Gothic-postmodernism : voicing the terrors of postmodernity / Maria Beville.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Beville, Maria.

Series:

Postmodern studies ; 43.

Postmodern studies, 0923-0483 ; 43

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Gothic fiction (Literary genre).

Terror in literature.

Postmodernism.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (220 p.)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Amsterdam ; Toronto : Rodopi, 2009.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

Being the first to outline the literary genre, Gothic-postmodernism, this book articulates the psychological and philosophical implications of terror in postmodernist literature, analogous to the terror of the Gothic novel, uncovering the significance of postmodern recurrences of the Gothic, and identifying new historical and philosophical aspects of the genre. While many critics propose that the Gothic has been exhausted, and that its significance is depleted by consumer society’s obsession with instantaneous horror, analyses of a number of terror-based postmodernist novels here suggest that the Gothic is still very much animated in Gothic-postmodernism. These analyses observe the spectral characters, doppelgangers , hellish waste lands and the demonised or possessed that inhabit texts such as Paul Auster’s City of Glass , Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses and Bret Easton Ellis’s Lunar Park . However, it is the deeper issue of the lingering emotion of terror as it relates to loss of reality and self, and to death, that is central to the study; a notion of ‘terror’ formulated from the theories of continental philosophers and contemporary cultural theorists. With a firm emphasis on the sublime and the unrepresentable as fundamental to this experience of terror; vital to the Gothic genre; and central to the postmodern experience, this study offers an insightful and concise definition of Gothic-postmodernism. It firmly argues that ‘terror’ (with all that it involves) remains a connecting and potent link between the Gothic and postmodernism: two modes of literature that together offer a unique voicing of the unspeakable terrors of postmodernity.

Contents:

Preliminary Material

Introduction

Defining Gothic-postmodernism

On Gothic Terror

Generic Investigations: What is ‘Gothic’?

Postmodernism

The Gothic and Postmodernism – At the Interface

Gothic Literary Transformations: The Fin de Siecle and Modernism

Introduction to Part II

The Gothic-postmodernist Novel: Three Models

Gothic Metafiction: The Satanic Verses

Bulgakov’s The Master and Margarita

Textual Terrors of the Self: Haunting and Hyperreality in Lunar Park

Conclusion

Bibliography

Index.

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Includes bibliographical references (p. [203]-212) and index.

ISBN:

1-282-50527-0

9786612505270

90-420-2665-0

OCLC:

649903236

Publisher Number:

10.1163/9789042026650 DOI