Postcolonial and Feminist Grotesque : Texts of Contemporary Excess.
Title:
Postcolonial and Feminist Grotesque : Texts of Contemporary Excess.
Author:
Pimentel Biscaia, Maria Sofia.
ISBN:
9783035102086
Personal Author:
Physical Description:
1 online resource (456 pages)
Contents:
Table of Contents -- Cultural and Literary Criticism: Locations of the Grotesque -- 1. Introduction - 9 -- 2. Dialogism and the Poetics of the Carnivalesque-Grotesque - 31 -- 3. Historical Overview of Grotesque Art, Literature, and Criticism - 61 -- Dialogical Readings: Practices of the Grotesque -- 1. Sacrificing the Animal-Woman -- 1.1. Woman as Spectacle and Martyr in When Dreams Travel - 117 -- 1.1.1. Female grotesqueness: a dialogue with Mary Russo - 117 -- 1.1.2. Freakishness and the mutilated female body - 120 -- 1.1.3. Female sacrifice, the discourse of resistanceand Julia Kristeva's theory of abjection - 140 -- 1.2. Feline Metamorphosis in Shame - 150 -- 1.2.1. René Girard's theory of the sacrificial victim - 150 -- 1.2.2. Martha Reineke's gender-informed perspectiveof the theory of the sacrificial victim:reconsidering the figure of the witch - 167 -- 1.2.3. Bakhtin and Girard meet and divide:the issue of violence - 169 -- 1.2.4. The carnivalesque-grotesque:Sufiya Zinobia and Omar Shakil - 177 -- 1.3. The Grotesque and Religious/Political Authority:Del amor y otros demonios and Shame - 208 -- 1.3.1. Sierva María: dog-woman and witch - 208 -- 1.3.2. The downfall of two tyrants andthe triumph of three mothers - 228 -- 2. Spiritual Realism or African Magical Realism: Hunger andthe Supernatural in The Famished Road - 279 -- 2.1. The Debate over the Concept of African Magical Realismand the Accusation of Cultural Imperialism - 279 -- 2.2. Rebirth and Nationhood: Spirits and Beggars - 293 -- 2.3. Madame Koto's Well-fed Body: Unreliable Embodimentof Wickedness Applied to the Witch Stereotype - 305 -- 2.4. Ignoring the Grotesque: the Misogynist Approachto the Blind Old Man's Character - 330 -- 3. In the Heart of Darkness: Travels Througha Grotesque Puppet Land in Pinocchio in Venice - 337.
3.1. Classicism versus the Grotesque: Academia versusCarnival and Fairy Tale versus Reality - 337 -- 3.2. Instances of Sacred Parody: Pinocchio as a Christ-like figure,the Madonna of the Organs as Demythologisationof the Virgin Mary, and the Engulfing Mamma - 356 -- 3.3. The Italian Tradition: Elements fromthe commedia dell'arte - 396 -- Conclusion - 407 -- Bibliography - 433.
Abstract:
Based on a dialogical premise, this book provides a comparative analysis of two interrelated literary fields: postcolonial and women's/feminist, viewed through the ideological and aesthetic prism of the grotesque. The author examines the work of novelists such as Githa Hariharan, Salman Rushdie, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Robert Coover and Ben Okri, selected to reveal the range and intensity of the grotesque in contemporary fiction through their de/constructions of gender and postcolonial politics. Complementary fields with the grotesque are considered through theorisations of Mary Russo, Julia Kristeva, Martha Reineke, Rene Girard and other intellectuals. Various literary formulations/frameworks are discussed to supplement views presented in the canonical texts of Mikhail Bakhtin and Wolfgang Kayser: post-colonial feminine identity/alterity/exoticism; postcolonial national identity; female grotesqueness and animal metamorphosis; abjectification; the principle of sacrificial economy; mythologisations of feminine martyrdom and motherhood; religious and political tyranny associated with imperialism and re-appropriation of carnivalesque-grotesque types in postmodernity.
Local Note:
Electronic reproduction. Ann Arbor, Michigan : ProQuest Ebook Central, 2017. Available via World Wide Web. Access may be limited to ProQuest Ebook Central affiliated libraries.
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