Two Ways of Looking at the Father: Sharon Olds’ The Father and Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home

Authors

  • Sara Villamarín-Freire Universidade da Coruña

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.1344/452f.2022.27.9

Keywords:

fatherhood, father-daughter relations, gaze, haptic visuality, ocularization, comics

Abstract

This article explores a series of visual-textual devices used in the representation of father figures in the poetry collection The Father (Sharon Olds, 1992) and the graphic memoir Fun Home (Alison Bechdel, 2006). I argue that literature can contribute to undo the conflation of paternity and patriarchy by portraying fathers as complex, fallible, and above all real individuals, as opposed to the disembodied abstract principle that has been prevalent in Western cultures. I will contend that the subsuming qualities of the dominant fiction can be subverted via a series of formal mechanisms related to the visual field that seek to foster reader engagement. In doing so, both The Father and Fun Home provide alternatives to traditional representations of the father figure.

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Published

2022-07-30

How to Cite

Villamarín-Freire, S. (2022). Two Ways of Looking at the Father: Sharon Olds’ The Father and Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home. 452ºF. Revista De Teoría De La Literatura Y Literatura Comparada, (27), 165–183. https://doi.org/10.1344/452f.2022.27.9

Issue

No. 27 (2022): Body, Vision, and Textuality: Contemporary Poetics and the Politics of Looking

Section

Monograph

License

All contents published in the journal are protected under a Creative Commons BY-NC-ND license. This corresponds to legislation within Spain, and does not allow commercial use of the texts. It is not possible to modify the contents either.

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Comparative Literature magazine 452ºF [ISSN 2013-3294] is a publishing project coordinated by Asociación Cultural 452ºF, and developed by its Editorial board.



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