Overview

Examining fictional purgatorial worlds in contemporary literature, film and video games, this book examines the way in which the female characters trapped within them construct identity positions of resistance and change. With the rise of populism, the Alt. Right, and isolationism in world politics in the second decade of the 21st Century, parallel, purgatorial worlds seem to currently proliferate within popular culture across all media, including television shows and films such as The Handmaids Tale, Us, Watchmen, and Margaret Atwood's The Testaments among many others. These texts depict alternate worlds that express the darkness and violence of our own, arguably none more so than for women. Featuring essays from a broad range of international contributors on topics as wide-ranging as mental health in the Silent Hill franchise and liminal spaces in the work of David Mitchell, this book is an original, timely and hope-filled analysis about overcoming the confines of a patriarchal, fundamentalist world where the female imaginative might just be the last, best hope.

Full Product Details

Author:   Simon Bacon
Publisher:   Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
Imprint:   Bloomsbury Academic
ISBN:  

9781350227033

ISBN 10:   135022703
Pages:   256
Publication Date:   07 September 2023
Audience:   Professional and scholarly ,  Professional & Vocational
Format:   Hardback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   Manufactured on demand  
We will order this item for you from a manufactured on demand supplier.

Table of Contents

"Acknowledgements List of Illustrations Contributor Notes Prologue Introduction Part I: Purgatorial Space 1.Particulate Matter: Miasma Theory, and Modern Horror, Jeffrey Andrew Weinstock (Central Michigan University, USA) 2.Between Hell and Hel: Gender, History and Nature in Subterranean Spaces, Elana Gomel (Tel Aviv University, Israel) 3. La Llorona Hauntings: Storytelling Feminicide at the Purgatorial Mexico/US Border, Cristina Santos (Brock University, Canada) and Sarah Revilla (University of British Columbia, Canada) Part II: Daughters, Mothers, Trauma 4. ""I Lost All Hope of Going up the Hill"": Silent Hill as a Female Specific Inferno, Dawn Stobbart (Lancaster University, UK) 5. ""Mother is God in the Eyes of a Child"": Doppelgangers, Punishment, and Maternal Otherworlds in Silent Hill and Triangle, Catherine Pugh (Independent Scholar, UK) 6. Pray and Obey: The Horror (and Purgatory) of Religious Fundamentalism, Nicola Young (Independent Scholar, UK) Part III: Female Development in Purgatorial Spaces 7. ""The New Eden?"": The Female-Centered Purgatorial Space of Dollhouse, Erin Giannini (Independent Scholar , USA) 8. The Vampire in the Attic Constructing Monstrous Female Identities in Liminal, Purgatorial Spaces, Taryn Tavener-Smith (Buckinghamshire New University, UK) 9.“Into the Further We Go”: Exploring Gender, World-building, and the Return of the Fantastic in the Insidious Franchise: Mark Richard Adams (Swindon College, UK) 10. Coded Outcry: Margaret Attwood's The Handmaid's Tale (1985 and 2017-Present) and The Testaments (2019), Gina Wisker (University of Brighton, UK) Part IV: Spaces of Female Resistance 11. Of Monstrous Spaces: Female Identity in American Horror Story: Murder House and American Horror Story: Hotel, Pembe Gözde Erdogan (Independent Scholar, UK) 12. ""This Time I'll Get It Right"": Female Coming-of-Age within Purgatorial Time Loops, Shawn Edrei (Tel Aviv University, Israel) 13. The Trauma We Inherit: Sister Night, Black Female Identity, and the Parallel Racial Purgatory of Watchmen, Kevin J. Wetmore Jr. (Loyola Marymount University, USA) 14. ""We're Human Too, You Know,"": Tethered Journeys and Shadowed Struggles in Jordan Peele's Us (2019), Nancy Johnson-Hunt (Auckland University of Technology, New Zealand) Notes Bibliography Index"

Reviews

This collection examines fictional horrors very like those that women face every day in the real world to illuminate how we got to where we are and, more importantly, where we may end up, offering up hope through engagement with models of survival, resistance, and victory. * Leah Richards, Professor of English, City University of New York, USA *

Author Information

Simon Bacon is an independent scholar working in Poland. He has previously edited works such as Gothic: A Reader, Horror: A Companion and Monsters: A Companion. Previous monographs include Becoming Vampire, Dracula as Absolute Other, Eco-Vampires, Vampires From Another World, and Unhallowed Ground.

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