The Museum and the Formula

tamed nature in Anthony Doerr's All the Light We Cannot See

Authors

Keywords:

Second World War, All The Light we Cannot See, Anthony Doerr

Abstract

The pursuit of a distinction between "culture" and "nature" is a staple of Western thought since Antiquity. The intellectual endeavor of the Enlightenment accelerates these efforts in its attempt to make the natural world completely cognizable and reductable to human intellect. The Second World War is a fundamental watershed event where one can observe the crisis of this model of thought. In this sense, this article proposes an investigation of two models that reduce nature to human cognition that are present in Anthony Doerr's novel All the Light we Cannot See: the museum of natural history and the trigonometric formula. Departing from Huyssen's (2014) notion of a "tamed nature" and Alberti's (2008) critique of "nature behind glass", it aims at illustrating how Doerr plays out, in the pages of his novel, the crisis of the Enlightened thought set in motion during the Second World War.

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Author Biographies

Luiz Gustavo Leitão Vieira, Independent Researcher (Pós-Lit/UFMG Alumnus)

Tradutor Público e Interpréte Comercial da Língua Inglesa, aprovado em concurso público organizado pela Junta Comercial do Estado de Minas Gerais; doutor em Literatura Comparada, pela FALE/UFMG (2013); possui graduação em Letras pela Faculdade de Letras - UFMG (2005) e mestrado em Literaturas de Língua Inglesa pela Faculdade de Letras - UFMG (2007). Tem experiência na área de Letras, com ênfase em Literaturas Estrangeiras Modernas, atuando principalmente nos seguintes temas: Ilíada, narrativas de guerra, grande guerra de 1914-18. Membro fundador (2007) do NEGUE - Núcleo de Estudos de Guerra e Literatura, da Faculdade de Letras/UFMG.

José Otaviano da Mata Machado Silva, Programa de Pós-Graduação em Estudos Literários/FALE-UFMG

Doctoral candidate at the Federal University of Minas Gerais (UFMG), under the Literary Studies Gradute Program (Pós-Lit). I research war narratives in different media. I am currently conducting resarch on memory in 21st Century historical novels that are set in the Second World War. My previous research includes an investigation on 20th and 21st Century war orphan narratives, representations of war in rock'n'roll and heavy metal music, representations of the Shoah in video games and theoretical issues concerning the written testimonies of war victims. I am a member of UFMG's War and Literature Study Group (NEGUE).

References

ADORNO, Theodor; HORKHEIMER, Max. Dialética do esclarecimento. Tradução Guido Antônio de Almeida. Rio de Janeiro: Zahar, 1985.

ALBERTI, Samuel J. M. M. Constructing Nature behind Glass. Museum and Society, Leicester, v. 6, n. 2, p. 73-95, jul. 2008.

BENJAMIN, Walter. Sobre o conceito de história. In: BENJAMIN, Walter. Obras escolhidas: magia, técnica, arte e política. Tradução Sérgio Paulo Rouanet. São Paulo: Brasiliense, 2011. p. 222-234. v. 1.

CYTRYNOWICZ, Roney. O silêncio do sobrevivente: diálogo e rupturas entre memória e história do Holocausto. In: SELIGMAN-SILVA, Márcio (org.). História, memória, literatura: o testemunho na era das catástrofes. Campinas: Editora da Unicamp, 2003. p. 123-138.

DOERR, Anthony. All the Light We Cannot See. New York: Scribner, 2014.

EAGLETON, Terry. A ideia de cultura. Tradução de Sandra Castello Branco. São Paulo: UNESP, 2005.

HUYSSEN, Andreas. Culturas do passado-presente: modernismos, artes visuais, políticas da memória. Tradução de Vera Ribeiro. Rio de Janeiro: Contraponto, 2014.

KATZ, Victor J. A History of Mathematics: An Introduction. 3. ed. Boston: Pearson, 2009.

LOY, David R. On the Duality of Culture and Nature. Philosophica, Lisboa, v. 55, p. 9-35, jan. 1995.

OWENS, Jill. Interview with Anthony Doerr, Author of All the Light We Cannot See. Medium, [S. l.], 16 jul. 2015. Powell’s Books, não paginado. Disponível em: https://medium.com/@Powells/interview-with-anthony-doerr-author-of-all-the-light-we-cannot-see-3a3a501ccad2. Acesso em: 20 mai. 2022.

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Published

2023-04-03

How to Cite

Leitão Vieira, L. G., & da Mata Machado Silva, J. O. (2023). The Museum and the Formula: tamed nature in Anthony Doerr’s All the Light We Cannot See. Aletria: Revista De Estudos De Literatura, 33(1), 56–77. Retrieved from https://periodicos.ufmg.br/index.php/aletria/article/view/40052

Issue

Vol. 33 No. 1 (2023): Dossiê: Literatura, Natureza e Violência

Section

Dossier: Nature and violence

License

Copyright (c) 2022 Luiz Gustavo Leitão Vieira, José Otaviano da Mata Machado Silva (Autor)

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