The Gothic, Postcolonialism and Otherness

The Gothic, Postcolonialism and Otherness
Author: T. Khair
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 200
Release: 2009-11-04
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 0230251048

Starting with a re-examination of the role of the colonial/racial Other in mainstream Gothic (colonial) fiction, this book goes on to engage with the problem of narrating the 'subaltern' in the post-colonial context. It engages with the problems of representing 'difference' in lucid conceptual terms, with much attention to primary texts, and highlights the strengths and weaknesses of colonial discourses as well as postcolonialist attempts to 'write back.' While providing rich readings of Conrad, Kipling, Melville, Emily Brontë, Erna Brodber, Jean Rhys and others, it offers new perspectives on Otherness, difference and identity, re-examines the role of emotions in literature, and suggests productive ways of engaging with contemporary global and postcolonial issues.

Unsettled Remains

Unsettled Remains
Author: Cynthia Sugars
Publisher: Wilfrid Laurier Univ. Press
Total Pages: 460
Release: 2010-08-27
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1554588006

Unsettled Remains: Canadian Literature and the Postcolonial Gothic examines how Canadian writers have combined a postcolonial awareness with gothic metaphors of monstrosity and haunting in their response to Canadian history. The essays gathered here range from treatments of early postcolonial gothic expression in Canadian literature to attempts to define a Canadian postcolonial gothic mode. Many of these texts wrestle with Canada’s colonial past and with the voices and histories that were repressed in the push for national consolidation but emerge now as uncanny reminders of that contentious history. The haunting effect can be unsettling and enabling at the same time. In recent years, many Canadian authors have turned to the gothic to challenge dominant literary, political, and social narratives. In Canadian literature, the “postcolonial gothic” has been put to multiple uses, above all to figure experiences of ambivalence that have emerged from a colonial context and persisted into the present. As these essays demonstrate, formulations of a Canadian postcolonial gothic differ radically from one another, depending on the social and cultural positioning of who is positing it. Given the preponderance, in colonial discourse, of accounts that demonize otherness, it is not surprising that many minority writers have avoided gothic metaphors. In recent years, however, minority authors have shown an interest in the gothic, signalling an emerging critical discourse. This “spectral turn” sees minority writers reversing long-standing characterizations of their identity as “monstrous” or invisible in order to show their connections to and disconnection from stories of the nation.

Gothic and Theory

Gothic and Theory
Author: Jerrold E. Hogle
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
Total Pages: 344
Release: 2019-03-14
Genre: Gothic fiction (Literary genre)
ISBN: 1474427790

This collection provides a thorough representation of the early and ongoing conversation between Gothic and theory - philosophical, aesthetic, psychological and cultural.

Queer Others in Victorian Gothic

Queer Others in Victorian Gothic
Author: Ardel Haefele-Thomas
Publisher: University of Wales Press
Total Pages: 210
Release: 2012-03-15
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 0708324665

Queer Others in Victorian Gothic: Transgressing Monstrosity explores the intersections of Gothic, cultural, gender, queer, socio-economic and postcolonial theories in nineteenth-century British representations of sexuality, gender, class and race. From mid-century authors like Wilkie Collins and Elizabeth Gaskell to fin-de-siecle writers such as J. Sheridan Le Fanu, Florence Marryat and Vernon Lee, this study examines the ways that these Victorian writers utilized gothic horror as a proverbial 'safe space' in which to grapple with taboo social and cultural issues. This work simultaneously explores our current assumptions about a Victorian culture that was monolithic in its disdain for those who were 'other'.

Gothic Remixed

Gothic Remixed
Author: Megen de Bruin-Molé
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2021-03-25
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 135023446X

The bestselling genre of Frankenfiction sees classic literature turned into commercial narratives invaded by zombies, vampires, werewolves, and other fantastical monsters. Too engaged with tradition for some and not traditional enough for others, these 'monster mashups' are often criticized as a sign of the artistic and moral degeneration of contemporary culture. These hybrid creations are the 'monsters' of our age, lurking at the limits of responsible consumption and acceptable appropriation. This book explores the boundaries and connections between contemporary remix and related modes, including adaptation, parody, the Gothic, Romanticism, and postmodernism. Taking a multimedia approach, case studies range from novels like Pride and Prejudice and Zombies and The Extraordinary Adventures of the Athena Club series, to television programmes such as Penny Dreadful, to popular visual artworks like Kevin J. Weir's Flux Machine GIFs. Megen de Bruin-Molé uses these monstrous and liminal works to show how the thrill of transgression has been contained within safe and familiar formats, resulting in the mashups that dominate Western popular culture.

The Gothic: Studies in History, Identity and Space

The Gothic: Studies in History, Identity and Space
Author: Katarzyna Więckowska
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 166
Release: 2020-04-14
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1848880995

The Gothic: Studies in History, Identity and Space is a collection of articles critically examining numerous aspects of the genre in a variety of texts, such as fiction, film and popular culture artefacts, and in various times and places, starting from the classic gothic novels and ending with contemporary gothicised cultural practices.

Romantic Literature and Postcolonial Studies

Romantic Literature and Postcolonial Studies
Author: Elizabeth A Bohls
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
Total Pages: 224
Release: 2013-01-22
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 0748678751

This book examines the relationship between Romantic writing and the rapidly expanding British Empire.

American Gothic

American Gothic
Author: Robert K. Martin
Publisher: University of Iowa Press
Total Pages: 279
Release: 1998-06
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 1587293021

In America as in Britain, the rise of the Gothic represented the other—the fearful shadows cast upon Enlightenment philosophies of common sense, democratic positivism, and optimistic futurity. Many critics have recognized the centrality of these shadows to American culture and self-identification. American Gothic, however, remaps the field by offering a series of revisionist essays associated with a common theme: the range and variety of Gothic manifestations in high and popular art from the roots of American culture to the present. The thirteen essayists approach the persistence of the Gothic in American culture by providing a composite of interventions that focus on specific issues—the histories of gender and race, the cultures of cities and scandals and sensations—in order to advance distinct theoretical paradigms. Each essay sustains a connection between a particular theoretical field and a central problem in the Gothic tradition. Drawing widely on contemporary theory—particularly revisionist views of Freud such as those offered by Lacan and Kristeva—this volume ranges from the well-known Gothic horrors of Edgar Allan Poe and Nathaniel Hawthorne to the popular fantasies of Stephen King and the postmodern visions of Kathy Acker. Special attention is paid to the issues of slavery and race in both black and white texts, including those by Ralph Ellison and William Faulkner. In the view of the editors and contributors, the Gothic is not so much a historical category as a mode of thought haunted by history, a part of suburban life and the lifeblood of films such as The Exorcist and Fatal Attraction.

The Cambridge History of the Gothic: Volume 3, Gothic in the Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries

The Cambridge History of the Gothic: Volume 3, Gothic in the Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries
Author: Catherine Spooner
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 555
Release: 2021-08-19
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1108652077

The third volume of The Cambridge History of the Gothic is the first book to provide an in-depth history of Gothic literature, film, television and culture in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries (c. 1896-present). Identifying key historical shifts from the birth of film to the threat of apocalypse, leading international scholars offer comprehensive coverage of the ideas, events, movements and contexts that shaped the Gothic as it entered a dynamic period of diversification across all forms of media. Twenty-three chapters plus an extended introduction provide in-depth accounts of topics including Modernism, war, postcolonialism, psychoanalysis, counterculture, feminism, AIDS, neo-liberalism, globalisation, multiculturalism, the war on terror and environmental crisis. Provocative and cutting edge, this will be an essential reference volume for anyone studying modern and contemporary Gothic culture.