Monstrous Textualities: Writing the Other in Gothic Narratives of Resistance (Gothic Literary Studies)

A literary study on Gothic narratives of resistance that brings together a range of critical approaches. Monstrous textualities emerge when Gothic narratives like Frankenstein employ the monstrous in their narrative structure to create stories of resistance, allowing writers to reflect upon their own poetics as they reclaim authority over their work under oppressive circumstances. This book traces the representation of the other through Black feminist hauntology in Toni Morrison's Beloved and Love . It also explores fat freak embodiment as a feminist resistance strategy in Angela Carter's Nights at the Circus and Margaret Atwood's Lady Oracle . Finally, it reads Atwood’s MaddAddam trilogy and Shelley Jackson's Patchwork Girl within a framework of critical posthumanist and cyborg theory. The result is a comprehensive argument about how these texts can be read within a framework of the critical posthumanist questioning of knowledge production, as well as an epistemological exploration beyond an exclusionary humanist paradigm. Monstrous textuality emerges when Gothic narratives like Frankenstein reflect the monstrous in their narrative structure to create narratives of resistance. It allows writers to meta-narratively reflect their own poetics and textual production, and reclaim authority over their work under circumstances of systemic cultural oppression and Othering. This book traces the representation of other Others through Black feminist hauntology in Toni Morrison's Beloved (1987) and Love (2003); it explores fat freak embodiment as a feminist resistance strategy in Angela Carter's Nights at the Circus (1984) and Margaret Atwood's Lady Oracle (1976); and it reads Atwood's MaddAddam trilogy (2003-13) and Shelley Jackson's Patchwork Girl (1995) within a framework of critical posthumanist and cyborg theory. The result is a comprehensive argument about how these texts can be read within a framework of critical posthumanist questioning of knowledge production, and of epistemological exploration, beyond the exclusionary humanist paradigm Cover Title Copyright Contents Acknowledgements Introduction: Teratologies Troubling Genealogies: Monstrous Textuality and Narratives of Resistance in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein Part I: What Moves at the Margin Introduction 1 Hauntologies 2 Haunted Narratives 3 Monstrous Narratives Conclusion Part II: A Female Monster Larger Than Life Introduction 4 Reframing Narratives 5 Corporeal Discourses 6 ‘A Female Monster Larger than Life’: Fatness and Resistance Conclusion Part III: Hideous Progeny Introduction 7 Posthuman Reading Practices 8 Posthuman Writing Practices 9 Posthuman Bodies in/as Narrative Conclusion Conclusion: ‘The Promises of Monsters’ Notes Bibliography Index