Open AccessPhytopoetics
Author(s) -
Joela Jacobs
Publication year - 2019
Publication title -
catalyst
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
ISSN - 2380-3312
DOI - 10.28968/cftt.v5i2.30027
Subject(s) - the imaginary , eroticism , german , narrative , reading (process) , poetry , agency (philosophy) , literature , literary translation , constitution , alien , order (exchange) , sociology , ideology , philosophy , art , art history , linguistics , psychoanalysis , epistemology , gender studies , law , psychology , political science , politics , population , demography , finance , economics , human sexuality , census
This article develops the notion of phytopoetics, which describes the role of plant agency in literary creations and the cultural imaginary. In order to show how plants prompt poetic productions, the article engages with narrative examples by modernist German authors Oskar Panizza, Hanns Heinz Ewers, and Alfred Döblin, which feature vegetal eroticism and violence. By close reading these texts and their contexts, the article maps the role of plant agency in the co-constitution of a cultural imaginary of the vegetal that results in literary works as well as societal consequences.