Gothic forms of feminine fictions [Paperback]

Gothic forms of feminine fictions is a study of the powers of the Gothic in late twentieth-century fiction and film. Susanne Becker argues that the Gothic, two hundred years after it emerged, exhibits renewed vitality in our media age with its obsession for stimulation and excitement.

Today's globalised entertainment culture, relying on soaps, reality TV shows, celebrity and excess, is reflected in the emotional trajectory of the Gothic's violence, eroticism and sentimental excess.

Gothic forms of feminine fictions discusses a wide range of anglophone Gothic romances, from the classics through pulp fictions to a postmodern Gothica. This timely and original study is a major contribution to gender and genre theory as well as cultural criticism of the contemporary. It will appeal to scholars in a wide range of fields and become essential for students of the Gothic, contemporary fiction - particularly Alice Munro and Margaret Atwood - and popular culture.

Introduction

Part I GOTHIC FORMS - FEMININE TEXTS

1 Gothic contextualisation

Experience - Excess! - Escape?

2 Gothic texture

Subjectivity - Interrogativity - Monstrosity

3 Gothic intertextuality

Filliation - Pulp/Horror/Romance - Canadian connections

Part II NEO-GOTHICISM: FROM HOUSES OF FICTION TO TEXTURES OF DRESS

4 Exploring Gothic contextualisation: Alice Munro and Lives of Girls and Women

Gothicising experience - The subject-in-the-making - Connectedness

5 Exceeding even gothic texture: Margaret Atwood and Lady Oracle

Re-experiencing gothicism - The subject-in-excess - Terrific excapes

6 Stripping the gothci: Aritha van Herk

Border experience - The subject-in-process - Escaping (en)closure

Part III GOTHIC TIMES AGAIN: TWO HUNDRED YEARS AFTER RADCLIFFE

7 The neogothic experience

8 Exceeding postmodernism

9 Global escapes

Bibliography

Susanne Becker is an edlã‚