Gothic Dissections in Film and Literature

Book excerpt: This is the first book-length study to systematically and theoretically analyse the use and representation of individual body parts in Gothic fiction. Moving between filmic and literary texts and across the body—from the brain, hair and teeth, to hands, skin and the stomach—this book engages in unique readings by foregrounding a diversity of global representations. Building on scholarly work on the ‘Gothic body’ and ‘body horror’, Gothic Dissections in Film and Literature dissects the individual features that comprise the physical human corporeal form in its different functions. This very original and accessible study, which will appeal to a broad range of readers interested in the Gothic, centralises the use (and abuse) of limbs, organs, bones and appendages. It presents a set of unique global examinations; from Brazil, France and South Korea to name a few; that address the materiality of the Gothic body in depth in texts ranging from the nineteenth century to the present; from Nikolai Gogol, Edgar Allan Poe, Roald Dahl and Chuck Palahniuk, to David Cronenberg, Freddy Krueger and The Greasy Strangler.