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Green, Matthew J. A. "‘She Brings Apocalypse’: Sex, Imagination and Redemptive Transgression in William Blake and the Graphic Novels of Alan Moore." Literature Compass 8. 10 2011. Accessed 14Jun. 2019. <https://onlinelibrary.w ... .1741-4113.2011.00839.x>. Added by: joachim (5/7/19, 12:49 PM) Last edited by: joachim (6/14/19, 7:58 PM) |
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| Resource type: Web Article Language: en: English Peer reviewed DOI: 10.1111/j.1741-4113.2011.00839.x BibTeX citation key: Green2011 Email resource to friend View all bibliographic details  |
Categories: General Keywords: "Promethea", Apocalypse, Blake. William, Butler. Judith, Gender, Moore. Alan, Sexuality, United Kingdom, USA, Williams III. J.H. Creators: Green Collection: Literature Compass |
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| Attachments | URLs https://onlinelibr ... -4113.2011.00839.x |
| Abstract |
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Gender and sexuality have long been contested sites within the Gothic. Since the eighteenth‐century, representations of masculinities and femininities have participated in larger socio‐political discourses circulating within and around gothic literature and visual art. The effects of such representations are themselves highly unstable and often a single work will demonstrate contrary impulses, subverting, challenging and, at the same time, reinscribing hegemonic values and dominant gender stereotypes. Despite – or perhaps because of – this instability, explicit depictions of sexuality retain a certain revolutionary tincture, an association open for development by artists seeking to perform counter‐hegemonic social interventions. Thus, when William Blake discusses the revolutionary potential of his art to display ‘the infinite which was hid’, he describes this process in terms of ‘an improvement of sensual enjoyment’, etching these claims beneath an image of a naked woman hovering over the flaming body of a recumbent male. This article investigates the representations of gender and sexuality in Moore’s work, situating these in relation to Blake’s equation of eroticism and imaginative transformation. Like Blake, Moore pays particular attention to an expansion of feminine sexuality in a manner that is suspicious of – and at times directly hostile toward – the heteronormative biases embedded in the institution of marriage. Both artists depict gender and sexuality in complicated and unsettling ways. Nevertheless, despite this shared sense that the emancipation of women’s sexual impulses is fundamentally connected with the psychological and political liberation of humanity, their representation of transgressive femininities requires further contextualisation and interrogation. Accordingly, this article will remain sensitive to the historical situations out of which their works emerge, whilst at the same time drawing on the theoretical works of Judith Butler to inform the analysis.
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