Science (and) Fiction in Ballard’s Vermilion Sands

Autori

  • C. Bruna Mancini Università della Calabria

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.13130/2035-7680/14520

Parole chiave:

Science; fiction VS reality; sf; technology; chronotope; surrealism

Abstract

Science, technology, and the (futuristic and surreal) uses of them are undoubtably essential elements in Ballard’s writing. His scientific language is both very elaborate and refined. Sometimes, it attains a metafictional mode, while it allows for an accurate discourse on (New Wave) science fiction, art, and narration. In Vermilion Sands, a collection of short stories published in 1971, Ballard describes this overlit place as an exotic suburb of the mind, and of the future. In Vermilion Sands, trauma flowers, singing plants, non-aural music, sound jewelry, automated poetry machines, sonic sculptures, self-painting canvasses, psychotropic houses are the psychological drives in these macabre, grotesque, and strange psychodramas. In this paper, I will analyze how science and technology contribute to build neural landscapes through a metanarrative perspective in Vermilion Sands.

Metriche

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Biografia autore

C. Bruna Mancini, Università della Calabria

C. Bruna Mancini Bruna Mancini is Associate Professor of English Literature at the University of Calabria. Her research interests include Gender and Migrations Studies, Translation Studies, Literary Geography. She has published essays on Shakespeare, on contemporary rewritings of Shakespeare, on the fantastic, gothic, monstrosity, city/space and literature. She edited and translated Eliza Haywood’s The Mercenary Lover (Liguori) and Charlotte Lennox’s Angelica, or, Quixote in petticoats (Liguori). In 2005, she wrote Sguardi su Londra. Immagini di una città mostruosa (Liguori). In 2013, she translated Erick Rabkin’s The Literary Unconscious (Solfanelli). In 2015, she translated Caryl Phillips’ The Shelter (Liguori). Her forthcoming book is titled Spazi del Femminile nelle letterature e culture di lingua inglese fra Settecento e Ottocento (Mimesis). She has edited, with Maria Teresa Chialant, a book whose title is Declinazioni del Fantastico. La prospettica critica di Romolo Runcini e l’opera di Edgar Allan Poe (Liguori). She is editing, with David Punter, a book titled Space(s) of the Fantastic (Routledge). She is currently working on objects, gender, and migration.

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Pubblicato

2020-11-29

Come citare

Mancini, C. Bruna. 2020. «Science (and) Fiction in Ballard’s Vermilion Sands». Altre Modernità, n. 24 (novembre):362-76. https://doi.org/10.13130/2035-7680/14520.

Fascicolo

N. 24 (2020): La narrazione come cura: la rappresentazione della malattia nelle nuove pratiche delle Medical Humanities

Sezione

Fuori verbale Entre mamparas Aparté Off the Record