Teksti, lukija ja affektit

Sarah Watersin The Little Stranger sekä lukijan pelko ja häpeä

• Pia Livia Hekanaho Turun yliopisto

DOI: https://doi.org/10.30665/av.74852

Abstract

Text, Reader, and Affectual Encounters: Sarah Waters’s The Little Stranger, and the Reader’s Fear and Shame

The article explores the relationship between literary theory, queer theory and the affective turn, the literary text analyzed being Sarah Waters’s The Little Stranger. Through the novel the article studies the notions of queer, gothic, shame, and “odd” readerly pleasures. Affect is often discussed together with feelings and emotions, and linked specifically to the bodily, non-discursive and extra-linguistic responses of the (textual) reader. I approach the notion of queer as a textual category that is applied to the analysis of the reader’s affectual responses in encounters between her and a text.

The notion of queer can be examined as the articulation of an affectual encounter in a reading process that gives readerly pleasure. The article locates pleasure and desire within the theoretical frame of reference on the categories of queer and affect. Here, affectual encounters are studied in particular through the notion of shame. The concepts of queer and the gothic have often been observed together; among other things, they have been used to clarify the reader’s “odd” feelings of pleasure induced by fear, terror, and horror. I argue that interpreting the notion of queer as a textual concept could provide new insights for literary scholars discussing affective responses to fiction and the various encounters between a text and a reader. This would place queer in line with other affective notions and find new ways of applying it.