Yael Shapira

Inventing the Gothic Corpse

The Thrill of Human Remains in the Eighteenth-Century Novel

• Broschiertes Buch

Produktbeschreibung

Inventing the Gothic Corpse shows how a series of bold experiments in eighteenth-century British realist and Gothic fiction transform the dead body from an instructive icon into a thrill device. For centuries, vivid images of the corpse were used to deliver a spiritual or political message; today they appear regularly in Gothic and horror stories as a source of macabre pleasure. Yael Shapira's book tracks this change at it unfolds in eighteenth-century fiction, from the early novels of Aphra Behn and Daniel Defoe, through the groundbreaking mid-century works of Samuel Richardson, Henry Fielding and Horace Walpole, to the Gothic fictions of Ann Radcliffe, Matthew Lewis, Charlotte Dacre and Minerva Press authors Isabella Kelly and Mrs. Carver.

In tracing this long historical arc, Shapira illuminates a hidden side of the history of the novel: the dead body, she shows, helps the fledgling literary form confront its own controversial ability to entertain. Her close scrutinyof fictional corpses across the long eighteenth century reveals how the dead body functions as a test of the novel's intentions, a chance for novelists to declare their allegiances in the battle between the didactic and the "merely" pleasurable.

Produktdetails

• Verlag: Palgrave Macmillan / Springer International Publishing / Springer, Berlin
• Artikelnr. des Verlages: 978-3-030-09499-7
• Softcover reprint of the original 1st ed. 2018
• Seitenzahl: 280
• Erscheinungstermin: 26. Januar 2019
• Englisch
• Abmessung: 210mm x 148mm x 16mm
• Gewicht: 369g
• ISBN-13: 9783030094997
• ISBN-10: 3030094995
• Artikelnr.: 56534434

Autorenporträt

Yael Shapira is a lecturer in the Department of English Literature and Linguistics at Bar-Ilan University in Israel. Her work has appeared in Eighteenth-Century Fiction , Eighteenth-Century Life , Narrative , Women's Writing and elsewhere. Her current research focuses on the forgotten Gothic novels of the Minerva Press in the Romantic period. 

Inhaltsangabe

1. Introduction: The Novel, the Corpse, and the Eighteenth-Century Marketplace.- 2. Spectacles for Sale: Reframing the Didactic Corpse in Behn and Defoe.- 3. Fictional Corpses at Mid-Century: Richardson, Fielding, and the Trouble with Hamlet.- 4. Death, Delicacy and the Novel: The Corpse in Women's Gothic Fiction.- 5. Shamelessly Gothic: Enjoying the Corpse in The Monk and Zofloya.- 6. Conclusion: Remains to Be Seen.

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1. Introduction: The Novel, the Corpse, and the Eighteenth-Century Marketplace.- 2. Spectacles for Sale: Reframing the Didactic Corpse in Behn and Defoe.- 3. Fictional Corpses at Mid-Century: Richardson, Fielding, and the Trouble with Hamlet.- 4. Death, Delicacy and the Novel: The Corpse in Women's Gothic Fiction.- 5. Shamelessly Gothic: Enjoying the Corpse in The Monk and Zofloya.- 6. Conclusion: Remains to Be Seen.