Chris Danta Chris Danta i(A73791 works by)
Gender: Male
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Works By

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1 Scaling Down Our Imagination of the Human: Ted Chiang and the Fable of Extinction Chris Danta , 2021 single work criticism
— Appears in: Transcultural Ecocriticism : Global, Romantic and Decolonial Perspectives 2021;
1 Eurydice’s Curse : J. M. Coetzee and the Prospect of Death Chris Danta , 2018 single work criticism
— Appears in: Australian Literary Studies , February vol. 33 no. 1 2018;

'The prospect of death is one of J. M. Coetzee’s central and enduring concerns. As David Attwell observes in his biography, ‘The most trenchant of the purposes of Coetzee’s metafiction . . . is that it is a means whereby he challenges himself with sharply existential questions’. My claim in this essay is that Coetzee uses the act of writing existentially to orient himself and his readers to the prospect of death. I argue that Coetzee treats the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice as a story about how to deal with the prospect of death. What seems to terrify the Coetzeean protagonist is the thought of the absolute solitariness of death. I call this the curse of Eurydice. Eurydice’s fate in the myth is to be left alone in the Underworld, dying for a second time after her impatient lover turns to gaze at her before they have safely reached the surface of the earth. To take Eurydice’s point of view in the story is to begin to glimpse the solitariness of death. One of the roles of women in Coetzee’s fiction, I suggest, is to mitigate the male character’s fear of this solitariness by conducting him to the threshold of death, but no further.'  (Publication abstract)
1 y separately published work icon Strong Opinions : J. M. Coetzee and the Authority of Contemporary Fiction Sue Kossew (editor), Julian Murphet (editor), Chris Danta (editor), New York (City) : Continuum , 2011 Z1875977 2011 anthology criticism This new collection of essays on Coetzee examines how his novels create and unsettle literary authority. Its unique contribution is to show how Coetzee provokes us into reconsidering certain basic formal and existential questions such as the nature of literary realism, the authority of the author and the constitution of the human self in a posthumanist setting by consciously revealing the literary-theoretical seams of his work. Strong Opinions makes the innovative claim that Coetzee’s work is driven not by a sense of scepticism or nihilism but rather by a form of controlled exposure that defines the literary. The essays in the volume variously draw attention to three of Coetzee’s most recent and significant experiments in controlled exposure. The first is the exposure of place-Coetzee’s decision to set his novels in his newly adopted country of Australia. The second is the exposure of form-Coetzee’s direct, almost essayistic address of literary-philosophical topics within his novels. And the third is the exposure of limits-Coetzee’s explicit deconstruction of the traditional limits of human life (Publisher website).
1 Coetzee's Animal Afterlives Chris Danta , 2009 single work criticism
— Appears in: Long Paddock , no. 4 2009; 'At first glance, the movement being outlined - away from the theological notion of grace and towards the 'body with its pain' - would seem to imply a disbelief in the efficacy of the afterlife. But, as any reader of Coetzee's recent fiction would be able to tell you, nothing could be further from the truth. One cannot read the post-Disgrace novels without noticing how prominently the afterlife figures in them both as theme and narrative device. While it would be going too far to label him a theologian, I think it is not too much of an exaggeration to call the late Coetzee a 'theorist of the afterlife' (Diary of a Bad Year 125).
My aim in this paper is to flesh out Coetzee's theory of the afterlife in order to see how it conditions the sense of his post-South-African fiction. The strangely touching essay 'On the Afterlife' that brings the 'Strong Opinions' section of Diary of a Bad Year to an end is as a good a place as any to start this investigation.'
1 Untitled Chris Danta , 2004 single work review
— Appears in: Colloquy ; Text Theory Critique , May no. 8 2004;
— Review of Deadly Pollen Stephen Oliver , 2003 selected work poetry
1 Untitled Chris Danta , 2003 single work review
— Appears in: Colloquy : Text Theory Critique , May no. 7 2003;
— Review of Loanwords John Mateer , 2002 selected work poetry
1 Outside i "I am smoking", Chris Danta , 2002 single work poetry
— Appears in: Colloquy : Text Theory Critique , April no. 6 2002;
1 The Secret Miracle i "what did you think - really -", Chris Danta , 2002 single work poetry
— Appears in: Colloquy : Text Theory Critique , April no. 6 2002;
1 [Untitled] i "tonight,", Chris Danta , 2002 single work poetry
— Appears in: Colloquy : Text Theory Critique , April no. 6 2002;
1 Lenz i "words", Chris Danta , 2002 single work poetry
— Appears in: Colloquy : Text Theory Critique , April no. 6 2002;
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