In the 18th and 19th centuries, a certain genre was popular in Britain: it-narratives. In it-narratives, an animal or an inanimate object like a coin, pin, or banknote is turned into a protagonist - and sometimes a narrator - and followed as it moves across space and time, affecting animate and inanimate agents alike. The last decades have witnessed the emergence of what can be referred to as a 'new generation' of it-narratives. Contemporary Anglophone novels exhibit a preoccupation with objects and the material world. Some of them share striking features with traditional it-narratives of the 18th and 19th centuries. Often, one object is the main object which acts as the narrator, guides and structures the story or serves as the axis around which other characters' stories spin while moving in the world and being given from hand to hand. This study focuses on analysing the role, function and meaning of human-made, mobile objects in these contemporary Anglophone novels and examining what forms the relationship between subjects and objects takes. As humans and objects are connected through stories and storytelling, this book investigates how the relationship between subjects and objects is constituted through stories and storytelling. By discarding a purely human-centric perspective on the world and turning the attention to objects to account for the inanimate, this study wants to make visible the interactions and interdependencies of objects and humans. Doing that, it seeks to contribute to the rethinking and reevaluation of the subject-object relationship in the 21st century.


CONTENTS


1 Introduction: Objects in Literature in the 21st Century: a New Generation of It-Narratives 1


2 Approaches to the Subject-Object Relationship 10


2.1 Defining the Object: Central Terminology 10
2.2 The Nonhuman Turn in the Humanities and Literature 12
2.2.1 Rethinking the Subject-Object Relationship: New Materialism 13
2.2.2 Thing Theory: The Role of Literature in Dealing with Objects 15
2.3 Exploring the Relationship between Subjects and Objects through Material Culture 17
2.3.1 Defining Material Culture 17
2.3.2 The Meaning of Objects: Objects as Signs 18
2.4 Exploring the Relationship between Subjects and Objects through the Analysis of Storytelling 20
2.4.1 Storytelling as a Human Activity: The Connection of Objects and Stories 20
2.4.2 The Narrative Potential of Objects 21
2.5 The Role of Identity Formation in Constituting the Subject-Object Relationship 22
2.5.1 The Narrative Construction of Identity 22
2.5.2 Introducing Narrative Identity 23
2.5.3 How Humans Rely on Objects to Construct Their (Narrative) Identity 25
2.6 The Role of Memory in Constituting the Subject-Object Relationship 25
2.6.1 Cultural Memory 26
2.6.2 Memory and Objects 26
2.7 Objects in Literature 28
2.7.1 Objects in Literature as a Genre: It-Narratives from the 18th to the 20th Centur