Böcker av Nicole C. Dittmer

Nicole C. Dittmer offers a reimagining of the popular Gothic female ';monster' figure in early-to-mid-Victorian literature. Regardless of the extensive scholarship concerning monstrosities, these pre-fin-de-siecle figurations have often been neglected by critical studies or interpreted as fragments of mind and body which create a division between culture and nature. In Monstrous Women and Ecofeminism, Dittmer deploys monism to delineate from and contest such dualism, unifies the material-immaterial aspects of fictional women, and blurs the distinction between nature-culture. Blending intertextual disciplines of medical sciences, ecofeminism, and fiction, she exposes female monstrosities as material and semiotic figurations. This book, then, identifies how women in the Victorian Gothic are informed by the entanglement of both immaterial discourses and material conditions. When repressed by social customs, the monistic mind-body of the material-semiotic figure reacts to and disrupts processes of ontology, transforming women into ';wild' and ';monstrous' (re)presentations.

Collecting seven tales from classic penny publications including the story of Mrs. Lovett, the piemaking counterpart to Sweeney Todd, this volume features newly edited text and insights from Dr. Dittmer's research to revive a wild company of witches, femme fatales, and deadly criminals for a new generation of readers.