Limits of Horror: Technology, Bodies, Gothic - Softcover

Botting, Fred

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0719083656 ISBN 13: 9780719083655

Publisher: Manchester University Press, 2011

Synopsis

This is a major re-evaluation of the role and cultural significance of Gothic horror.

About this title

About the Author

Fred Botting is Professor in the Institute for Cultural Research, Lancaster University.

From the Back Cover

Horror isn't what it used to be. Nor are its Gothic avatars.

The meaning of monsters, vampires and ghosts has changed significantly over the last two hundred years, as have the mechanisms (from fiction to fantasmagoria, film and video games) through which they are produced and consumed. Limits of horror, moving from gothic to cybergothic, through technological modernity and across a range of literary, cinematic and popular cultural texts, critically examines these changes and the questions they pose for understanding contemporary culture and subjectivity.

Re-examining key concepts such as the uncanny, the sublime, terror, shock and abjection in terms of their bodily and technological implications, this book advances current critical and theoretical debates on Gothic horror to propose a new theory of cultural production based on an extensive discussion of Freud's idea of the death drive.

Limits of horror will appeal to students and academics in Literature, Film, Media and Cultural Studies and Cultural Theory.

From the Inside Flap

Horror isn t what it used to be. Nor are its Gothic avatars.The meaning of monsters, vampires and ghosts has changed significantly over the last two hundred years, as have the mechanisms (from fiction to fantasmagoria, film and video games) through which they are produced and consumed. Limits of horror, moving from gothic to cybergothic, through technological modernity and across a range of literary, cinematic and popular cultural texts, critically examines these changes and the questions they pose for understanding contemporary culture and subjectivity. Re-examining key concepts such as the uncanny, the sublime, terror, shock and abjection in terms of their bodily and technological implications, this book advances current critical and theoretical debates on Gothic horror to propose a new theory of cultural production based on an extensive discussion of Freud s idea of the death drive.Limits of horror will appeal to students and academics in Literature, Film, Media and Cultural Studies and Cultural Theory.

Edition details

• Publisher: Manchester University Press
• Publication date: 2011
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0719083656
• ISBN 13: 9780719083655
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 240