The Gothic Family Romance

Heterosexuality, Child Sacrifice, and the Anglo-Irish Colonial Order

Fiction & Literature, Literary Theory & Criticism, Feminist Criticism, British, Theory
Cover of the book The Gothic Family Romance by Margot Backus, Duke University Press
View on Amazon View on AbeBooks View on Kobo View on B.Depository View on eBay View on Walmart
Author: Margot Backus ISBN: 9780822398295
Publisher: Duke University Press Publication: June 1, 2012
Imprint: Duke University Press Books Language: English
Author: Margot Backus
ISBN: 9780822398295
Publisher: Duke University Press
Publication: June 1, 2012
Imprint: Duke University Press Books
Language: English

Tales of child sacrifice, demon lovers, incestual relations, and returns from the dead are part of English and Irish gothic literature. Such recurring tropes are examined in this pioneering study by Margot Gayle Backus to show how Anglo-Irish gothic works written from the eighteenth through the twentieth centuries reflect the destructive effects of imperialism on the children and later descendents of Protestant English settlers in Ireland.
Backus uses contemporary theory, including that of Michel Foucault and Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, to analyze texts by authors ranging from Richardson, Swift, Burke, Edgeworth, Stoker, and Wilde to contemporary Irish novelists and playwrights.
By charting the changing relations between the family and the British state, she shows how these authors dramatized a legacy of violence within the family cell and discusses how disturbing themes of child sacrifice and colonial repression are portrayed through irony, satire, “paranoid” fantasy, and gothic romance. In a reconceptualization of the Freudian family romance, Backus argues that the figures of the Anglo-Irish gothic embody the particular residue of childhood experiences within a settler colonial society in which biological reproduction represented an economic and political imperative.
Backus’s bold positioning of the nuclear family at the center of post-Enlightenment class and colonial power relations in England and Ireland will challenge and provoke scholars in the fields of Irish literature and British and postcolonial studies. The book will also interest students and scholars of women’s studies, and it has important implications for understanding contemporary conflicts in Ireland.

View on Amazon View on AbeBooks View on Kobo View on B.Depository View on eBay View on Walmart

Tales of child sacrifice, demon lovers, incestual relations, and returns from the dead are part of English and Irish gothic literature. Such recurring tropes are examined in this pioneering study by Margot Gayle Backus to show how Anglo-Irish gothic works written from the eighteenth through the twentieth centuries reflect the destructive effects of imperialism on the children and later descendents of Protestant English settlers in Ireland.
Backus uses contemporary theory, including that of Michel Foucault and Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, to analyze texts by authors ranging from Richardson, Swift, Burke, Edgeworth, Stoker, and Wilde to contemporary Irish novelists and playwrights.
By charting the changing relations between the family and the British state, she shows how these authors dramatized a legacy of violence within the family cell and discusses how disturbing themes of child sacrifice and colonial repression are portrayed through irony, satire, “paranoid” fantasy, and gothic romance. In a reconceptualization of the Freudian family romance, Backus argues that the figures of the Anglo-Irish gothic embody the particular residue of childhood experiences within a settler colonial society in which biological reproduction represented an economic and political imperative.
Backus’s bold positioning of the nuclear family at the center of post-Enlightenment class and colonial power relations in England and Ireland will challenge and provoke scholars in the fields of Irish literature and British and postcolonial studies. The book will also interest students and scholars of women’s studies, and it has important implications for understanding contemporary conflicts in Ireland.

More books from Duke University Press

Cover of the book Right to Rock by Margot Backus
Cover of the book The Marcus Garvey and Universal Negro Improvement Association Papers, Volume XII by Margot Backus
Cover of the book Japanoise by Margot Backus
Cover of the book Mao Zedong and China in the Twentieth-Century World by Margot Backus
Cover of the book We Are Left without a Father Here by Margot Backus
Cover of the book Food, Farms, and Solidarity by Margot Backus
Cover of the book Understories by Margot Backus
Cover of the book Reproducing the French Race by Margot Backus
Cover of the book Millenarian Vision, Capitalist Reality by Margot Backus
Cover of the book On Hawthorne by Margot Backus
Cover of the book No Tea, No Shade by Margot Backus
Cover of the book Virtual Migration by Margot Backus
Cover of the book The Appearances of Memory by Margot Backus
Cover of the book Good Bread Is Back by Margot Backus
Cover of the book Willful Subjects by Margot Backus
We use our own "cookies" and third party cookies to improve services and to see statistical information. By using this website, you agree to our Privacy Policy