The Gothic scene of international relations: ghosts, monsters, terror and the sublime after September 11

Accepting Furet’s claim that events acquire meaning and significance only in the context of narratives, this article argues that a particular type of international relations narrative has emerged with greater distinction after the traumatic experience of September 11: the gothic narrative. In a sense the political rhetoric of President Bush marks the latest example of America’s fine tradition in the gothic genre that began with Edgar Allan Poe and Nathaniel Hawthorne and extends through Henry James to Stephen King. His discourse of national security, it will be shown, assumes many of the predicates of gothic narratives. The gothic scenes evoked by Bush as much as Poe involve monsters and ghosts in tenebrous atmospheres that generate fear and anxiety, where terror is a pervasive tormentor of the senses. Poe’s narratives, for example, turn on encounters with dark, perverse, seemingly indomitable, forces often entombed in haunted houses. Similarly, Bush’s post-September 11 narratives play upon fears of terrorists and rogue states who are equally dark, perverse and indomitable forces. In both cases, ineffable and potently violent and cruel forces haunt and terrorise the civilised, human world.

Gothic Territory : una aproximación a la estética burtoniana

Aquest treball té com a objectiu l'anàlisi de l'estètica cinematogràfica del director Tim Burton. Es desenvoluparà fent un recorregut pels moviments artístics que han servit d'influència al director i les experiències vitals que l'han inspirat a l'hora de construir la seva filmografia. En aquest sentit, la seva biografia és vital per entendre les temàtiques a les que sol recórrer a l'hora de realitzar un film.

American Gothic House : Built in the 1880's, 2001.

Information brochure on the American Gothic House made famous by Iowan Grant Wood

The Poetics and Politics of the American Gothic : Gender and Slavery in Nineteenth-Century American Literature

Taking as its point of departure recent insights about the performative¦nature of genre, The Poetics and Politics of the American Gothic¦challenges the critical tendency to accept at face value that gothic¦literature is mainly about fear. Instead, Agnieszka Soltysik Monnet¦argues that the American Gothic, and gothic literature in general,¦is also about judgment: how to judge and what happens when¦judgment is confronted with situations that defy its limits.¦Poe, Hawthorne, Melville, Gilman, and James all shared a concern¦with the political and ideological debates of their time, but tended¦to approach these debates indirectly. Thus, Monnet suggests, while¦slavery and race are not the explicit subject matter of antebellum¦works by Poe and Hawthorne, they nevertheless permeate it through¦suggestive analogies and tacit references. Similarly, Melville, Gilman,¦and James use the gothic to explore the categories of gender and¦sexuality that were being renegotiated during the latter half of the¦century. Focusing on The Fall of the House of Usher, The Marble¦Faun, Pierre, The Turn of the Screw, and The Yellow Wallpaper,¦Monnet brings to bear minor texts by the same authors that further¦enrich her innovative readings of these canonical works. At the same¦time, her study persuasively argues that the Gothic's endurance¦and ubiquity are in large part related to its being uniquely adapted¦to rehearse questions about judgment and justice that continue to¦fascinate and disturb.

The Gothic in Contemporary Literature and Popular Culture : Pop Goth

This interdisciplinary collection brings together world leaders in Gothic Studies, offering new readings on popular Gothic cultural productions from the last decade. Topics covered include, but are not limited to: contemporary High Street Goth/ic fashion, Gothic performance and art festivals, Gothic popular fiction from Twilight to Shadow of the Wind, Goth/ic popular music, Goth/ic on TV and film, new trends like Steampunk, well-known icons Batman and Lady Gaga, and theorizations of popular Gothic monsters (from zombies and vampires to werewolves and ghosts) in an age of terror/ism.

Gustav Hasford's Gothic Poetics of Demystification

Gustav Hasford is the author of two important Vietnam War novels: The Short-Timers (1979), which was adapted by Stanley Kubrick into Full Metal Jacket (1987), and The Phantom Blooper (1990), its sequel. Relentlessly critical of the war that destroyed his generation, Hasford uses an array of Gothic themes, tropes and figures - such as the werewolf, vampire, and ghost - to describe the transformation of men into monsters that begins with basic training and can never be reversed. These and other Gothic devices allow Hasford to demystify and disenchant the Vietnam War, to strip it of euphemisms and official myths, and to reveal the violence that lays beneath. Unlike other well-known writers of the same generation, such as Michael Herr and Chris O'Brien, Hasford eschews postmodern techniques in order to pursue a rhetorical strategy of horror combined with black humor. The results are two novels of extraordinary ferocity, critical acumen and wit. The chapter concludes with an analysis of the specifically Gothic reading experience of ethical dilemma - a Gothic exercise in judgment - choreographed by both narratives.

Daughters of Lilith : transgressive femininity in Bram Stoker’s late gothic fiction

Daughters of Lilith: Transgressive Femininity in Bram Stoker’s Late Gothic Fiction explore le thème de la transgression féminine dans quatre romans gothiques de Bram Stoker. En combinant les études féministes et les études de genre, cette thèse examine les différents visages de la dissidence féminine à travers Dracula (1897), The Jewel of Seven Stars (1903), The Lady of the Shroud (1909) et The Lair of the White Worm (1911). Dans ces textes, la transgression est incarnée par la femme hystérique, la mère monstrueuse, la femme exotique et la New Woman. De plus, le traitement de ces stéréotypes féminins révèle une certaine tolérance envers la dissension féminine chez l’auteur. Souvent perçu comme un écrivain conservateur, Stoker est plutôt qualifié de progressiste dans cette thèse. L’inclusion de personnages féminins forts et déterminés à travers ses romans ainsi que ses rapports avec plusieurs féministes et proto-féministes dans sa vie privée témoignent de sa libéralité envers les femmes. Sa largeur d’esprit semble d’ailleurs évoluer tout au long de sa carrière ainsi qu’avec la progression du mouvement suffragiste britannique, une période mouvante à la fin du dix-neuvième et au début du vingtième siècle.

Exploring gothic sexuality

In his well-known analysis of the evolution of sexuality in society in "Making sexual history", Jeffrey Weeks comments that, following a series of major challenges throughout the twentieth century (ranging from Freud's work to the challenges of feminism and queer politics), "sexuality becomes a source of meaning, of social and political placing, and of individual sense of self". [...]