The subject of murder : gender, exceptionality, and the modern killer / Lisa Downing.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Downing, Lisa.

Contributor:

Lipman Criminology Library Fund.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Murderers--Press coverage.

Murderers.

Women murderers--Press coverage.

Women murderers.

Murder in literature.

Wuornos, Aileen.

Lacenaire, Pierre François, 1800-1836.

Lacenaire, Pierre François.

Hindley, Myra.

Lafarge, Marie, 1816-1852.

Lafarge, Marie.

Nilsen, Dennis Andrew, 1945-2018.

Nilsen, Dennis Andrew.

Jack, the Ripper.

Jack.

Press coverage.

Physical Description:

viii, 241 pages ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

Chicago ; London : The University of Chicago Press, 2013.

Summary:

In The Subject of Murder, Lisa Downing explores the ways in which the figure of the murderer has been made to signify a specific kind of social subject in Western modernity. In contemporary culture, we continue to believe that there is something different and exceptional about killers, but is the murderer such a distinctive type? Are they degenerate beasts or supermen as they have been depicted on the page and the screen? Or are murderers something else entirely? Book jacket.

Contents:

Murder and gender in the European nineteenth century

"Real murderer and false poet": Pierre-François Lacenaire

The "angel of arsenic": Marie Lafarge

The beast in man: Jack and the rippers who came after

The twentieth-century Anglo-American killer

"Infanticidal" femininity: Myra Hindley

"Monochrome man": Dennis Nilsen

Serial killing and the dissident woman: Aileen Wuornos

Kids who kill: defying the stereotype of the murderer

By way of brief conclusion.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Local Notes:

Acquired for the Penn Libraries with assistance from the Lipman Criminology Library Fund.

ISBN:

022600354X

9780226003405

022600340X

9780226003542

OCLC:

796002517

Publisher Number:

99957604368