Category: Literature

The Giants: Blunderbore

November 21, 2023 By arne hendriks Off

Although contemporary man can be considered a giant, we do not see ourselves as such. In fact we generally distance ourselves from the giant by associating them with forms of evil so outrageous that it doesn’t affect our sense of self. By short investigations of…

The Swallow Cycle

October 2, 2023 By arne hendriks Off

Thumbling stories have two things in common: 1. The protagonist is by default very small, and 2. To emphasize and perhaps ridicule this smallness, at some point in the story, they’re swallowed by an animal, preferably a cow. The good news is that most times…

Type 700 Tom

February 20, 2023 By arne hendriks Off

The Thumbling project focuses on global variants of the Tom Thumb and Thumbelina tale. There are literally hundreds of variants of this popular story that features a character of extremely tiny size. This character may be referred to as thumbling, inchling, fingerling, dwarf, homunculus, manikin,…

Original Final Words

July 18, 2018 By arne hendriks Off

Richard Matheson’s novel ‘The shrinking man’ was published in 1956 and soon adapted for film. In the film the famous last words are inspiring but quite different from the original final words in Matheson’s book. Supposedly the original text was adapted by director Jack Arnold.…

The Fear of the Gods

February 3, 2014 By arne hendriks 1

In The Food of the Gods and how it came to Earth, the British writer H.G. Wells presents Herakleophorbia IV, a nutrient that makes anything grow to about six times its regular size. The story takes the reader, rather uninspired, through the regular motions of such…

Abundance Fantasies: Cockaigne

May 23, 2013 By arne hendriks 1

“And still I’ve more to tell of it; The geese when roasted on the spit Fly to the abbey (believe it or not) And cry out ‘Geese, all hot, all hot!’ With garlic in great quantity, The best-dressed geese a man could see. The larks are…

Subliminal Tinker Bell

November 9, 2012 By arne hendriks Off

If we want to convince mankind that we should downsize the human body it will not be sufficient to present the endocrinological and genetic possibilities to shrink, or point out the amount of damage we are causing because of human size, or any of the…

The Rescale Archive

November 28, 2011 By arne hendriks 0

Rescaling something always has effect. It makes us notice things. It changes the way we perceive, and it reinstates a certain autonomy of the object. But what happens if the rescaled object is the human body? How would we perceive reality if everything around us…

Anthropology of Small Mythological Characters

July 11, 2011 By arne hendriks 1

Undoubtedly myths have some responsibility for how we define our relationship with the small. Mythical explanations of the world often present small beings as metaphors for the unexplainable. The small have become a space to project human desires, fears, ideals and ideas. Knowledge of this vast…

Shrink to Power

February 19, 2011 By arne hendriks 0

Popular culture is ripe with examples of the playful desire to shrink. We’ve reported before on the peculiar desire of some people to sexually fantasize about very small men, and women especially. But not all forms of microphilia are of an erotic nature. On the…

Children’s Shrinklit.

October 19, 2010 By arne hendriks 0

There is a lot of of children’s literature involving little or shrunken characters. These stories sparked our imagination as a child and in many cases continue to do so, consciously and subconsciously. In the Netherlands we have Pinkeltje and Wiplala, in Sweden it’s Simon Small,…

An Act of Rebellion

September 14, 2010 By arne hendriks 2

In The Tin Drum, one of the great postwar literary classics, the protagonist Oskar Matzerath decides to stop growing at age 3. He explains to the reader that since he was born with a fully developed consciousness he could observe adults, and their ways. Since he…

ShrinkLit

April 2, 2010 By arne hendriks 1

Literature, both high and low, offers important insights when it comes to our view on size differences. Here’s a list of books, periodically updated and expanded, in which size  plays a key role. Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift (published 1776-7). In this political satire Gulliver meets with…

A fascinating adventure into the unknown!

April 1, 2010 By arne hendriks 0

This research project takes its name from the 1957 classic scifi film The Incredible Shrinking Man. Based on Richard Matheson’s book The Shrinking Man, it is about a man who slowly shrinks into oblivion. It is a rich document for analysis of some of the…