Overview

This collection is the first to focus exclusively on twenty-first-century young adult Gothic fiction. The essays demonstrate how the contemporary resurgence of the Gothic signals anxieties about (and hopes for) young people in the twenty-first century. Changing conceptions of young adults as liminal figures, operating between the modes of child and adult, can be mobilised when combined with Gothic spaces and concepts in texts for young people. In young adult Gothic literature, the crossing of boundaries typical of the Gothic is often motivated by a heterosexual romance plot, in which the human or monstrous female protagonist desires a boy who is not her 'type'. Additionally, as the Gothic works to define what it means to be human particularly in relation to gender, race, and identity the volume also examines how contemporary shifts and flashpoints in identity politics are being negotiated under the metaphoric cloak of monstrosity.

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9781786837509

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This collection is a valuable contribution to discussions of Gothic fiction for young people. Its innovative, engaging essays address the intersections of the Gothic with genre, youth culture, spatiality, textual consumption, gender, and considerations of what it is to be human. --Clare Bradford FAHA, Deakin University, Australia -- Clare Bradford FAHA, Deakin University, Australia * University of Wales * This timely volume traces the ways in which myriad anxieties of being on the verge of adulthood in contemporary culture are given form in young adult Gothic texts. Paying particular attention to how the genre traverses boundaries, it reimagines the relations between power and oppression for teen characters and readers through the deployment of humour and horror, creative and corrective revisions of traditional tales, and alternate understandings of monstrosity, space, gender, and other-than-human beings. --Karen Coats, Director of the Centre for Research in Children's Literature, University of Cambridge -- Karen Coats, Director of the Centre for Research in Children's Literature, University of Cambridge * University of Wales *

""Particularly useful not only for scholarship but also for undergraduate syllabi."" * Children's Literature * ""This collection is a valuable contribution to discussions of Gothic fiction for young people. Its innovative, engaging essays address the intersections of the Gothic with genre, youth culture, spatiality, textual consumption, gender, and considerations of what it is to be human."" --Clare Bradford FAHA, Deakin University, Australia -- Clare Bradford FAHA, Deakin University, Australia * University of Wales * ""This timely volume traces the ways in which myriad anxieties of being on the verge of adulthood in contemporary culture are given form in young adult Gothic texts. Paying particular attention to how the genre traverses boundaries, it reimagines the relations between power and oppression for teen characters and readers through the deployment of humour and horror, creative and corrective revisions of traditional tales, and alternate understandings of monstrosity, space, gender, and other-than-human beings."" --Karen Coats, Director of the Centre for Research in Children’s Literature, University of Cambridge -- Karen Coats, Director of the Centre for Research in Children’s Literature, University of Cambridge * University of Wales *

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This collection will be suitable for undergraduate and postgraduate students.

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