The popularity of such widely known works as "The Lottery" and The Haunting of Hill House has tended to obscure the extent of Shirley Jackson's literary output, which includes six novels, a prodigious number of short stories, and two volumes of domestic sketches. Organized around the themes of influence and intertextuality, this collection places Jackson firmly within the literary cohort of the 1950s. The contributors investigate the work that informed her own fiction and discuss how Jackson inspired writers of literature and film. The collection begins with essays that tease out what Jackson's writing owes to the weird tale, detective fiction, the supernatural tradition, and folklore, among other influences. The focus then shifts to Jackson's place in American literature and the impact of her work on women's writing, campus literature, and the graphic novelist Alison Bechdel. The final two essays examine adaptations of The Haunting of Hill House and Jackson's influence on contemporary American horror cinema. Taken together, the essays offer convincing evidence that half a century following her death, readers and writers alike are still finding value in Jackson’s words.
Author(s): Melanie R. Anderson, Lisa Kröger
Publisher: Routledge
Year: 2016
Language: English
Pages: 218
Tags: literature, gothic, american literature, shirley jackson, the gothic, comparative literature, women’s fiction,
Cover......Page 1
Title......Page 4
Copyright......Page 5
Contents......Page 6
List of figures......Page 8
Editors and contributors......Page 9
Acknowledgments......Page 12
Introduction......Page 14
1 “We know only names, so far”: Samuel Richardson, Shirley Jackson, and exploration of the precarious self......Page 20
2 A failed experiment: Family and humanity in The Sundial......Page 38
3 Perception, supernatural detection, and gender in The Haunting of Hill House......Page 48
4 Speaking of magic: Folk narrative in Hangsaman and We Have Always Lived in the Castle......Page 67
5 The Road Through the Wall and Shirley Jackson’s America......Page 89
6 “Laughing through the words”: Recovering housewife humor in Shirley Jackson’s We Have Always Lived in the Castle......Page 110
7 “Listening to what she had almost said”: Containment and duality in Shirley Jackson’s We Have Always Lived in the Castle......Page 124
8 Knowing and narration: Shirley Jackson and the campus novel......Page 136
9 The haunting of Fun Home : Shirley Jackson and Alison Bechdel’s queer Gothic neodomesticity......Page 155
10 The tower or the nursery? Paternal and maternal re-visions of Hill House on film......Page 173
11 Girl anachronism: We Have Always Lived in the Castle and the depiction of adolescent psychosis in Excision (2012) and Stoker (2013)......Page 196
Index......Page 214
