Female Identity in Contemporary Fictional Purgatorial Worlds

Examining fictional purgatorial worlds in contemporary literature, film and video games, this book examines the way in which the female characters trapped within them construct identity positions of resistance and change. With the rise of populism, the Alt. Right, and isolationism in world politics in the second decade of the 21st Century, parallel, purgatorial worlds seem to currently proliferate within popular culture across all media, including television shows and films such as The Handmaids Tale , Us , Watchmen , and Margaret Atwood''s The Testaments among many others. These texts depict alternate worlds that express the darkness and violence of our own, arguably none more so than for women. Featuring essays from a broad range of international contributors on topics as wide-ranging as mental health in the Silent Hill franchise and liminal spaces in the work of David Mitchell, this book is an original, timely and hope-filled analysis about overcoming the confines of a patriarchal, fundamentalist world where the female imaginative might just be the last, best hope.>

Product details

• Authors: Simon Bacon
• Assisted by: Simon Bacon (Editor)
• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 20.03.2025
• EAN: 9781350227071
• ISBN: 978-1-350-22707-1
• No. of pages: 256
• Dimensions: 154 mm x 232 mm x 14 mm
• Subjects: Humanities, art, music > Linguistics and literary studies > English linguistics / literary studies; LITERARY CRITICISM / Gothic & Romance, LITERARY CRITICISM / American / General, LITERARY CRITICISM / Modern / 21st Century, Films, cinema, PERFORMING ARTS / Film / Genres / Horror, Literature: history & criticism, Literary studies: from c 1900 -, Literary studies: fiction, novelists & prose writers, Literary studies: fiction, novelists and prose writers, Literary studies: c 1900 to c 2000, Film history, theory or criticism