Description
Unspeakable: Literature and Terrorism from the Gunpowder Plot to 9/11 explores the representation of terrorism in plays, novels, and films across the centuries. Time and time again, writers and filmmakers including William Shakespeare, Joseph Conrad, Henry James, Gillo Pontecorvo, Don DeLillo, John Updike, and Steven Spielberg refer to terrorist acts as beyond comprehension, “a deed without a name,” but they do not stop there. Instead of creating works that respond to terrorism by providing comforting narratives reassuring audiences and readers of their moral superiority and the perfidy of the terrorists, these writers and filmmakers confront the unspeakable by attempting to see the world from the terrorist’s perspective and by examining the roots of terrorist violence.
Table of Contents
Introduction: Speakable/Unspeakable: The Rhetoric of Terrorism
Chapter 1: "A Deed without a Name": Macbeth, the Gunpowder Plot, and Terrorism
Chapter 2: Terrorism in the Nineteenth Century: the Stevensons, Greer, James, Conrad, and the Rosetti Sisters
Chapter 3: When Terrorism becomes Speakable: Pontecorvo's The Battle of Algiers and the Literature of the Troubles
Chapter 4: Israel/Palestine: Unspeakability in John le Carré, The Little Drummer Girl, Steven Spielberg, Munich, and Mohammed Moulessehoul [Yasmina Khadra], The Attack
Chapter 5: "Why do they hate us?": Updike, Hamid, DeLillo
Epilogue: Where Do We Go From Here? Nadeem Aslam, The Blind Man’s Garden and Amy Waldman, The Submission
