|
Showing 1 - 3 of
3 matches in All Departments
Offering an insightful examination of Stephen King’s fiction,
this book utilises a psychoanalytical approach drawing on Freud’s
theory of the uncanny. It demonstrates how entrenched King’s work
is in a literary tradition influenced by psychoanalytic theory, as
well as the ways that King evades and amends Freud. Such an
approach positions King’s texts not simply as objects of
interpretation that might yield latent meaning, but as producers of
meaning. King can certainly be read through the lens of the
uncanny, but this book also aims to consider the uncanny through
the lens of King. Organised around specific elements of the uncanny
that can be found in King’s fiction, this book explores the
themes of death and the return of the dead, monstrosity, telepathy,
inanimate objects becoming menacingly animate, and spooky children.
Popular texts are considered, such as IT, The Shining, and Pet
Sematary, as well as less discussed work, including The Institute,
The Regulators and Desperation. The book’s central argument is
that King’s uncanny motifs offer insightful commentary on what is
repressed in contemporary culture and insist on the failure of
scientific rationalism to explain the world. King’s uncanny
imaginary rejects dualistic notions of an experiencing self in an
inert physical world and insists that psychic experience is bound
up with the environmental. This book will be of interest to
students and scholars of contemporary and popular literature,
gothic and horror studies, and cultural studies.
Telling the Real Story: Genre and New Zealand Literature
interrogates the relationships between genre and New Zealand
literature. What modes of writing have been deemed more appropriate
than others at particular times, and why? Why have some narratives
been interpreted as realist when there are significant aspects of
them that relate to other genres, such as romance, science fiction
and Gothic? What meanings are generated by the meeting points in a
text, where one mode meets another? What is at stake in writing,
for example, a New Zealand vampire novel or an art world thriller?
By rereading canonical texts and exploring writers who have been
sidelined because of their use of non-realist genre elements,
Telling the Real Story exposes the interplay of realism, Gothic,
fantasy, romance and melodrama within New Zealand narratives and
demonstrates that the apparently realist monolith of the national
literature is infinitely more diverse and exciting than it may
seem. Frank Sargeson, Sylvia Ashton-Warner, Keri Hulme, Elizabeth
Knox and Eleanor Catton are among the major New Zealand writers
whose work is seen in fresh and exciting ways.
|
|