The Gothic in contemporary British trauma fiction
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Bibliographic Information
The Gothic in contemporary British trauma fiction
Palgrave Macmillan, c2019
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Note
Includes bibliographical references and index
Description and Table of Contents
Description
This book examines the intersection of trauma and the Gothic in six contemporary British novels: Martin Amis's London Fields, Margaret Drabble's The Gates of Ivory, Ian McEwan's Atonement, Pat Barker's Regeneration and Double Vision, and Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go. In these works, the Gothic functions both as an expression of societal violence at the turn of the twenty-first century and as a response to the related crisis of representation brought about by the contemporary individual's highly mediated and spectatorial relationship to this violence. By locating these six novels within the Gothic tradition, this work argues that each text, to borrow a term from Jacques Derrida, "participates" in the Gothic in ways that both uphold the paradigm of "unspeakability" that has come to dominate much trauma fiction, as well as push its boundaries to complicate how we think of the ethical relationship between witnessing and writing trauma.
Table of Contents
1. Introduction: The Gothic in Contemporary British Trauma Fiction I. Current Debates in Trauma Theory and Witnessing A. Trauma Theory and the Ethics of Criticism B. Responding to the Call to Empathy: Literature as Witness C. An Aesthetic of Trauma D. Expanding Caruth's Model of Trauma E. Implications for Trauma Fiction II. Gothic Times A. Meaning and Scope of Contemporary Usages of "Gothic" B. Gothic Trauma C. Can the Gothic be Contemporary? Can the Contemporary be Gothic? D. Beyond the Trauma Paradigm E. Gothic Voyeurism III. The Gothic in Recent British Trauma Fiction References
2. Beyond the Event Horizon: Witnessing the Nuclear Sublime in Martin Amis's London Fields References 3. Gothic Collisions: Regarding Trauma in Margaret Drabble's The Gates of Ivory References 4. Fading Into Unknowing: Gothic Postmemory in Ian McEwan's Atonement References 5. Identification or Exploitation? The Evolution of the Gothic as Metaphor for Trauma in Pat Barker's Regeneration and Double Vision References 6. Witness or Spectator?: Gothic Interrogations of The Reader-Witness in Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go References 7. Conclusion References
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