From its first publication in 1992, Men, Women, and Chain Saws has offered a groundbreaking perspective on the creativity and influence of horror cinema since the mid-1970s. Investigating the popularity of the low-budget tradition, Carol Clover looks in particular at slasher, occult, and rape-revenge films. Although such movies have been traditionally understood as offering only sadistic pleasures to their mostly male audiences, Clover demonstrates that they align spectators not with the male tormentor, but with the females tormented--notably the slasher movie's "final girls"--as they endure fear and degradation before rising to save themselves. The lesson was not lost on the mainstream industry, which was soon turning out the formula in well-made thrillers. Including a new preface by the author, this Princeton Classics edition is a definitive work that has found an avid readership from students of film theory to major Hollywood filmmakers.

Written in the thirteenth century, the Icelandic prose sagas, chronicling the lives of kings and commoners, give a dramatic account of the first century after the settlement of Iceland—the period from about 930 to 1050. To some extent these elaborate tales are written versions of traditional sagas passed down by word of mouth. How did they become the long and polished literary works that are still read today? The evolution of the written sagas is commonly regarded as an anomalous phenomenon, distinct from contemporary developments in European literature. In this groundbreaking study, Carol J. Clover challenges this view and relates the rise of imaginative prose in Iceland directly to the rise of imaginative prose on the Continent. Analyzing the narrative structure and composition of the sagas and comparing them with other medieval works, Clover shows that the Icelandic authors, using Continental models, owe the prose form of their writings, as well as some basic narrative strategies, to Latin historiography and to French romance.

In the past few decades, interest in the rich and varied literature of early Scandinavia has prompted a great deal of interest in its background: its origins, social and historical context, and relationship to other medieval literatures. Until the 1980s, however, there was a distinct lack of scholarship in the area, so in 1985, Carol J. Clover and John Lindow brought together some of the most ambitious and distinguished Old Norse scholars to contribute essays for a collection that would finally fill the void of a comprehensive guide to the field. The contributors summarize and comment on scholarly work in the major branches of the field: eddic and skaldic poetry, family and kings' sagas, courtly writing, and mythology. Taken together, their judicious and well-written essays, each with a full bibliography, make up this vital survey of Old Norse literature in English - a basic reference work that has stimulated much research and helped to open up the field to a wider academic readership. This volume has become an essential text for instructors, and twenty years later, is now being republished as part of the Medieval Academy Reprints for Teaching (MART) series with a new preface that discusses more recent contributions to the field.