"King Kong in the Mist. Travel, Knowledge, and Emotion"

Lubrich, Oliver; Liebal, Katja (2016). "King Kong in the Mist. Travel, Knowledge, and Emotion". Kulturpoetik - Zeitschrift für kulturgeschichtliche Literaturwissenschaft / Journal for cultural poetics, 16(1), pp. 49-63. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht 10.13109/kult.2016.16.1.49

[img] Text
Lubrich & Liebal (2016), King Kong in the Mist.pdf - Published Version
Restricted to registered users only
Available under License Publisher holds Copyright.

Download (1MB)

In the twentieth century, two key texts about the »greatest of the great apes«, the gorilla, shaped our perception of other primates. At the first glance, they could not be more different.While one represents a fictive struggle with an aggressive monster (King Kong, 1932), the other is the memoir of a scientist who researches and protects gentle creatures (Gorillas in the Mist, 1983). When read as travel narratives, however, both reveal surprising similarities. Starting with a journey to a remote, unknown place, they describe the humans’ conflicting emotions during their encounter with animals. Both books deal with the recognition that we share cognitive and affective traits with the bestial ›other‹. The article compares the presentation of gorillas in these different and yet similar texts from the interdisciplinary perspective of literature and primatology. It explores the role of emotions in inter-species interaction and in the process of knowledge production in the field.

Item Type:

Journal Article (Original Article)

Division/Institute:

06 Faculty of Humanities > Department of Linguistics and Literary Studies > Institute of Germanic Languages

UniBE Contributor:

Lubrich, Oliver

Subjects:

400 Language > 430 German & related languages
800 Literature, rhetoric & criticism > 830 German & related literatures

ISSN:

1616-1203

Publisher:

Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht

Language:

English

Submitter:

Simone Gehr

Date Deposited:

21 Sep 2016 16:14

Last Modified:

22 May 2023 16:24

Publisher DOI:

10.13109/kult.2016.16.1.49

BORIS DOI:

10.7892/boris.88182

URI:

https://boris.unibe.ch/id/eprint/88182

Actions (login required)

Edit item Edit item
Provide Feedback