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dc.contributor.advisorMonsman, Geralden_US
dc.contributor.authorThomas, Susan J.
dc.creatorThomas, Susan J.en_US
dc.date.accessioned2015-02-13T16:25:53Zen
dc.date.available2015-02-13T16:25:53Zen
dc.date.issued2014en
dc.identifier.urihttp://hdl.handle.net/10150/344423en
dc.description.abstractHideous Progeny: Postcolonial Fiction and the Gothic Tradition explores the vexed relationship between postcolonial fiction and the Anglo-European-American Gothic mode. Gothic motifs figure abundantly in postcolonial works, but they are not always meant to be taken seriously; often they take a comic and ironic stance toward the subject matter. When horror does appear in these works, it is usually not situated in the abject Other (the pharmakos figure), but in the projecting mindset of the dominant culture. As the title Hideous Progeny implies, such postcolonial novels are the rebellious offspring of the Gothic canon; they can even be dubbed Frankenstein's monsters, created from the disjecta membra of the nineteenth-century Gothic tradition and reassembled into a newly vital, global Gothic literature. Or, to use a different metaphor, they function as inverted mirror images, as photographic negatives, of the nineteenth-century Gothic novel, neutralizing its familiar tropes with an injection of "magical realist" motifs from diverse cultural traditions. This study uses a psychoanalytic methodology to analyze the Gothic source echoes in selected novels by Toni Morrison, Gabriel García Márquez, and Salman Rushdie. Through the lens of post-Freudian theorists Nicolas Abraham, Maria Torok, and Julia Kristeva, in particular, these novels will be depicted as Gothic--suspended between a haunted past and a technologically disorienting present--and also anti-Gothic. If the Gothic novel explored the unconscious anxieties of late eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Western culture, as many have suggested, the postcolonial Gothic novel explores the unconscious anxieties of an emerging global culture in the late twentieth century. Unlike its Anglo-American precursor, however, postcolonial Gothic fiction does not recoil from the unknown, but embraces the "liminal" zone, finding in it both "tiger and lady," both terror and potential renewal.
dc.language.isoen_USen
dc.publisherThe University of Arizona.en_US
dc.rightsCopyright © is held by the author. Digital access to this material is made possible by the University Libraries, University of Arizona. Further transmission, reproduction or presentation (such as public display or performance) of protected items is prohibited except with permission of the author.en_US
dc.subjectmagical realismen_US
dc.subjectpostcolonialen_US
dc.subjectEnglishen_US
dc.subjectGothicen_US
dc.titleHideous Progeny: Postcolonial Fiction and the Gothic Traditionen_US
dc.typetexten
dc.typeElectronic Dissertationen
thesis.degree.grantorUniversity of Arizonaen_US
thesis.degree.leveldoctoralen_US
dc.contributor.committeememberHogle, Jerrold E.en_US
dc.contributor.committeememberAiken, Susan Hardyen_US
dc.contributor.committeememberMonsman, Geralden_US
dc.description.releaseDissertation not available in either the UA Campus Repository or the ProQuest Dissertations and Theses database, at the request of the author.en_US
thesis.degree.disciplineGraduate Collegeen_US
thesis.degree.disciplineEnglishen_US
thesis.degree.namePh.D.en_US
dc.description.admin-noteRestricted upon deposit. KC. April 3rd, 2015en
html.description.abstractHideous Progeny: Postcolonial Fiction and the Gothic Tradition explores the vexed relationship between postcolonial fiction and the Anglo-European-American Gothic mode. Gothic motifs figure abundantly in postcolonial works, but they are not always meant to be taken seriously; often they take a comic and ironic stance toward the subject matter. When horror does appear in these works, it is usually not situated in the abject Other (the pharmakos figure), but in the projecting mindset of the dominant culture. As the title Hideous Progeny implies, such postcolonial novels are the rebellious offspring of the Gothic canon; they can even be dubbed Frankenstein's monsters, created from the disjecta membra of the nineteenth-century Gothic tradition and reassembled into a newly vital, global Gothic literature. Or, to use a different metaphor, they function as inverted mirror images, as photographic negatives, of the nineteenth-century Gothic novel, neutralizing its familiar tropes with an injection of "magical realist" motifs from diverse cultural traditions. This study uses a psychoanalytic methodology to analyze the Gothic source echoes in selected novels by Toni Morrison, Gabriel García Márquez, and Salman Rushdie. Through the lens of post-Freudian theorists Nicolas Abraham, Maria Torok, and Julia Kristeva, in particular, these novels will be depicted as Gothic--suspended between a haunted past and a technologically disorienting present--and also anti-Gothic. If the Gothic novel explored the unconscious anxieties of late eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Western culture, as many have suggested, the postcolonial Gothic novel explores the unconscious anxieties of an emerging global culture in the late twentieth century. Unlike its Anglo-American precursor, however, postcolonial Gothic fiction does not recoil from the unknown, but embraces the "liminal" zone, finding in it both "tiger and lady," both terror and potential renewal.


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