All that Gothic

This book provides a comprehensive introduction to the history, aesthetics and key themes of Gothic, the main issues and debates surrounding the genre along with the approaches and theories that have been applied to Gothic texts and films. The volume discusses a wide range of 18 and 19 century texts and moves into 20 century literature and film. It explores the cultural resonances created by the genre and raises a variety of issues, including the ways in which Gothic monstrosity mimics same-sex desire and social transgression. The texts included in the volume argue that Gothic film and fiction animated the darker shadows of the dominant culture.

Autorentext

Agnieszka Lowczanin specializes in British literature of the 18 and 19century. She obtained her PhD from the University of Lódz (Poland) with a dissertation which focused on the deployment of death in canonical novels of this period and in Gothic fiction.
Dorota Wisniewska graduated from the English Institute, University of Lódz. She obtained her M.A. from the University of Toledo (USA), and her PhD from the University of Lódz. Her areas of scholarly interest include American Gothic fiction and horror film, pop culture and gender studies.

Inhalt

Contents: Weronika Laszkiewicz: Perversity in the Selected Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Marek Wilczynski: From Scratch Once More or, Sam Lawson Restarts the American Gothic - Wit Pietrzak: From Faustus to Azatoth: H. P. Lovecraft's «Dreams in the Witch-House» (of Modernity) - Zofia Kolbuszewska: Gothic Metalepsis and Ekphrastic Horror: Self-Conscious Reflection on the Ambivalent Cultural Status in Stephen King's «The Road Virus Heads North» - Dorota Filipczak: Loveless Legacies: Gothic Mothers and Haunted Daughters in Postcolonial Literature - Anna Branach-Kallas: Reading (Post-) Colonial Terror within Gothic Aesthetics: The Conceptual Limits of Postcolonial Gothic in Canadian Aboriginal Fiction - Monika Kocot: The Haunting of the House in Charlotte Perkins Gilman's «The Yellow Wallpaper» - Krzysztof Kosecki: Hermann Hesse's Steppenwolf as a Modern Gothic Tale: A Cognitive Poetic Perspective - Yvonne Leffler: «Nature is the Church of Satan.» The Gothic Topography in Contemporary Scandinavian Horror Novels and Films - Agnieska Lowczanin: Antonia and the Male Gaze. Imaging Femininity in M. G. Lewis's The Monk - Tomasz Fisiak: Who's Afraid of Carmilla? Le Fanu's «Carmilla»: Gender and Power - Sara Tavassoli: Grotesque Revived: Monstrosity in Angela Carter's Nights at the Circus - Agnieszka Kotwasinska: Body out of (Human) Bounds: Lesbian Transformations in Contemporary Horror Fiction - Jadwiga Wegrodzka: E. Nesbit and the Gothic Mode in Children's Fiction - Barbara Braid: Gothic Subversions of Heterosexual Matrix in Sarah Waters's Affinity - Marta Goszczynska: Floating Worlds, Splintered Narratives and Unstable Identities: The Spectral Return of the Gothic in Sarah Waters's Fingersmith - Elisabeth Bronfen: Gothic Dispatches from War Zones - Ewa Partyka: Gothic Elements in Vampire Films by Hammer Film Productions - Agnieszka Rasmus: Peter Bogdanovich's Targets: The Old Gothic Monster vs. the New Villain - Katarzyna Malecka: «I've seen bodies shining like stars»: Making a Case for Necrophilia in Lynne Stopkewich's Kissed - Elena Baeva: As Gothic As It Gets? E. Elias Merhige's Shadow of the Vampire - A Gothic Film on the Gothic Nature of Film - Agnieszka Izdebska: Gothic Convention and the Aesthetics of Failure.