Feticism and irony of the pornographic ékphrasis in Lichen by Alice Munro
Abstract
The aim of this article is to trace the relationship between ekphrasis, fetish and desire in Alice Munro’s short story Lichen. The core of the story is the description of a Polaroid snapshot which represents a female sexual organ. The analysis will focus on the different perspectives between male and female gazes that are represented in the story. On the one hand, from the male point of view the image is fetish, as it assumes an erotic and pornographic dimension. On the other hand, the female gaze deconstructs the violence inscribed in the image by using a verbal and rhetorical strategy that operates through irony and epiphany.
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References
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>Sitografia
Ventura, Héliane, Alice Munro ou l’anatomie de l’âme, giugno 2006, http://www.alaaddin.it/Munro/Heliane%20Ventura.html, web (ultimo accesso: 7 ottobre 2007).
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