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Schneider, Christian W. Framing Fear: The Gothic Mode in Graphic Literature. ELCH - Studies in English Literary and Cultural History. Trier: Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Trier, 2014. 
Added by: joachim (01/07/2014, 10:21)   Last edited by: joachim (31/08/2021, 13:51)
Resource type: Book
Language: en: English
ID no. (ISBN etc.): 978-3-86821-511-3
BibTeX citation key: Schneider2014
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Categories: General
Keywords: "Batman", "Fun Home", "The Sandman", "Watchmen", Autobiography, Bechdel. Alison, Gaiman. Neil, Gibbons. Dave, Horror, Moore. Alan, Superhero, United Kingdom, USA
Creators: Schneider
Publisher: Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Trier (Trier)
Views: 14/869
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Abstract
In recent years, the medium of comics has finally attained enough cultural recognition to be discussed as a valid form of artistic expression by critics and readers alike. However, acknowledging merely respectable ‘graphic novels’ fails to grasp the formal and emotional possibilities shaping comics as a form of graphic literature. These possibilities are also visible in its less respectable recesses, particularly the mode of lurid horror and decay: the Gothic. Surfacing in various media, the Gothic is another critical concept increasingly gaining attention and respect. Yet, there has not been a systematic analysis of the conceptual overlap of Gothic and comics so far. This is what this study tries to remedy. Based on a cognitively-oriented model of both the Gothic’s specific affective pull and the complex formal arrangement of words and images in comics, it analyses several graphic texts from different genres and their diverse Gothic aspects. Within these multi-faceted contexts, it explores how the Gothic mode may be manifested in graphic literature, which affective and cognitive effects it has on its readers and how it expresses a very specific world-view that goes far beyond cheap thrills and lurid spectacle.

Table of Contents

I. THE GOTHIC MODE AND GRAPHIC LITERATURE (1)

1. Introduction (3)

2. Methodology (9)
2.1. An affective form (9)
2.2. Neoformalism (10)
2.3. Cognitive literary studies (14)
– Literary schemata and emotions (16)
– Aesthetic affect (21)
– Narrativity (23)
– Non-narrativity (26)
2.4. Intermediality (27)

3. The Gothic Mode (29)
3.1. Defining the Gothic (29)
– Gothic criticism (30)
– What is a mode? (33)
– Gothic (and) horror (36)
3.2. A definitional core (38)
– The literature of fear (38)
– Transgression and excess (41)
– The sublime (42)
– Uncanny and abject transgressions (44)
– Dark carnival (46)
– Gothic time and space (49)
– A crisis of representation (53)
– Post-structuralist Gothic (54)
– Gothic and narrativity (57)
3.3. Gothic forms (58)
– Gothic artificiality (60)
– The Gothic view (62)
– Gothic fragments (66)
– Gothic intertextuality (67)
– Postmodern Gothic (68)
3.4. The Gothic world (72)
– The Gothic world-view (75)

4. Graphic literature (79)
4.1. Comics criticism (79)
4.2. Defining comics (81)
– Comics as a medium (85)
4.3. What is graphic literature? (86)
– Visual literariness (91)
– Comics as a narrative medium (95)
– Non-narrative comics (97)
4.4. Comics as hybrid medium (100)
– Word versus image (101)
– Image versus series (104)
– Sequence versus surface (106)
– Text as experience versus text as object (107)
4.5. A cognitive reading of comics (109)
4.6. The chronotope of comics (114)
– Space in comics (114)
– Time in comics (116)
4.7. Gothic comics (122)
– A subversive art form? (122)
– Fear of images (123)
– Uncanny comics (125)
– Precursors (127)

II. THE GOTHIC MODE IN GRAPHIC LITERATURE: ANALYSING SELECTED WORKS (129)

5. “Fear in their hearts”: 1950s horror comics (131)

6. “In the midst of death …”: Neil Gaiman’s The Sandman (150)

7. Behind the spandex wall: Gothic superheroes (182)
7.1. “Look at Dracula, squint a bit …”: Batman and the Gothic (184)
7.2. “Nothing ever ends”: The Gothic world of Watchmen (202)

8. “Looks like skulls”: Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home and Gothic life narratives (220)

9. Conclusion (240)

10. References (250)
10.1. Graphic Literature (250)
10.2. Other Sources (255)


Added by: joachim  Last edited by: joachim
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