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Conventions of the Ungendered Narrative

  • Khuman Bhagirath Jetubhai EMAIL logo und Madhumita Ghosal
Veröffentlicht/Copyright: 7. Dezember 2022
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Aus der Zeitschrift Anglia Band 140 Heft 3-4

Abstract

An ungendered narrative is a work of fiction where the gender of one or more characters remains undisclosed throughout the entire work or a significant portion of it. This lack of gender results in the deconstruction of gender, and the narrative transcends a fixed gender binary. This paper discusses the importance given to characters’ gender in the history of literature as well as the ungendered narrative’s attempt to change this importance by not gendering the characters. In addition, this paper identifies the attributes common to the select ungendered narratives, that is, how ungendered narratives are written (including the stylistic and thematic features authors employ), that may help determine whether a work of literature can be called an ungendered narrative. The ungendered narrative highlights the insignificance of gender in fiction and real life, imploring readers to stop casting judgments based on gender and sexuality, which can lead to violence, trauma, ostracism, and abandonment. This narrative’s strength calls for additional such works, and this paper provides a framework for authors who intend to create them.

Key terms: gender; genre; language; narrative; character; reader; identity

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Published Online: 2022-12-07
Published in Print: 2022-12-01

© 2022 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston

Artikel in diesem Heft

  1. Frontmatter
  2. Frontmatter
  3. Light and Divine Wisdom: An Alternative Interpretation of the Iconography of the Fuller Brooch
  4. Tu beoð gemæccan: The Key Concept of Maxims I Representing One of the Fundamental Principles of the World Order
  5. Wulf and Eadwacer Reloaded: John of Antioch and the Starving Wife of Odoacer
  6. Sensational News about Nature: Risk and Resilience in Satirical Ozone Poetry of the Victorian Era
  7. Influences of George Gordon Byron on Asdren
  8. Construction of Identity/World and ‘Symbolic Death’: A Lacanian Approach to William Golding’s Pincher Martin
  9. The Anatomist of Love and Disease in Jeanette Winterson’s Written on the Body
  10. Conventions of the Ungendered Narrative
  11. “In My Mind’s Eye”: On the Relocation of Hamlet’s Story by Michael Almereyda
  12. ‘Force’ and ‘Chi’: Duality, Identity, and Struggle in Star Wars and Buchi Emecheta’s Kehinde
  13. Anxious Dynamics of Exile and the Ambivalence of Arab American Identity in Diana Abu-Jaber’s Crescent: Critical Reflections and Contemplations
  14. Between Remembering and Confession: A Refugee Narrative in Dina Nayeri’s Refuge
  15. Orfeo: A Posthuman Modern Prometheus. Uncommon Powers of Musical Imagination
  16. On Literary Apathy: Forms of Dis/Affection in My Year of Rest and Relaxation (2018)
  17. Reviews
  18. Roberta Frank. 2022. The Etiquette of Early Northern Verse. Conway Lectures in Medieval Studies 2010. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, xxx + 265 pp., $ 65.00.
  19. Claire Breay and Joanna Story (eds.), with Eleanor Jackson. 2021. Manuscripts in the Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms: Cultures and Connections. Dublin: Four Courts Press, xvii + 256 pp., numerous colour illustr., € 58.50.
  20. Mark Amsler. 2021. The Medieval Life of Language: Grammar and Pragmatics from Bacon to Kempe. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 264 pp., 2 figures, 2 tables, € 106.00.
  21. Alexandra Barratt and Susan Powell (eds.). 2021. The Fifteen Oes and Other Prayers: Edited from the Text Published by William Caxton (1491). Middle English Texts 61. Heidelberg: Winter, xxxvi + 54 pp., € 44.
  22. Carolin Gebauer. 2021. Making Time: World Construction in the Present-Tense Novel. Narratologia 77. Berlin/Boston, MA: De Gruyter, xvii + 378 pp., 5 tables, 5 illustr., € 99.95.
  23. Kai Wiegandt. 2019. J. M. Coetzee’s Revisions of the Human: Posthumanism and Narrative Form. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, ix + 280 pp., € 90.94.
  24. Linda K. Hughes, Sarah Ruffing Robbins and Andrew Taylor with Heidi Hakimi-Hood and Adam Nemmers (eds.). 2022. Transatlantic Anglophone Literatures, 1776–1920: An Anthology. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 808 pp., 60 illustr., £ 29.99/$ 39.95.
  25. Juliane Braun. 2019. Creole Drama: Theatre and Society in Antebellum New Orleans. Writing the Early Americas 4. Charlottesville, VA/London: The University of Virginia Press, 280 pp., 12 illustr., $ 69.50.
  26. Lisa Gotto. 2021. Passing and Posing between Black and White: Calibrating the Color Line in U. S. Cinema. Film Studies. Bielefeld: transcript, 247 pp., 30 figures, € 49.00.
  27. Daniel Stein. 2021. Authorizing Superhero Comics: On the Evolution of a Popular Serial Genre. Studies in Comics and Cartoons. Columbus, OH: Ohio State University Press, xv + 315 pp., 28 illustr., $ 34.95.
  28. Books Reviewed: Anglia 140 (2022)
https://doi.org/10.1515/ang-2022-0043
Schlagwörter für diesen Artikel
gender; genre; language; narrative; character; reader; identity

Artikel in diesem Heft

  1. Frontmatter
  2. Frontmatter
  3. Light and Divine Wisdom: An Alternative Interpretation of the Iconography of the Fuller Brooch
  4. Tu beoð gemæccan: The Key Concept of Maxims I Representing One of the Fundamental Principles of the World Order
  5. Wulf and Eadwacer Reloaded: John of Antioch and the Starving Wife of Odoacer
  6. Sensational News about Nature: Risk and Resilience in Satirical Ozone Poetry of the Victorian Era
  7. Influences of George Gordon Byron on Asdren
  8. Construction of Identity/World and ‘Symbolic Death’: A Lacanian Approach to William Golding’s Pincher Martin
  9. The Anatomist of Love and Disease in Jeanette Winterson’s Written on the Body
  10. Conventions of the Ungendered Narrative
  11. “In My Mind’s Eye”: On the Relocation of Hamlet’s Story by Michael Almereyda
  12. ‘Force’ and ‘Chi’: Duality, Identity, and Struggle in Star Wars and Buchi Emecheta’s Kehinde
  13. Anxious Dynamics of Exile and the Ambivalence of Arab American Identity in Diana Abu-Jaber’s Crescent: Critical Reflections and Contemplations
  14. Between Remembering and Confession: A Refugee Narrative in Dina Nayeri’s Refuge
  15. Orfeo: A Posthuman Modern Prometheus. Uncommon Powers of Musical Imagination
  16. On Literary Apathy: Forms of Dis/Affection in My Year of Rest and Relaxation (2018)
  17. Reviews
  18. Roberta Frank. 2022. The Etiquette of Early Northern Verse. Conway Lectures in Medieval Studies 2010. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, xxx + 265 pp., $ 65.00.
  19. Claire Breay and Joanna Story (eds.), with Eleanor Jackson. 2021. Manuscripts in the Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms: Cultures and Connections. Dublin: Four Courts Press, xvii + 256 pp., numerous colour illustr., € 58.50.
  20. Mark Amsler. 2021. The Medieval Life of Language: Grammar and Pragmatics from Bacon to Kempe. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 264 pp., 2 figures, 2 tables, € 106.00.
  21. Alexandra Barratt and Susan Powell (eds.). 2021. The Fifteen Oes and Other Prayers: Edited from the Text Published by William Caxton (1491). Middle English Texts 61. Heidelberg: Winter, xxxvi + 54 pp., € 44.
  22. Carolin Gebauer. 2021. Making Time: World Construction in the Present-Tense Novel. Narratologia 77. Berlin/Boston, MA: De Gruyter, xvii + 378 pp., 5 tables, 5 illustr., € 99.95.
  23. Kai Wiegandt. 2019. J. M. Coetzee’s Revisions of the Human: Posthumanism and Narrative Form. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, ix + 280 pp., € 90.94.
  24. Linda K. Hughes, Sarah Ruffing Robbins and Andrew Taylor with Heidi Hakimi-Hood and Adam Nemmers (eds.). 2022. Transatlantic Anglophone Literatures, 1776–1920: An Anthology. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 808 pp., 60 illustr., £ 29.99/$ 39.95.
  25. Juliane Braun. 2019. Creole Drama: Theatre and Society in Antebellum New Orleans. Writing the Early Americas 4. Charlottesville, VA/London: The University of Virginia Press, 280 pp., 12 illustr., $ 69.50.
  26. Lisa Gotto. 2021. Passing and Posing between Black and White: Calibrating the Color Line in U. S. Cinema. Film Studies. Bielefeld: transcript, 247 pp., 30 figures, € 49.00.
  27. Daniel Stein. 2021. Authorizing Superhero Comics: On the Evolution of a Popular Serial Genre. Studies in Comics and Cartoons. Columbus, OH: Ohio State University Press, xv + 315 pp., 28 illustr., $ 34.95.
  28. Books Reviewed: Anglia 140 (2022)
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