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This collection considers how women writers subvert normative structures in their adaptations of fairy tales. Though fairy tales as a genre have long been associated with conservative values, writers like Anne Sexton, Angela Carter, and Emma Donoghue, among others, reimagine fairy tales as an instrument of social critique of traditional structures. The essays in this collection consider the way women writers rewrite mythologies inherited from the past, charting the decline of aristocratic systems and entrenched class structures.
Meandering plots, dead ends, and repetition, diaries do not conform to literary expectations, yet they still manage to engage the reader, arouse empathy and elicit emotional responses that many may be more inclined to associate with works of fiction. Blurring the lines between literary genres, diary writing can be considered a quasi-literary genre that offers a unique insight into the lives of those we may have otherwise never discovered. This edited volume examines how diarists, poets, writers, musicians, and celebrities use their diary to reflect on multiculturalism and intercultural relations. Within this book, multiculturalism is defined as the sociocultural experiences of underrepresent...
This volume adds to previous historical and political studies about 'Gladiator' with essays about the movie’s relation to pop culture and contemporary discourses. It not only relates 'Gladiator' to traditional cinema aspects such as heroism, music, acting, studio culture, and visual effects, but it also connects the film to sports, religion, and the environment, expanding the ways in which the film can be evaluated by modern audiences. The volume can be read by individuals or in classroom settings, especially as a recommended text for students studying the ancient world in film.
The Paths of Zatoichi charts the history and influence of the Japanese film and television franchise about Zatoichi the blind swordsman. The franchise is comprised of 29 films and 100 TV episodes (starring the famous Shintaro Katsu, who starred in 26 of the 29 feature films). They all follow the adventures of a blind masseur in medieval Japan, who wanders from village to village and often has to defend himself with his deadly sword skills. The first film was released in 1962 and the most recent in 2010. These dates demonstrate how the franchise can be used as a means of charting Japanese cinema history, via the shifts in production practices and audience preferences which affected the Zatoichi series and numerous other film and TV texts. Zatoichi signifies a huge area of Japanese film history which has largely been ignored in much existing scholarly research, and yet it can reveal much about the appeal of long-running characters, franchises, and their constant adaptation and influence within global popular culture.
The Superhero Multiverse focuses on the evolving meanings of the superhero icon in 21st-century film and popular media, with an emphasis on re-adapting, re-imagining, and re-making. With its focus on multimedia and transmedia transformations, The Superhero Multiverse pivots on two important points: firstly, it reflects on the core concerns of the superhero narrative—including the relationship between ‘superhero comics’ and ‘superhero films’, the comics roots of superhero media, matters of canon and hybridity, and issues of recycling and stereotyping in superhero films and media texts. Secondly, it considers how these intersecting textual and cultural preoccupations are intrinsic to the process of remaking and re-adapting superheroes, and brings attention to multiple ways of materializing these iconic figures in our contemporary context.
A 2022 Choice Reviews Outstanding Academic Title Environmental Postcolonialism: A Literary Response is an academic investigation of the environmental repercussions of colonial destruction. This volume addresses the complex interplay between postcolonialism and environmental discourse through literature produced in the ex-colonies. This literature is read from the standpoint of ex-colonies within their human and non-human context. The primary objective of this volume is to scrutinize environmental concerns in the light of postcolonial theory, and so it examines works of art from the twin perspective of eco-criticism and postcolonialism which illuminates and underscores how colonizers destroyed and interfered with both nature and culture. Through discussing the intersecting layers of ecocriticism and postcolonial criticism, the volume gestures to new directions and generates a hopeful vision of a decolonized world.
A 2022 Choice Reviews Outstanding Academic Title Environmental Postcolonialism: A Literary Response is an academic investigation of the environmental repercussions of colonial destruction. This volume addresses the complex interplay between postcolonialism and environmental discourse through literature produced in the ex-colonies. This literature is read from the standpoint of ex-colonies within their human and non-human context. The primary objective of this volume is to scrutinize environmental concerns in the light of postcolonial theory, and so it examines works of art from the twin perspective of eco-criticism and postcolonialism which illuminates and underscores how colonizers destroyed and interfered with both nature and culture. Through discussing the intersecting layers of ecocriticism and postcolonial criticism, the volume gestures to new directions and generates a hopeful vision of a decolonized world.
Glass slippers, a fairy godmother, a ball, a prince, an evil stepfamily, and a poor girl known for sitting amongst the ashes: incarnations of the "Cinderella" fairy tale have resonated throughout the ages. Hidden between the lines of this fairy tale exists a history of fantasy about agency, power, and empowerment. This book examines twenty-first-century “Cinderella” adaptations that envision the classic tale in the twenty-first century through the lens of wokenesss by shifting rhetorical implications and self-reflexively granting different possibilities for protagonists. The contributors argue that the "Cinderella" archetype expands past traditional takes on the passive princess. From Sex and the City to Game of Thrones, from cyborg "Cinderellas" to Inglorious Basterds, contributors explore gender-bending and feminist adaptations, explorations of race and the body, and post-human and post-truth rewritings. The collection posits that contemporary “Cinderella” adaptations create a substantive cultural product that both inform and reflect a contemporary social zeitgeist.
This book examines contemporary "Cinderella" fairy tale adaptations to argue that the traditionally passive princess has been updated for the 21st century. Using wokeness as a theoretical lens, it analyzes the "Cinderella" story's potentiality as a social gauge for how we construe gender, sex, agency, and power.