Ο Εμμανουήλ Ροΐδης και η μεταφορά της επιστήμης

Abstract

Examining the impact of science on Emmanuel Roidis' writing, this paper tackles the issue of scientific impetus in the author's fiction, namely the short stories dealing with animals (with a focus on "The story of a horse"). It maintains that in Roidis' criticism science manifests itself by dint of Aristotelian analogy and metaphor, which is invariably employed to intersect different fields of thought, including philosophy, aesthetics, literary ideas and the scientific spirit of the nineteenth century. Informed by this propensity, the narrative in the animal stories engages in Darwinian ideas and in certain naturalist practices which parallel the social with the natural world (e.g. Zola's "circulus"), employing also motifs (e.g. human beast) which mediate Darwin's theories. Roidis' animal stories, which derive from the long-term ethical tradition of fable -from Aesop and Aristotle to La Fontaine and Koraes- open up to the scientific spirit of their era through the practice of analogical association and metaphor. In drawing a constant parallel between man and animal for satirical and ethical purposes, Rodis' text invites diverse discourses (philosophical or /and physiological treatise, social analysis, medical document and so on), creating the "mosaic" that constitutes the generic ambiguity of Roidis' short stories.