Shirley Jackson’s Dark Tales

Reconsidering the Short Fiction

Dr Joan Passey, Dr Robert Lloyd (Herausgeber)

Buch | Softcover

248 Seiten

2025
Bloomsbury Academic (Verlag)
978-1-350-36115-7 (ISBN)

Noch nicht erschienen (ca. August 2025)
Versandkostenfrei
Auch auf Rechnung

Artikel merken

The first dedicated exploration of the short fiction of Shirley Jackson for three decades, this volume takes an in-depth look at the themes and legacies of her 200-plus short stories. Recognized as the mother of contemporary horror, scholars from across the globe, and from a range of different disciplinary backgrounds, dig into the lasting impact of her work in light of its increasing relevance to contemporary critical preoccupations and the re-release of Jackson's work in 2016. Offering new methodologies to study her work, this volume calls upon ideas of intertextuality, ecocriticism and psychoanalysis to examine a broad range of themes from national identity, race, gender and class to domesticity, the occult, selfhood and mental illness. With consideration of her blockbuster works alongside later works that received much less critical attention, Shirley Jackson's Dark Tales promises a rich and dynamic expansion on previous scholarship of Jackson's oeuvre, both bringing her writing into the contemporary conversation, and ensuring her place in the canon of Horror fiction.

Joan Passey is Lecturer at the University of Bristol, UK, where she has taught since 2016. She has published on Shirley Jackson in Women’s Studies, introduced the biopic Shirley for 70+ Curzon cinemas nationwide, and participated in a Q&A to promote Shirley with Birds Eye View. Robert Lloyd is a teacher and researcher at Cardiff University, UK, and specializes in women’s literature, the supernatural, and critical theory. He completed his thesis on Shirley Jackson and spectrality in 2021, is in the process of preparing his monograph, and has published on Jackson in Women’s Studies.

I. Influence and Inheritance

‘A Relator of Stories’: Supernatural Presences in Joseph Glanvill’s Saducismus Triumphatus (1681) and the Short Fiction of Shirley Jackson – Miranda Corcoran (University College Cork, Ireland)

‘The most seductive of mirages’: The Weird American Dream in Selected Short Stories by Shirley Jackson and Joyce Carol Oates - Joseph Norman (Brunel University, UK)

Demon lovers, Bluebeard's wives: Folkloric intertexts and horror in Jackson and Machado – Erika Kvistad (University of South-East Norway, Norway)

Negotiating Witchcraft in Shirley Jackson’s Short Fiction – Dara Downey (Trinity College Dublin, Ireland)

II. Bodies and Minds

Nightmares, Neurosis and Clinical Psychology in the Short Stories of Shirley Jackson – Alice Vernon (Aberystwyth University, UK)

Meeting the Devil: Diabolic Influence and Diabolic Resistance in Shirley Jackson’s James Harris Stories – Robert Zipser (Independent Researcher, USA)

‘Missing’ Women: Spectral Displacement in Shirley Jackson’s Short Fiction – Robert Lloyd (Cardiff University, UK)

III. Space and Place

Into the Gothic Wilderness: The (Un)natural World in ‘Mrs. Spencer and the Oberons’ and ‘The Man in the Woods’ – Alissa Burger (Culver-Stockton College, USA)

The Anxious City in Shirley Jackson’s ‘Pillar of Salt’ and ‘The Tooth’: A Phenomenology of the Uncanny – Luke Reid (Dawson College, Canada)

On her way to the grocery store: shopping, alienation and the lost housewife in Shirley Jackson’s short stories – Emma Liggins (Manchester Metropolitan University, UK)
IV. Genre and Form

‘I Could Do With a Change’: Shirley Jackson’s Engagement with Postwar Science Fiction – Janice Lynne Deitner (Trinity College Dublin, Ireland)

‘This Gloomy Kind of Story:’ Shirley Jackson’s Conte Cruels and the Horror Tale in the Post-Pulp Era – Kevin Knott (Frostburg State University, USA)

Myth and Ritual in Shirley Jackson’s Short Fiction – Samantha Landau (University of Tokyo, Japan)

Bibliography

Index

Erscheint lt. Verlag	21.8.2025
Verlagsort	London
Sprache	englisch
Maße	156 x 234 mm
Themenwelt	Literatur ► Krimi / Thriller / Horror ► Horror
	Geisteswissenschaften ► Sprach- / Literaturwissenschaft ► Anglistik / Amerikanistik
	Geisteswissenschaften ► Sprach- / Literaturwissenschaft ► Literaturwissenschaft
	Sozialwissenschaften ► Politik / Verwaltung ► Politische Theorie
	Sozialwissenschaften ► Soziologie
ISBN-10	1-350-36115-1 / 1350361151
ISBN-13	978-1-350-36115-7 / 9781350361157
Zustand	Neuware