Abstract:

What happens when we read an Austen novel "horizontally"—that is, in opposition to the vertical framing established by the author? This essay answers this question by examining the case of absent insects in Austen's Emma. After a review of how a traditional, humanistic reading of the novel unfolds, the essay proposes an alternative view to explore how the novel has omitted vital biological agents and processes in favor of a particular androcentric viewpoint, one in which humans not only reign supreme, but also display a high degree of separation from and imperviousness to the natural world. The essay argues that, in the wake of Covid 19, this mythic (if highly pleasurable) view of the human warrants critical reexamination. Thus, while the essay demonstrates an alternative reading practice to a canonical text, it also proposes new, biologically informed approaches to teaching such texts in the literature classroom. In other words, it suggests that literary study has much to gain from newer biological definition of that it means to be human.

摘要：

当我们“水平地”阅读奥斯汀的小说——也就是说，与作者建立的垂直框架相反，会发生什么？本文通过考察奥斯汀的《艾玛》中昆虫缺失的案例来回答这个问题. 在回顾了小说的传统人文主义阅读如何展开之后，本文提出了另一种观点，以探索小说如何省略重要的生物制剂和过程，以支持一种特定的以男性为中心的观点，在这种观点中，人类不仅至高无上，但也表现出与自然世界的高度分离和不可渗透性。这篇文章认为，在 Covid 19 之后，这种关于人类的神话（如果非常令人愉快）的观点值得重新审视。因此，虽然这篇文章展示了经典文本的另一种阅读实践，但它也提出了在文学课堂上教授此类文本的新的、生物学上的方法。换句话说，它表明文学研究可以从新的生物学定义中获得很多好处，即它意味着成为人类。