Overview
Contributions by Amylou Ahava, Jeff Ambrose, Fernando Gabriel Pagnoni Berns, Daniel P. Compora, Penny Crofts, Keith Currie, Erin Giannini, Diganta Roy, Hannah Lina Schneeberger, Shannon S. Shaw, Maria Wiegel, and Margaret J. Yankovich First published in 1986, Stephen King’s novel IT forever changed the legacy of the literary clown. The subject of a TV miniseries and a two-part film adaptation and the inspiration for a resurgence of the evil clown figure in popular culture, IT's influence is undeniable, yet scholarship to date is almost exclusively devoted to the adaptations rather than the novel itself. Encountering Pennywise: Critical Perspectives on Stephen King’s ""IT"" considers the pronounced cultural fluctuations of IT's legacies by centering the novel within the theoretical frameworks that animate it and ensure its literary and cultural persistence. The collection explores the ways the novel, so like its antagonist, replicates (or disavows) the icons of various canons and categories in order to accomplish specific psychological and cultural work. Gathering the work of scholars from diverse professional and disciplinary vantage points, editor Whitney S. May has curated an anthology that spans discussions of American surveillance culture, intergenerational conflict, the legacies of settler colonialism and Native American representation, serial-killer fanaticism, and more. In this volume, we read the protagonists’ constellations of countermoves against Pennywise as productive outlines of critique effectuated by the richness of the clown’s reflective power. The essays are therefore thematically arranged into a series of four categories of ""counter""—countercurrents, countercultures, counterclaims, and counterfeits—where each supplies a specific critical lens through which to view Pennywise’s disruptions of both culture and cultural critique.
Full Product Details
Author: Whitney S. May
Publisher: University Press of Mississippi
Imprint: University Press of Mississippi
Dimensions:
Width: 15.20cm
, Height: 1.20cm
, Length: 22.80cm
Weight: 0.363kg
ISBN: 9781496842237
ISBN 10: 1496842235
Pages: 212
Publication Date: 20 September 2022
Audience:
Professional and scholarly
,
Professional & Vocational
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active
Availability: Out of stock
The supplier is temporarily out of stock of this item. It will be ordered for you on backorder and shipped when it becomes available.
Reviews
"[T]he collection nevertheless offers a valuable approach to understanding King's novel and is a worthwhile contribution to King scholarship.--Tracy A. Stephens ""Studies in the Novel"" Whitney S. May's Encountering Pennywise: Critical Perspectives on Stephen King's 'IT' offers interesting and insightful commentary on a well-known but largely overlooked novel, films, and character.--Benjamin Radford, author of Bad Clowns"
Whitney S. May's Encountering Pennywise: Critical Perspectives on Stephen King's 'IT' offers interesting and insightful commentary on a well-known but largely overlooked novel, films, and character.--Benjamin Radford, author of Bad Clowns
Author Information
Whitney S. May is a lecturer for the Department of English at Texas State University and a doctoral student in the American Studies program at the University of Texas. Her work has appeared in such publications as Gothic Studies, Supernatural Studies, and the Edgar Allan Poe Review, as well as Representing Kink: Fringe Sexuality and Textuality in Literature, Digital Narrative, and Popular Culture and The Big Top on the Big Screen: Explorations of the Circus in Film.
