Full Description
This Companion explores the many ways in which the Gothic has dispersed in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, and in particular how it has come to offer a focus for the tensions inherent in modernity. Fourteen essays by world-class experts show how the Gothic in numerous forms - including literature, film, television, and cyberspace - helps audiences both to distance themselves from and to deal with some of the key underlying problems of modern life. Topics discussed include the norms and shifting boundaries of sex and gender, the explosion of different forms of media and technology, the mixture of cultures across the western world, the problem of identity for the modern individual, what people continue to see as evil, and the very nature of modernity. Also including a chronology and guide to further reading, this volume offers a comprehensive account of the importance of Gothic to modern life and thought.
Contents
Chronology; Part I. The Gothic and Modernity: 1. Introduction: modernity and the proliferation of Gothic Jerrold E. Hogle; 2. Modernist Gothic John Paul Riquelme; 3. Contemporary Gothic and the law Susan Chaplin; Part II. The Gothic and the Modern Body: 4. Gothic configurations of gender Avril Horner and Sue Zlosnik; 5. The 'queer limits' in the modern Gothic E. L. McCallum; 6. Teen Gothic Glennis Byron and Sharon Deans; Part III. The Gothic and Modern Media: 7. Cinema of the Gothic extreme Elisabeth Bronfen; 8. American film noir Charles Scruggs; 9. Technogothics of the early twenty-first century Isabella Van Elferen; Part IV. Multi-cultural and Global Gothic: 10. Gothic and the politics of race Maisha L. Wester; 11. The Gothic in North American 'subcultures' Carlos Gallego; 12. The postcolonial Gothic Ken Gelder; 13. Asian Gothic Katarzyna Ancuta; 14. The Gothic and magical realism Lucie Armitt; Guide to further reading; Guide to further viewing.
