Bringing light to Twilight: perspectives on a pop culture phenomenon

The astounding commercial success of Stephenie Meyer's Twilight series, not just with adolescent girls (as originally intended), but with a large and diverse audience, makes interpreting their underlying themes vital for understanding the ways that we perceive and interact with each other in contemporary society. Literary critics have interpreted vampires from Stoker's Dracula to Rice'sLestat in numerous ways - as symbols of deviant sexuality; as transgressive figures of sexual empowerment; as xenophobic representations of foreigners; as pop culture figures that reveal the attitudes of the masses better than any scholarly writing - and the Twilight saga is no exception. The essays in this collection use these interpretative lens and others to interrogate the meanings of Meyer's books, making a compelling case for the cultural relevance of Twilight and providing insights on how we can 'read' popular culture to our best advantage. The volume will be of interest to academic and lay readers alike: undergraduates, graduate students, and instructors of children's and young adult literature, contemporary U.S. literature, gothic literature, and popular culture, as well as the myriad Twilight fans who seek to explore and re-explore thenovels from a variety of angles. Giselle Liza Anatol is Associate Professor of English at the University ofKansas and the editor of two previous books, Reading Harry Potter: Critical Essays (Praeger 2003) and Reading Harry Potter Again: New Critical Essays (Praeger 2009). She has published extensively on representations of motherhood in contemporary Caribbean literature, and representations of race and ethnicity incontemporary children's literature. She has blogged about her research into the Twilight phenomenon for the University of Stirling's web forum, 'The GothicImagination.' INDICE: IntroductionbGiselle Liza Anatol * Part I: Literary Contexts, Pastand Present * The Wolf in the Woods: Representations of 'Little Red Riding Hood' in Twilight - Margaret Kramar * Textual Vampirism in the Twilight Saga: Drawing Feminist Life from Jane Eyre and Teen Fantasy Fiction - Kristen Deffenbacher and Mikayla Zagoria-Moffet * Serial Experiments in Popular Culture: The Resignification of Gothic Symbology in Anita Blake Vampire Hunter and the Twilight Series - Carole Veldman-Genz * Twilight, Translated - Kim Allen Gleed * Variations, Subversions and Endless Love: Fan Fiction and the Twilight Saga - Maria Lindgren Leavenworth * True Blood Waits: The Romance of Law and Literature- Meredith Wallis * Part II: Gender and Sexuality * Wake Up, Bella! A Personal Essay on Twilight, Mormonism, Feminism, and Happiness - Tammy Dietz * 'When you kiss me, I want to die': Arrested Feminism in Buffy the Vampire Slayer andthe Twilight Series - Rhonda Nicol * One is not born a vampire, but becomes one': Motherhood, Masochism, and Male Mothering in Twilight - Merinne Whitton *Of Monsters and Men: Toxic Masculinity and the 21st-Century Vampire in the Twilight Saga - Tracey Bealer * The Other Edward: Twilight's Queer Construction of the Vampire as Idealized Teenage Boyfriend - Joseph Somers and Amy L. Hume * Part III: Class, Race, and Green Space * 'Embraced' by Consumption: Twilightand the Modern Construction of Gender - Michael Goebel * Fashion Sucksb&Blood? Clothes and Covens in Twilight and Hollywood Culture - Angie Chau * Trailingin Jonathan Harker's Shadow: Bella as Modern-Day Ethnographer in Meyer's Twilight Novels - Joo Ok Kim and Giselle Liza Anatol * The Great American Love Affair: Indians in the Twilight Saga - Brianna Burke * Green is the New Black: Ecophobia and the Gothic Landscape in the Twilight Series - Tara K. Parmiter

• ISBN: 978-0-230-11068-7
• Editorial: Palgrave MacM
• Encuadernacion: Rústica
• Páginas: 258
• Fecha Publicación: 08/07/2011
• Nº Volúmenes: 1
• Idioma: Inglés