling them. It really is rather surprising that Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus (1818, 1831) has not repeatedly been interpreted as an allegory of fictional characters.
The Unwritten (2010–2015), a recent series of Vertigo fantasy comics created by writer Mike Carey and artist Peter Gross does, however, evoke such a parallel through its highly metafictional and intertextual characterizations. In my presentation – based on a soon forthcoming article – I will allow this fantastical reframing of Frankenstein’s creation to prompt a serious theoretical speculation: if critical readings of Frankenstein were superimposed on theories of fictional characters, what connections and disruptions would emerge?
Before, Brian McHale (2005, 67–68) has called his fellow narratologists Frankensteins, who are wont to force irreconcilable views and elements into seemingly sensible shapes and histories. My claim is that readers, in trying to cognitively engage with fictional characters, are inclined to similar contortions: the manifestly non-human mixes with the ideas of human to create something multiple, liminal, and impossible – embodiments of the paradox of fiction.
It seems that narrative theory is used to being haunted by monstrous creations, and thus, in the best case scenario, this analogy between Frankenstein’s creature and fictional characters will not only add another layer to the rich interpretation history of Shelley’s magnum opus but will also usher character theory in new directions. First, it invites novel, shifting perspectives to the complex relations characters have to authors, readers, and each other. Second, examining the famous, collage-like instability of Frankenstein’s monster more closely reveals that the same condition is shared by most fictional characters. Instead of only being seen as stiff, structuralist paradigms of traits, characters should be conceptualized as dynamic constructions that constantly negotiate mimetic humanity and unavoidable artificiality as well as (multi)medial, repeatable bodies and elusive, inferred lives.
In what ways could more character-centered approaches challenge and open up transmedia theories - and vise versa?
See the Prezi slides for Works Cited.
Stuff in Finnish by Essi Varis
Drafts by Essi Varis
Fantasy comics from Vertigo series like Fables and The Sandman to works like Hellboy or The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen draw their new-found scholarly appeal from their eclectic, literary character galleries. Especially Mike Carey and Peter Gross' The Unwritten (2009–) realizes every type of interfigurality Müller has identified in experimental literature, and even adds alternatives of its own. Close reading of this on-going series underlines that interfigurality is a flexible, transmedial phenomenon: characters of words and pictures can parallel and reuse elements from purely textual characters in imaginative ways. This flexibility, however, renders Müller's name-bound character concept insufficient. As comparing characters to one another – especially transmedially – would not be possible without complex cognitive processes, Müller's structuralistic view implies and should be supplemented with a cognitive basis.
Thus, combined with the cognitive character theories developed by Baruch Hochman (1985) and Aleid Fokkema (1991), Müller's notion of interfigurality becomes a viable analyzing tool for narratives of all kinds. Since comics is a medium of gaps, fragments and "the invisible", its heroes often read like puzzles, and some central pieces can occasionally be found through interfigural speculations.
Lizzie: I’m working out the rules. Where can I get some garlic?
(Carey & Gross (2011) The Unwritten #20, [19].)
The Unwritten (2010¬-2015), a recent series of Vertigo fantasy comics created by writer Mike Carey and artist Peter Gross, discusses several unresolvable metafictional problems, mostly from the point of view of its self-consciously fictional characters. One of the trickiest, and perhaps the most central to the plot, is the characters’ relations to the work’s many intersecting genre conventions: can the protagonists exploit them, or are they ultimately unable to avoid becoming exploited by them? This peculiar push-and-pull between the characters’ designed, predestined fictional aspect and their willful, mimetic human aspect is made visible especially through two prominent vampire characters. Once the protagonist’s sidekick, Richie Savoy gets bitten, his relation to reality starts shifting: he finds himself a slave to familiar vampiric tropes, including bloodlust and super-sensitivity to sensory stimuli. Despite Savoy’s insistence that vampires do not exist in the storyworld he resides, the bite of this fictional creature seems to have infected him with generic “rules” that invade and control him like a disease, making him “less real” and more prone to certain roles, actions, habits, and dispositions. By contrast, when the antagonist, Count Ambrosio, hunts, it is him who appears to twist the storyworld around him: darkness spreads, and red-eyed wolves and bats come out to set him an appropriate stage. Yet, not even these two cases together have been enough to brand the entire series a ‘vampire comic’. To sum, then, The Unwritten implicitly evokes questions about the dynamics of character, trope, and genre: which motivates which, specifically in the case of vampire narratives?
In my presentation, I will seek possible answers to these questions from narrative theory, transmedia theory, and character theory, including the theoretical constructions of James Phelan and Wolfgang G. Müller. That is, I will use the vampire scenes of The Unwritten comic as prompts to consider critically the interrelations of the vampire genre, the vampire as a stock character, and the popularcultural tropology that ties them together.
embodiments of the interests expressed by unnatural narratologists. According to unnatural narratology, the greatest virtue of fiction is its ability to go beyond what is real, natural, or human, and thus, to expand the readers’ views of the world (Alber et al. 2013). Arguably, many comics from Little Nemo (1905–1926) to The Sandman (1989–1996) have strived to do just that: to leave single, conventional ideas of time, space, and humanity behind.
Neil Gaiman recently penned an unexpected prequel for his cult comic. The Sandman: Overture (2015) – illustrated by J. H. Williams III and colored by Dave Stewart – recounts the mysterious astral catastrophe that had left Dream, the god-like protagonist, exhausted and helpless for the opening act of the main series. The human readers might be surprised to find that this fantastical chain of events, which threatens to end the entire universe, does not involve a single human character. Instead, the comics’ narration employs several, mostly visual techniques to suggest perspectives that are, in one way or another, non-human, alien, or estranging. In my presentation, I examine these techniques and their possible effects on the reader by utilizing cognitive comics analysis and notions of unnatural narratology. To what extent does this comic, made by human hands for human readers, succeed in imagining an apocalypse that is neither caused nor prevented by Homo Sapiens? In which ways can anthropocentric narration be circumvented, and how does it, nevertheless, sneak in through the back door?
They are potential, artificial human analogues. Even though they are nearly immortal, they have been constructed and given life by mere mortals. Once they get off their creators’ desks, however, there is little hope of controlling them. It really is rather surprising that Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus (1818, 1831) has not repeatedly been interpreted as an allegory of fictional characters.
The Unwritten (2010–2015), a recent series of Vertigo fantasy comics created by writer Mike Carey and artist Peter Gross does, however, evoke such a parallel through its highly metafictional and intertextual characterizations. In my presentation – based on a soon forthcoming article – I will allow this fantastical reframing of Frankenstein’s creation to prompt a serious theoretical speculation: if critical readings of Frankenstein were superimposed on theories of fictional characters, what connections and disruptions would emerge?
Before, Brian McHale (2005, 67–68) has called his fellow narratologists Frankensteins, who are wont to force irreconcilable views and elements into seemingly sensible shapes and histories. My claim is that readers, in trying to cognitively engage with fictional characters, are inclined to similar contortions: the manifestly non-human mixes with the ideas of human to create something multiple, liminal, and impossible – embodiments of the paradox of fiction.
It seems that narrative theory is used to being haunted by monstrous creations, and thus, in the best case scenario, this analogy between Frankenstein’s creature and fictional characters will not only add another layer to the rich interpretation history of Shelley’s magnum opus but will also usher character theory in new directions. First, it invites novel, shifting perspectives to the complex relations characters have to authors, readers, and each other. Second, examining the famous, collage-like instability of Frankenstein’s monster more closely reveals that the same condition is shared by most fictional characters. Instead of only being seen as stiff, structuralist paradigms of traits, characters should be conceptualized as dynamic constructions that constantly negotiate mimetic humanity and unavoidable artificiality as well as (multi)medial, repeatable bodies and elusive, inferred lives.
In what ways could more character-centered approaches challenge and open up transmedia theories - and vise versa?
See the Prezi slides for Works Cited.