Elisabeth Bronfen

In 1846, Edgar Allen Poe wrote that 'the death of a beautiful woman is, unquestionably, the most poetic topic in the world'. The conjuction of death, art and femininity forms a rich and disturbing strata of Western culture, explored here in fascinating detail by Elisabeth Bronfen. Her examples range from Carmen to Little Nell, from Wuthering Heights to Vertigo, from Snow White to Frankenstein. The text is richly illustrated throughout with thirty-seven paintings and photographs. The argument that this book presents is that narrative and visual representations of death can be read as symptoms of our culture and because the feminine body is culturally constructed as the superlative site of "other" and "not me", culture uses art to dream the deaths of beautiful women.

Death, Femininity and the Aesthetic

Over Her Dead Body

Louise Bourgeois

Marie-Laure Bernadac

The Insomnia Drawings

Mad Men, Death and the American Dream

Anne Rice

Stephen King

Michel Foucault

Judith Halberstam

William Gibson

Robert Louis Stevenson

Andrew O'Hagan

Umberto Eco

Slavoj Žižek

Sigmund Freud

Jean Baudrillard

Mike Kelley

Beatriz Colomina

James Sampson Meyer

Mary Shelley

Patrick McGrath

Jeff Wall

Jacques Lacan

Marina Warner

Hal Foster

Jerry Saltz

Damien Hirst

Amelia Jones

Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick

Nancy Spector

Julia Kristeva

Edmund Burke

Mark Edmundson

Richard Dyer

Bret Easton Ellis

Edgar Allan Poe

Richard Davenport-Hines

Douglas Crimp

Gianni Jetzer

Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak

Carol J. Clover

Trevor J. Fairbrother

Anthony Vidler

Bruce Hainley

Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev

Kate Ferguson Ellis

Kobena Mercer

Stan Douglas

Alex Farquharson

Jane D. Marsching

Mark Alice Durant

Nike Bätzner

Michael Cohen (kustos.)

Tacita Dean

Christoph Grünenberg

Jonathan Jones (likovni kritik.)

Shamim Momin

Andrew Ross (Professor of Social and Cultural Analysis.)

Jaques Derrida

Part of the acclaimed 'Documents of Contemporary Art' series of anthologies. This collection of writings examines the pervasive and influential role of the Gothic in contemporary art, providing the first comprehensive overview of its uses within contemporary visual culture. The Gothic includes artists' writings by Mike Kelley, Damien Hirst, Tacita Dean, Jonathan Meese and Catherine Sullivan, complemented by literary extracts from Horace Walpole, William Gibson, Bret Easton Ellis and Stephen King, and theoretical writings by such key thinkers as Carol Clover, Beatriz Colomina, Julia Kristeva, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Marina Warner and Slavoj Žižek. Artists surveyed include Matthew Barney, Louise Bourgeois, Tacita Dean, Sue de Beer, Janet Cardiff, Mark Dion, Stan Douglas, Robert Gober, Douglas Gordon, Dan Graham, Damien Hirst, Mike Kelley, Paul McCarthy, Teresa Margolles, Jonathan Meese, Raymond Pettibon, Paul Pfeiffer, Gregor Schneider, Cindy Sherman, Catherine Sullivan, Andy Warhol, and Jane and Louise Wilson. Writers include Jean Baudrillard, Elizabeth Bronfen, Edmund Burke, Carol Clover, Beatriz Colomina, Douglas Crimp, Jacques Derrida, Richard Dyer, Umberto Eco, Bret Easton Ellis, Trevor Fairbrother, Alex Farquharson, Hal Foster, Michel Foucault, Sigmund Freud, William Gibson, Christoph Grunenberg, Bruce Hainley, Judith Halberstam, Amelia Jones, Jonathan Jones, Mike Kelley, Julia Kristeva, Jacques Lacan, Patrick McGrath, Kobena Mercer, James Meyer, Edgar Allan Poe, Andrew Ross, Jerry Saltz, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Mary Shelley, Nancy Spector, Robert Louis Stevenson, Anthony Vidler, Jeff Wall, Horace Walpole, Marina Warner, Anne Williams and Slavoj Žižek.

The Gothic

In this engaging and original study Elisabeth Bronfen examines Sylvia Plath's poetry, her novel The Bell Jar, her shorter fiction as well as her autobiographical texts, in the context of the resilient Plath-Legend that has grown since her suicide in 1963 and to which, after over three decades of silence, Ted Hughes responded with his collection of commemorative poems, Birthday Letters. Arguing that although we cannot sever our reading of Plath's work from the critical and biographical writings about her, the study nevertheless offers close readings of texts to explore the various self-fashionings in poetry and prose which this highly ambivalent poet developed. The central theme to which this study returns is Plath's insistence on a clandestine traumatic knowledge of fallibility and fragility underlying the fiction of success, health and happiness so prevalent in post-World War Two. Elisabeth Bronfen is Professor of English at the University of Zurich.

Sylvia Plath

Bronfen presents the argument that narrative and visual representations of death can be read as symptoms of culture and because the feminine body is culturally constructed as the superlative site of "other" and "not me," culture uses art to dream the deaths of beautiful women.

Beate Neumeier

This collection of essays by experts in Renaissance and Gothic studies tracks the lines of connection between Gothic sensibilities and the discursive network of the Renaissance. The texts covered encompass poetry, epic narratives, ghost stories, prose dialogues, political pamphlets and Shakespeare's texts, read alongside those of other playwrights. The authors show that the Gothic sensibility addresses subversive fantasies of transgression, be this in regard to gender (troubling stable notions of masculinity and femininity), in regard to social orders (challenging hegemonic, patriarchal or sovereign power), or in regard to disciplinary discourses (dictating what is deemed licit and what illicit or deviant). They relate these issues back to the early modern period as a moment of transition, in which categories of individual, gendered, racial and national identity began to emerge, and connect the religious and the pictorial turn within early modern textual production to a reassessment of Gothic culture.

A reassessment

Gothic Renaissance

Dorothy Richardson's novel cycle Pilgrimage, completed in 1938, continues to be marginalized despite the fact that in the 1990s several monographs and many articles addressing the issues of gender, genre and modernism have been published. Her work has been recuperated from oblivion primarily as a voice of feminine modernism, but the philosophical underpinnings are still overlooked. Mapping this early modernist text against our postmodern interest in real and imagnined geographies, Bronfen addresses the question of how identity is formed as a result of corporeal and cultural positioning.

Space, Identity, Text

Dorothy Richardson's Art of Memory

In light of resurgent interest in hysteria, leading feminist scholar Elisabeth Bronfen reinvestigates medical writings and cultural performance to reveal the continued relevance of a disorder widely thought to be a romantic formulation of the past. Tracing the subject from the 1800s to the present, Bronfen's insights are sure to interest a wide range of readers. 20 photos. 5 line illustrations.

Hysteria and Its Discontents

The Knotted Subject

Träume und Katastrophen haben das amerikanische Projekt von Anfang an begleitet. Das Kino ist der Ort, wo sie aufgegriffen, verhandelt und neu konzipiert wurden. Die Essays dieses Bandes widmen sich den kulturellen Imaginationen Amerikas als einer Geschichte der Heimsuchungen. Elisabeth Bronfen stellt dazu Crossmapping als ein Verfahren vor, welches Verbindungslinien zwischen Literatur, Film und anderen Medien aufzeigt, etwa das kulturelle Nachleben von Shakespeare und Wagner in Hollywood. Auch analysiert sie die ästhetische Verschränkung von Weiblichkeit und Tod, mit besonderem Fokus auf der Figur der Femme Fatale, und stellt die Praktiken und Strukturen der kinematischen Re-Imagination von Geschichte vor.

Essays zum kulturellen Imaginären einer Nation

Hollywood und das Projekt Amerika

Shakespeare is everywhere in contemporary media culture. This book explores the reasons for this dissemination and reassemblage. Ranging widely over American TV drama, it discusses the use of citations in Westworld and The Wire, demonstrating how they tap into but also transform Shakespeare’s preferred themes and concerns. It then examines the presentation of female presidents in shows such as Commander in Chief and House of Cards, revealing how they are modelled on figures of female sovereignty from his plays. Finally, it analyses the specifically Shakespearean dramaturgy of Deadwood and The Americans. Ultimately, the book brings into focus the way serial TV drama appropriates Shakespeare in order to give voice to the unfinished business of the American cultural imaginary.

An infinite variety of appropriations in American TV drama

Serial Shakespeare

Misha Kavka

Exploring the status of feminism in this "postfeminist" age, this sophisticated meditation on feminist thinking over the past three decades moves away from the all too common dependence on French theorists and male thinkers and instead builds on a wide-ranging body of feminist theory written by women. These writings address the question "Where are we going?" as well as "Where have we come from?" As evidenced in the essays compiled here, the multiplicity of directions available to this new feminism ranges from poststructuralist academic theory through cultural activism to re-readings of law, literature, and representation. Contributors include Mieke Bal, Lauren Berlant, Rosi Braidotti, Elisabeth Bronfen, Judith Butler, Rey Chow, Drucilla Cornell, Ann Cvetkovich, Jane Gallop, Beatrice Hanssen, Claire Kahane, Ranjana Khanna, Biddy Martin, Juliet Mitchell, Anita Haya Patterson, and Valerie Smith. Feminist Consequences, representing the forefront of international feminist thought, marks a new and long-desired stage of feminist criticism where women are themselves making theory rather than reacting to male production.

Theory for the New Century

Feminist Consequences

Approximately 80 previously unpublished writings by Louise Bourgeois appear here in print for the first time, which, combined with eight extensive scholarly essays turns our critical understanding of Bourgeois work on its head, offering a new and unprecedented insight into the work of one of the 20th centurys greatest artists. Famed for such works as The Destruction of the Father (1974), Arch of Hysteria (1993) and her huge and emblematic piece Maman (1999) an enormous spider as an icon of maternal protection and withdrawal Bourgeois investigated the realm of psychoanalytical territory through her sculptures, paintings and writings. Louise Bourgeois: The Return of the Repressed shows the enduring presence of psychoanalysis as a motivational force and a site of exploration in her life and work. Selected and edited by Philip Larratt-Smith, her literary archivist, these texts provide a comprehensive overview and re-reading covering 60 years of artistic production. The second volume in this gorgeous set also serves as an impressive and up-to-date monograph, detailing works up until the artists death in 2010.

The Return of the Repressed

A.S.Byatt's 'Possession' as Postmodern Moral Fiction

Romancing Difference, Courting Coherence

In this new edition of her engaging and original study Elisabeth Bronfen examines Sylvia Plath's poetry, her novel The Bell Jar, her shorter fiction as well as her autobiographical texts, in the context of the resilient Plath-Legend that has grown since her suicide in 1963 and to which, after over three decades of silence. Ted Hughes responded with his collection of commemorative poems, Birthday letters. Arguing that although we can not sever our reading of Plath's work from the critical and biographical writings about her, the study nevertheless offers close readings of texts to explore the various self-fashionings in poetry and prose. Which this highly ambivalent poet developed. The central theme to which this study returns is Plath's insistence on a clandestine traumatic knowledge of fallibility and fragility underlying the fiction of success, health and happiness so prevalent in post-World War Two, whether expressed as anger and violence, as the celebration of feminine figures of transcendence,

In this engaging and original study Professor Bronfen examines Sylvia Plath's poetry, her novel, The Bell Jar, her shorter fiction, and her autobigraphical texts in the context of the resilient Plath legend that has grown since her suicide in 1963.

Who can forget Dorothy's quest for the great and powerful Oz as she tried to return to her beloved Kansas? She thought she needed a wizard's magic, only to discover that home—and the power to get there—had been with her all along. This engaging and provocative book proposes that Hollywood has created an imaginary cinematic geography filled with people and places we recognize and to which we are irresistibly drawn. Each viewing of a film stirs, in a very real and charismatic way, feelings of home, and the comfort of returning to films like familiar haunts is at the core of our nostalgic desire. Leading us on a journey through American film, Elisabeth Bronfen examines the different ways home is constructed in the development of cinematic narrative. Each chapter includes a close reading of such classic films as Fleming's The Wizard of Oz, Sirk's Imitation of Life, Burton's Batman Returns, Hitchcock's Rebecca, Ford's The Searchers, and Sayles's Lone Star.

The Imaginary Geography of Cinema

Home in Hollywood

Eine Untersuchung am Beispiel von Dorothy M. Richardsons Romanzyklus "Pilgrimage"

Der literarische Raum

The great, influential cultural critic, Elisabeth Bronfen, sets out in this book a conversation between literature, cinema and visual culture. The crossmappings facilitated in and between these essays address the cultural survival of image formulas involving portraiture and the uncanny relation between the body and its visual representability, the gendering of war, death and the fragility of life, as well as sovereignty and political power. Each chapter tracks transformations that occur as aesthetic figurations travel from one historical moment to another, but also from one medium to another. Many prominent artists are discussed during these journeys into the cultural imaginary, include Degas, Francesca Woodman, Cindy Sherman, Paul McCarthy, Eva Hesse, Louise Bourgeois, Wagner, Picasso, and Shakespeare, as well as classic Hollywood's film noir and melodrama and the TV series, The Wire and House of Cards.

On Visual Culture

Crossmappings

Surrealist writer André Breton praised hysteria for being the greatest poetic discovery of the nineteenth century, but many physicians have since viewed it as the "wastebasket of medicine," a psychosomatic state that defies attempts at definition and cure and that can be easily mistaken for other pathological conditions. In light of a resurgence of critical interest in hysteria, leading feminist scholar Elisabeth Bronfen reinvestigates medical writings and cultural performance to reveal the continued relevance of a disorder widely thought to be a romantic formulation of the past. Through a critical rereading, she develops a new concept of hysteria, one that challenges traditional gender-based theories linking it to dissatisfied feminine sexual desire. Bronfen turns instead to hysteria's traumatic causes, particularly the fear of violation, and shows how the conversion of psychic anguish into somatic symptoms can be interpreted today as the enactment of personal and cultural discontent. Tracing the development of cultural formations of hysteria from the 1800s to the present, this book explores the writings of Freud, Charcot, and Janet together with fictional texts (Radcliffe, Stoker, Anne Sexton), opera (Mozart, Wagner), cinema (Cronenberg, Hitchcock, Woody Allen), and visual art (Marie-Ange Guilleminot, Cindy Sherman). Each of these creative works attests to a particular relationship between hysteria and self-fashioning, and enables us to read hysteria quite literally as a language of discontent. The message broadcasted by the hysteric is one of vulnerability: vulnerability of the symbolic, of identity, and of the human body itself. Throughout this work, Bronfen not only offers fresh approaches to understanding hysteria in our culture, but also introduces a new metaphor to serve as a theoretical tool. Whereas the phallus has long dominated psychoanalytical discourse, the image of the navel--a knotted originary wound common to both genders--facilitates discussion of topics relevant to hysteria, such as trauma, mortality, and infinity. Bronfen's insights make for a lively, innovative work sure to interest readers across the fields of art and literature, feminism, and psychology. Originally published in 1998. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Elisabeth Bronfen

About

Books

Join the club