Jack the Ripper : media, culture, history / edited by Alexandra Warwick and Martin Willis.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Warwick, Alexandra.

Willis, Martin, 1971-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Jack, the Ripper--Influence.

Jack.

Jack, the Ripper.

Serial murders--England--London--History--19th century.

Serial murders.

Social aspects.

England--London.

History.

Serial murders--Social aspects.

Serial murders in mass media.

Serial murderers in literature.

Physical Description:

xvi, 251 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

Manchester ; New York : Manchester University Press ; New York : distributed exclusively in the USA by Palgrave, 2007.

Summary:

Jack the Ripper: Media, culture, history collects together some of the best academic work on the most important and sensational murder case of the nineteenth century. Leading scholars in the fields of history, media and cultural studies debate the influence of the Whitechapel murders on race, gender, the press, fiction, film and the City of London. This is the first collection of its kind to take the Whitechapel murders seriously as a vital ingredient in the creation of modern Britain, and the first collection of essays from diverse fields of scholarship to offer academic analysis of the representations and influence of the Whitechapel murders on both the nineteenth century and the contemporary world.

The collection offers a range of readings of Jack the Ripper organised around the disciplinary topics of media, culture and history, and drawing on scholarly methods and interests appropriate to all three. In turn, the sections consider the Victorian press and contemporary fictional and filmic representations of Jack the Ripper; the influence of the Whitechapel murders on nineteenth-century literature and science, as well as contemporary tourism; and the historical forces of female prostitution, racial anxiety and urban deprivation.

Jack the Ripper: Media, culture, history will be of interest to scholars of the Victorian period, particularly to those with interests in nineteenth-century media, culture and history. It will also be an invaluable resource for lecture courses on Victorian Britain and for students wishing to read the best of the available scholarship on the Whitechapel murders.

Contents:

The Whitechapel murders: chronology xiv

Part I Media

1 The house that Jack built / Christopher Frayling 13

2 The pursuit of angles / L. Perry Curtis, Jr 29

3 Casting the spell of terror: the press and the early Whitechapel murders / Darren Oldridge 46

4 Order out of chaos / Gary Coville, Patrick Lucanio 56

5 Blood and ink: narrating the Whitechapel murders / Alexandra Warwick 71

Part II Culture

6 The Ripper writing: a cream of a nightmare dream / Clive Bloom 91

7 The Whitechapel murders and the medical gaze / Andrew Smith 110

8 'Jonathan's great knife': Dracula meets Jack the Ripper / Nicholas Rance 124

9 Jack the Ripper, Sherlock Holmes and the narrative of detection / Martin Willis 144

10 Living in the slashing grounds: Jack the Ripper, monopoly rent and the new heritage / David Cunningham 159

Part III History

11 Narratives of sexual danger / Judith Walkowitz 179

12 Jack the Ripper as the threat of outcast London / Robert F. Haggard 197

13 'Who kills whores?' 'I do,' says Jack: race and gender in Victorian London / Sander L. Gilman 215

14 Crime and Punishment / William J. Fishman 229.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9780719074936

0719074932

0719074940

9780719074943

OCLC:

123113872