Δαρβινικό και θετικιστικό πνεύμα στις ιστορίες ζώων του Εμμανουήλ Ροΐδη

Abstract

Please note: this article is in Greek. The Darwinian and the positivistic tendency in Roidis short stories dealing with animals: Focusing on “The story of a horse” (1894) and “The story of a hen-coop” (1897), it maintains that the metonymic and allegorical patterns of the animal short stories draw upon Darwin’s scientific thought, Taine’s aesthetics on fable, and Zola’s version of Darwinism as it appears in his preoccupation with the causal relations permeating phenomena. Darwin’s anthropomorphism and zoomorphism, and Zola’s notion of the human beast are employed in a web of reciprocal relationships between natural and social world to support Roidis’ aesthetic predilection for an art varying from the sublime to ridiculous. In drawing a constant parallel between man and animal for satirical and ethical purposes, Roidis’ text invites diverse discourses (philosophical or/and physiological treatise, social analysis, medical document and so on) thus creating the idiosyncratic and intricate style of his poetics.