Performativity of Villainy and Evil in Anglophone Literature and Media

by Nizar Zouidi (Editor)

Overview

Performativity of Villainy and Evil in Anglophone Literature and Media studies the performative nature of evil characters, acts and emotions across intersecting genres, disciplines and historical eras. This collection brings together scholars and artists with different institutional standings, cultural backgrounds and (inter)disciplinary interests with the aim of energizing the ongoing discussion of the generic and thematic issues related to the representation of villainy and evil in literature and media. The volume covers medieval literature to contemporary literature and also examines important aspects of evil in literature such as social and political identity, the gothic and systemic evil practices. In addition to literature, the book considers examples of villainy in film, TV and media, revealing that performance, performative control and maneuverability are the common characteristics of villains across the different literary and filmic genres and eras studied in the volume.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9783030760540
Publisher:	Springer International Publishing
Publication date:	07/25/2021
Edition description:	1st ed. 2021
Pages:	510
Product dimensions:	5.83(w) x 8.27(h) x 0.00(d)

About the Author

Nizar Zouidi is Assistant Professor of English Language and Literature at the University of Hail, Saudi Arabia, and at the University of Gafsa, Tunisia. Zouidi is the author of a number of book chapters and journal articles about the representations of evil in early modern drama.

Table of Contents

1. Contours of an Inherent Frame: The Underpinnings of Evil in Everyman, Bibhash Choudhury.- 2. If You Only Knew: Mephistopheles, Master Mirror, and the Experience of Evil, Dustin Lovett.- 3. Recognizable Patterns of Evil in Muslim Characters in Late Medieval and Early Modern Literature, Jeffrey McCambridge.- 4. Desiring Empire: The Colonial Violence of “Hijab Pornography”, Ibtisam M. Abujad.- 5. Villains of the High Seas: Apostasy and Piracy in George Peele’s The Battle of Alcazar, the Anonymously Authored Captain Thomas Stukeley, and William Daborne’s A Christian Turned Turk, Jared S. Johnson.- 6. The Psychological Origins of Evil: The Trickster in Webster’s The Duchess of Malfi, Hend Hamed.- 7. A Show of Illusions: Performing Villainous Magic in Shakespeare’s The Tempest & Macbeth, Lisann Anders.- 8. The Demon’s Amorous Looking Glass: Reflections on the Villain’s Performative Self-Fashioning in Richard III by William Shakespeare, Nizar Zouidi.- 9. “It is his hand”: Villainy through letters in Shakespeare’s King Lear and Twelfth Night, Sélima Lejri.- 10. Villainy as a facet of Nietzsche’s Wirkliche Historie prefigured in Shakespeare’s Richard II and concretized in Brecht’s Man Equals Man and The Measures Taken, Mariem Khmiri.- 11. Tituba’s Stairway: Representations of Tituba in Historical and Fictional Texts, Danielle Legros Georges.- 12. Colonial ‘Idea’ and ‘Work’: The Evil in Marlow’s Heart of Darkness, Ahmet Süner.- 13. Caught in a Feudal Hang-Up: My Feudal Lord Mirroring a Villain and the Rebellion of a Pakistani Woman, Humaira Riaz.- 14. Good Versus Evil in Max’s Lucha Libre Adventures Series (2011-2020), Xavier Garza, Amy Cummins.- 15. Melville andFord: Ahab and the Duke, John Price.- 16. Naught Beyond: A Phenomenology of Ahab’s “Madness Maddened”, Bill Scalia.- 17. Seductive Female Villains and Rhetoricians in The Monk and Zofloya; or, The Moor, Hediye Özkan.- 18. Dressed to Kill: Manipulating Perceived Social Class Through the Con of Clothing in Nineteenth- and Early Twentieth-Century Fiction, Sabrina Paparella.- 19. Supernatural Doppelgangers: Manifestations of Villainy in Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights, Tammie Jenkins, 20. Debating ‘the Nuclear Evil’ in U.S. Nuclear Fiction, Inna Sukhenko.- 21. The Evil Gaze of the State and the Post-Human Interrogator in 1984, Sadok Bouhlila.- 22. Wicked Speech and Evil Acts: Performativity as Discourse and Murder as Responsibility in Curtain – Poirot’s Last Case (1975) and Speedy Death (1929), Federica Crescentini.- 23. Host of Otherness: The Trope of the Urban Space Habitat and the Concept of Evil in Contemporary Science Fiction Media, Mark Filipowich.- 24. Busting Binaries: Beyond Evil in Youth Literature, a Consideration of Emezi’s Pet, E. F. Schraeder.- 25. On the Performance of Villainy and Evil in Joker (2019), Kelvin Ke Jinde.- 26. “Making Our Work of Art a Masterpiece”: The Aesthetics of Evil in Alfred Hitchcock’s Rope, Brennan Thomas.- 27. Textual Evil and Performative Precarity in Bret Easton Ellis’ American Psycho, Nicky Gardiner.

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

“This is a wide-ranging and innovative exploration of villainy that will be of interest to scholars of early modern drama, contemporary film and literature and everything in between.” (Kevin Corstorphine, Lecturer in American Literature, University of Hull, UK)