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Writing like a rat
Author(s) -
Ellmann Maud
Publication year - 2004
Publication title -
critical quarterly
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.111
H-Index - 17
eISSN - 1467-8705
pISSN - 0011-1562
DOI - 10.1111/j.0011-1562.2004.00597.x
Subject(s) - section (typography) , modernity , literature , art , philosophy , psychoanalysis , art history , aesthetics , psychology , epistemology , computer science , operating system
According to Deleuze and Guattari, Kafka's experiments with animality epitomise the responsibility of the artist: 'either stop writing, or write like a rat'. The present essay examines how modernist writing tackles this strange responsibility. The first section provides a brief synopsis of facts and fictions about rats, focusing on the animals' association with the networks of modernity; a further section examines the role of rats in Freud's case history of the Rat Man; and the conclusion discusses the role of the rat in modernist writing, particularly in the works of Eliot, Joyce, Lewis, and Beckett.