Shirley Jackson

From The Lottery to The Haunting of Hill House, Shirley Jackson's oeuvre has created an influential apocalyptic vision of America. This collection of essays offers new insights into her work, in light of themes of space, motherhood and race, as well as filmic adaptations of her work.

2021 Bram Stoker Awards(R) Nominee for Superior Achievement in Non-Fiction

From the short story «The Lottery» to the masterworks The Haunting of Hill House and We Have Always Lived in the Castle, Shirley Jackson's popular, often bestselling works experimented with popular generic forms (melodrama, folktale, horror, the Gothic, and the Weird) to create a uniquely apocalyptic vision of America and its contradictions.

With a Foreword by award-winning Jackson biographer Ruth Franklin, this collection features comprehensive critical engagement with Jackson's works, including those that have received less scholarly attention. Among these are the novels The Road Through the Wall, The Bird's Nest, and Hangsaman, as well as Jackson's historical study, The Witchcraft of Salem Village. Also included are essays on Jackson's darkly humorous collections Life Among the Savages and Raising Demons, on Stephen King's «literary friendship» with Jackson, on the little-known film adaptations Lizzie (1957) and Hosszú Alkony (Long Twilight) (1997), and the first-ever extended analysis devoted to Jackson's unpublished satirical cartoon sketches.

The collection's five sections focus on Jackson's style, key themes, and influence; her politics and poetics of space; her treatment of the «monstrous» mother and monstrousness of motherhood; her representations of outsiders and minorities; and moving-image adaptations of her work.

Autorentext

Kristopher Woofter teaches courses in horror, the Gothic, and the Weird tradition in literature and the moving image in the Department of English at Dawson College, Montréal, Québec. He has co-edited several collections, including American Twilight: The Cinema of Tobe Hooper (2021), Joss Whedon vs. the Horror Tradition: The Production of Genre in Buffy and Beyond (2019), and Recovering 1940s Horror Cinema: Traces of a Lost Decade (2015). He has also published essays on the series Supernatural (2020), Caitlín R. Kiernan (2019), George A. Romero (2018), pseudo-documentary (2018), The Cabin in the Woods (2014), and the Gothic documentary (2013).

Klappentext

2021 Bram Stoker Awards(R) Nominee for Superior Achievement in Non-Fiction From the short story «The Lottery» to the masterworks The Haunting of Hill House and We Have Always Lived in the Castle, Shirley Jackson s popular, often bestselling works experimented with popular generic forms (melodrama, folktale, horror, the Gothic, and the Weird) to create a uniquely apocalyptic vision of America and its contradictions. With a Foreword by award-winning Jackson biographer Ruth Franklin, this collection features comprehensive critical engagement with Jackson s works, including those that have received less scholarly attention. Among these are the novels The Road Through the Wall, The Bird s Nest, and Hangsaman, as well as Jackson s historical study, The Witchcraft of Salem Village. Also included are essays on Jackson s darkly humorous collections Life Among the Savages and Raising Demons, on Stephen King s «literary friendship» with Jackson, on the little-known film adaptations Lizzie (1957) and Hosszú Alkony (Long Twilight) (1997), and the first-ever extended analysis devoted to Jackson s unpublished satirical cartoon sketches. The collection s five sections focus on Jackson s style, key themes, and influence; her politics and poetics of space; her treatment of the «monstrous» mother and monstrousness of motherhood; her representations of outsiders and minorities; and moving-image adaptations of her work.

Inhalt

Contents: Reading Jackson: Style, Theme, Tradition Ralph Beliveau: Shirley Jackson and American Folk Horror: The Public Face of Private Demons Michael T. Wilson: «How the Dinner Revolves»: Eating, Food, and Consumption in the Fiction of Shirley Jackson Daniel T. Kasper: The Posthumous Style of Shirley Jackson Carl H. Sederholm: Raising Her Voice: Stephen King's Literary Dialogue with Shirley Jackson The Politics and Poetics of Space Patrycja Antoszek: «Intrusions from the Outside World»: Shirley Jackson and the Politics and Poetics of Enclosure Dara Downey: «No one Can Ever Find Me»: Gingerbread Houses in Shirley Jackson's Fiction Elizabeth Mahn Nollen: The «Terrible» House as Locus of Female Power in We Have Always Lived in the Castle Michelle Kay Hansen: «Move Your Feet, Dear. I'm Conga- ing»: Drawing Circles around Domesticity in Shirley Jackson's Cartoons Luke Reid: Romancing the Nostalgic Future: Prophecy, Planning, and Postwar Architecture in The Sundial Mothers and Other Monsters Wyatt Bonikowski: Elizabeth and Elizabeth: The Secret of the Mother's Desire in The Bird's Nest Rebecca Million: Living an Aporia: Notes on Shirley Jackson's Home Books and the Impossible- Possible of Motherhood Ibi Kaslik: Hangsaman: Writing the Self in Blood at the Margins Mikaela Bobiy: Home Is Where the Heart Is(n't): The House as Mother in Jackson's House Trilogy Outsiders and Minorities Emily Banks: Erotic Envy and the Racial Other in «Flower Garden» Stephanie A. Graves: Wicked Creature(s): Delirium and Difference in The Witchcraft of Salem Village Rebecca Stone Gordon: «A Lady of Undeniable Gifts but Dubious Reputation»: Reading Theodora in The Haunting of Hill House Jackson on Film and Television Will Dodson: «Some Disturbing Obstruction»: Lizzie from The Bird's Nest Jeffrey Andrew Weinstock: Walking Alone Together: Adapting Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House Kristopher Woofter: Long Twilight (Hosszú Alkony), Shirley Jackson, and the Eerie In- Between Erin Giannini: A Good Life?: Merricat, from Tyrant to Savior in We Have Always Lived in the Castle and Its Film Adaptation Darryl Hattenhauer: Afterword.