Bibliographic record
Abstract
In this study of narration, feminist theory, and grotesque Canadian fiction, my aim is to provide a narrative model with which to read characters portrayed as both female and monstrous in a way that criticism on the grotesque does not. I provide two systems for the methodology of this study: via negativa, a well-established philosophical system of definition by negation, which shows the strength of the grotesque to represent a subject that is inherently paradoxical; and a narrative model called the "middle voice," which I developed to examine narratives that confuse or render ambiguous the identity of subjects. Through these distinct but complementary frameworks I illustrate a literary phenomenon in fiction of the grotesque: that authors develop and reveal the subjectivity of characters by confounding identities. Although I provide a concise definition of the term "grotesque," my focus is on feminist theoretical approaches to the grotesque. However, whereas feminist theory on the grotesque examines the binary opposition of woman to man, this study shows that the grotesque bypasses the "male/female" dichotomy in the representation of fictional characters. Instead, the sustained contradiction of the central opposition "woman/monster" works to undermine the notion of fictional characterization. Specifically, this study focuses on the grotesque as a narrative strategy and examines the use of the grotesque in the portrayal of female narrators. The prevalence of female grotesque characters in recent Canadian fiction combined with the rapid growth of interest in the critical concept of the "female grotesque" requires a theoretical analysis of the literature. In the fiction I examine by Canadian authors Margaret Atwood, Lynn Coady, Barbara Gowdy, Alice Munro, and Miriam Toews, narrators are contradictory. As subjects, they have doubled identities. Authors situate identity ("subjectivity") in the realm of paradox, rather than in the realm of clarity and resolution. As a result, readers and critics must rely on ambiguity and subversion as guides when posing the ultimately irresolvable question "who is speaking?" Through analysis of this fiction, then, I argue for nothing short of a new conceptualization of subjectivity.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.005 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.023 | 0.018 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.007 | 0.002 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.003 |
| Research integrity | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.006 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".