Ghostly Alterities. Spectrality and Contemporary Literatures in English. (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9783898217149)

Ghostly Alterities analyses the meaning of ghostliness in contemporary Anglophone novels - Patricia Grace's Baby No-Eyes (1998), Toni Morrison's Beloved (1987), J. M. Coetzee's Foe (1986), Vivienne Cleven's Her Sister's Eye (2002), Ben Okri's The Famished Road (1991), Pat Barker's The Ghost Road (1995) - in which the figure of the ghost is often entrusted with the task of questioning Western culture and history. After an introductory chapter which investigates Freud's concept of the uncanny along with theoretical issues raised by Iain Chambers and Jacques Derrida, Ghostly Alterities discusses the novels from different critical orientations (postcolonialism, poststructuralism and psychoanalysis), presenting ghostliness as intersecting with three major themes: the problem of the spectre's visibility and "bodily" nature; the particular melancholic state of mind the ghost can trigger which brings about a very special kind of (g)hospitality; the spectral nature of history and its relationship with the characters' personal memory.

Author: Bianca Delvillano
ISBN-10: 3898217140
ISBN-13: 9783898217149
Publisher: Ibidem Press
Language: English
Published: 05/01/2009
Pages: 196
Format: Paperback
Weight: 0.53lbs
Size: 8.27h x 5.83w x 0.42d