Animated Film as an Eloquent Body: Seth Boyden’s an Object at Rest as Mattertext
Animated Film as an Eloquent Body: Seth Boyden’s an Object at Rest as Mattertext

Summary/Abstract: This article primarily aims to present material ecocriticism as a newly emerging and paradigm-changing outlook in the studies of environment and literature. Extending the scope of literary and cultural studies to encompass the study of animated films, it first introduces material ecocriticism as a theoretical background in relation to ecocriticism’s developmental steps. Then, by referring to the theories foregrounded by Serenella Iovino and Serpil Oppermann, it analyses Seth Boyden’s short animated film entitled An Object at Rest (2015) as a case in point. The film exemplifies especially what Jeffrey J. Cohen contends about stone as a narrative site. By highlighting the story-telling qualities of the stone, the article sheds light on how animated films with ecological orientations may be used as “heuristic strategies” to discuss human-nature relations in a posthuman context.

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