Gothic Dissections in Film and Literature ─ The Body in Parts

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.

Ian Conrich is Honorary Fellow at the University of Vienna, Austria. He is an author or editor of fourteen books, including Horror Zone: The Cultural Experience of Contemporary Horror Cinema (2009) and The Cinema of John Carpenter: The Technique of Terror (2005).

Laura Sedgwick is studying for a PhD in Film and Gothic Studies at the University of Stirling, Scotland. She is co-editor of ‘Islands and Film’, a special issue of the journal Post Script.