1st Edition

The Female Grotesque Risk, Excess and Modernity

By Mary Russo Copyright 1995

    The grotesque - the exagggerated, the deformed, the monstrous - has been a well-considered subject for students of comparative literature and art. In a major addition to the literature of art, cultural criticism and feminist studies, Mary Russo re-examines the grotesque in the light of gender, exploring the works of Angela Carter David Cronenberg Bahktin Kristeva Freud Zizek. Mary Russo looks at the portrayal of the grotesque in Western culture and by combining the iconographic and the historical, locates the role of the woman's body in the discourse of the grotesque.

    Introduction; Chapter 1 Up There, Out There; Chapter 2 Female Grotesques; Chapter 3 Freaks, Freak Orlando, Orlando; Chapter 4 Twins and Mutant Women; Chapter 5 “From the Base Upward”; Chapter 6 Revamping Spectacle;

    Biography

    Mary Russo is Professor of Literature and Critical Theory at Hampshire College in Massachusetts.