Walking shadows : : reflections on the American fantastic and the American grotesque from Washington Irving to the postmodern era / / by Ib Johansen.

• Superior document: Costerus, new series, v. 211
• Author: Johansen, Ib, 1938-
• Place / Publishing House: Leiden ;, Boston : : Brill Rodopi.; c2015.
• Year of Publication: 2015
• Language: English
• Series: Costerus New Series 211.
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (512 p.)
• Notes: Description based upon print version of record.

Walking Shadows focuses on the American fantastic and the American grotesque, attempting in this manner for the first time to establish an overview of and a theoretical approach to two literary modes that have often been regarded as essential to an understanding of the American cultural canon. The central importance of these two literary forms has been pointed out earlier by important theorists such as Stanley Cavell, David Reynolds, and William Van O’Connor. A number of literary works, from the beginning of the nineteenth to the end of the twentieth centuries, are taken up in order to illustrate the inherent links or family resemblances between the two modes, with special reference to the way in which a Bakhtinian reading may facilitate our appreciation of their status within the canon. These excursions into the House of Fantastic and Grotesque Fiction may be of interest not only to hardcore aficionados, but also to philosophically minded readers in general, in particular perhaps to those who have paid acute attention to debates on late twentieth and early twenty-first century post-structuralism and deconstruction (where the classic positions of Foucault, Derrida, and others still appear to be relevant).

Table of Contents

Preliminary Material -- Introduction: Theorizing the American Fantastic and the American Grotesque -- Todorov, Bakhtin, and Other Theorists -- Rip Van Winkle’s Fall into History: Framing Washington Irving’s Tale -- Wrestling with God in the Devil’s Territories: Hawthorne and the Fantastic -- The Crowing of the Cock: Melville’s Fantastic Turn in “Cock-A-Doodle-Doo!” -- Convoluted Spaces: The Carnivalesque-Grotesque in Edgar Allan Poe’s “King Pest” -- The Apocalyptic-Grotesque in Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Masque of the Red Death” -- In the Empire of Signs: Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Black Cat” and the Pure Fantastic -- Spectres of America: Ghostliness in Henry James’ The Turn of the Screw -- Commemorating the Black and Angry Dead in Toni Morrison’s Beloved -- Modernism and Its Discontents: H.P. Lovecraft’s Poetics of Horror -- On the Byways of Modernism: Nathanael West and Patricia Highsmith -- Inside the American Nightmare: Bret Easton Ellis’ American Psycho and Its Cultural Context -- Bret Easton Ellis as an Example of Postmodernist Fiction, the Film Medium and Its Side-Effects -- The Incredible Lightness of Being -- Epilogue: Conclusions -- Appendix on Shadows -- Bibliography -- Index.