Insatiable bloodlust, dangerous sexualities, the horror of the undead, uncharted Trannsylvanian wildernesses, and a morbid fascination with the `other': the legend of the vampire continues to haunt popular imagination.Reading the Vampire examines the vampire in all its various manifestations and cultural meanings. Ken Gelder investigates vampire narratives in literature and in film, from early vampire stories like Sheridan Le Fanu's `lesbian vampire' tale Carmilla and Bram Stoker's Dracula, the most famous vampire narrative of all, to contemporary American vampire blockbusters by Stephen King and others, the vampire chronicles of Anne Rice, `post-Ceausescu' vampire narratives, and films such as FW Murnau's Nosferatu and Bram Stoker's Dracula.Reading the Vampire embeds vampires in their cultural contexts, showing vampire narratives feeding off the anxieties and fascinations of their times: from the nineteenth century perils of tourism, issues of colonialism and national identity, and obsessions with sex and death, to the `queer' identity of the vampire or current vampiric metaphors for dangerous exchanges of bodily fluids and AIDS.

Reading the Vampire (Popular Fictions Series)

Arts & Photography

Gelder, Ken

History & Criticism

Routledge

Gelder examines the vampire in its various film and narrative manifestations, placing the vampires in their cultural contexts. The author draws upon films such as Murnau's Nosferatu and books such as Anne Rice's historical vampire chronicles.

Popular Fiction

In this important book, Ken Gelder offers a lively, progressive and comprehensive account of popular fiction as a distinctive literary field. Drawing on a wide range of popular novelists, from Sir Walter Scott and Marie Corelli to Ian Fleming, J. K. Rowling and Stephen King, his book describes for the first time how this field works and what its unique features are. In addition, Gelder provides a critical history of three primary genres - romance, crime fiction and science fiction - and looks at the role of bookshops, fanzines and prozines in the distribution and evaluation of popular fiction. Finally, he examines five bestselling popular novelists in detail - John Grisham, Michael Crichton, Anne Rice, Jackie Collins and J. R. R. Tolkien - to see how popular fiction is used, discussed and identified in contemporary culture.

Popular Fiction: The Logics and Practices of a Literary Field

Literature & Fiction

United States

Subcultures: cultural histories and social practice

This book presents a cultural history of subcultures, covering a remarkable range of subcultural forms and practices. It begins with London’s ‘Elizabethan underworld’, taking the rogue and vagabond as subcultural prototypes: the basis for Marx’s later view of subcultures as the lumpenproletariat, and Henry Mayhew’s view of subcultures as ‘those that will not work’. Subcultures are always in some way non-conforming or dissenting. They are social - with their own shared conventions, values, rituals, and so on – but they can also seem ‘immersed’ or self-absorbed. This book identifies six key ways in which subcultures have generally been understood: <ul>
<li>through their often negative relation to work: idle, parasitical, hedonistic, criminal</li> <li>their negative or ambivalent relation to class</li> <li>their association with territory - the ‘street’, the ‘hood’, the club - rather than property</li> <li>their movement away from home into non-domestic forms of ‘belonging’</li> <li>their ties to excess and exaggeration (as opposed to restraint and moderation)</li> <li>their refusal of the banalities of ordinary life and in particular, of massification.</li> </ul> Subcultures looks at the way these features find expression across many different subcultural groups: from the Ranters to the riot grrrls, from taxi dancers to drag queens and kings, from bebop to hip hop, from dandies to punk, from hobos to leatherfolk, and from hippies and bohemians to digital pirates and virtual communities. It argues that subcultural identity is primarily a matter of narrative and narration, which means that its focus is literary as well as sociological. It also argues for the idea of a subcultural geography: that subcultures inhabit places in particular ways, their investment in them being as much imaginary as real and, in some cases, strikingly utopian.

Subcultures

Politics & Social Sciences

Social Sciences

In Uncanny Australia Gelder and Jacobs show how Aboriginal claims for sacredness radiate out to affect the modern nation. They look at Coronation Hill, Hindmarsh Island, Uluru and the repatriation of sacred objects; they examine secret business in public places, promiscuous sacred sites, ghosts and bunyips, cartographic nostalgia, reconciliation and democracy, postcolonial racism and New Age enchantments. 
Uncanny Australia is a challenging and thought-provoking work that offers a new way of understanding how the sacred haunts the modern through the effect of the uncanny.

Uncanny Australia: Sacredness and Identity in a Postcolonial Nation

History

Jacobs, Jane M.

Americas

Melbourne University Press

This anthology collects the best examples of Australian gothic short stories from colonial times. Demonic bird cries, grisly corpses, ghostly women and psychotic station-owners populate a colonial landscape which is the stuff of nightmare. In stories by Marcus Clarke, Mary Fortune and Henry Lawson, the colonial homestead is wracked by haunted images of murder and revenge. Settlers are disoriented and traumatised as they stumble into forbidden places and explorers disappear, only to return as ghostly figures with terrible tales to tell. colonial progress, promise and nation-building, and reveal just how vivid the gothic imagination is at the heart of Australian fiction.

The Anthology Of Australian Colonial Gothic Fiction

Weaver, Rachael

Literary

Melbourne University

An invaluable academic resource, this investigation tracks the trends of contemporary Australian fiction with clear, approachable language and well-known works to illustrate points. A complete study of the major genres of Australian fiction that have flourished since 1989, this reference covers the popular—including crime fiction, science fiction, fantasy, and romance novels—as well as the literary.  Novels used and referenced in this wide-ranging survey include Murray Bail's Eucalyptus, Kate Grenville's Secret River, and Richard Flanagan's Gould's Book of Fish. Outside of studying literary themes, the effects of globalization on Australian fiction is also explored.

After the Celebration: Australian Fiction 1989-2007

Salzman, Paul

The best of colonial Australian romance fiction is collected in this anthology. The Anthology of Colonial Australian Romance Fiction collects captivating stories of love and passion, longing and regret. In these tales women arriving in the New World make decisions about relationships and marriage, social conventions, finances and career--and even the future of the nation itself. The 'slim and graceful' Australian girl becomes a new character type- independent, self-possessed and full of promise. These stories also show women gaining experience about the world, and the men, around them. They are put to the test by a new life and a new place. And not every relationship works out well. The best of colonial Australian romance fiction is collected in this anthology, from writers such as Ada Cambridge, Rosa Praed, Francis Adams, Henry Lawson, Mura Leigh and many others.

The Anthology of Colonial Australian Romance Fiction

This book presents a cultural history of subcultures, covering a remarkable range of subcultural forms and practices. It begins with London's 'Elizabethan underworld', taking the rogue and vagabond as subcultural prototypes: the basis for Marx's later view of subcultures as the lumpenproletariat, and Henry Mayhew's view of subcultures as 'those that will not work'. Subcultures are always in some way non-conforming or dissenting. They are social - with their own shared conventions, values, rituals, and so on - but they can also seem 'immersed' or self-absorbed. This book identifies six key ways in which subcultures have generally been understood: <ul> <li>through their often negative relation to work: idle, parasitical, hedonistic, criminal</li> <li>their negative or ambivalent relation to class</li> <li>their association with territory - the 'street', the 'hood', the club - rather than property</li> <li>their movement away from home into non-domestic forms of 'belonging'</li> <li>their ties to excess and exaggeration (as opposed to restraint and moderation)</li> <li>their refusal of the banalities of ordinary life and in particular, of massification.</li> </ul> Subcultures looks at the way these features find expression across many different subcultural groups: from the Ranters to the riot grrrls, from taxi dancers to drag queens and kings, from bebop to hip hop, from dandies to punk, from hobos to leatherfolk, and from hippies and bohemians to digital pirates and virtual communities. It argues that subcultural identity is primarily a matter of narrative and narration, which means that its focus is literary as well as sociological. It also argues for the idea of a subcultural geography: that subcultures inhabit places in particular ways, their investment in them being as much imaginary as real and, in some cases, strikingly utopian.

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Gelder, Ken. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Gelder, Ken

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Gelder, Ken. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Reading the Vampire (Popular Fictions Series)

Reading the Vampire (Popular Fictions Series)

Popular Fiction: The Logics and Practices of a Literary Field

Popular Fiction

Subcultures

Uncanny Australia: Sacredness and Identity in a Postcolonial Nation

The Anthology Of Australian Colonial Gothic Fiction

After the Celebration: Australian Fiction 1989-2007

The Anthology of Colonial Australian Romance Fiction

Subcultures