Grotesque

The new edition of the bestselling Grotesque offers an accessible introduction to the use (and abuse) of this complex literary term. Justin D. Edwards and Rune Graulund explore the influence of the grotesque on cultural forms throughout history, with particular focus on its representation in literature, visual art and film.

The book presents a history of the literary grotesque from Classical writing to the present, examining theoretical debates around the term in their historical and cultural contexts, and introduces readers to key writers, artists and film makers of the grotesque, including Homer, Rabelais, Shakespeare, Carson McCullers, David Cronenberg, Ottessa Moshfegh and Bong Joon Ho. It analyses key terms such as discord and transgression, deformed and distorted bodies, misfits and freaks, and explores the grotesque in relation to queer theory, post-colonialism and the carnivalesque. Updated and expanded throughout, the second edition reveals how grotesque is always on the move, pushing against the boundaries of shifting standards of what is and is not normal. It includes insightful new chapters on the absurd and ecocriticism. It also features fresh insight into fat studies, sophistication and the grotesque, decolonial grotesque, planetary grotesque, the New Weird and Ecogothic.

This invaluable guide offers an original and distinctive overview of this vital genre. It is essential reading for students of literature, art history and film studies.

Justin D. Edwards (1970–2023) was chair of Gothic Studies at the University of Stirling, UK, and co-president of the International Gothic Association. He published widely on horror and on gothic, including Gothic Passages: Racial Ambiguity and the American Gothic (2003), Gothic Canada: Reading the Spectre of a National Literature (2005) and the co-edited anthology Dark Scenes from Damaged Earth: The Gothic Anthropocene (2022).

Rune Graulund is Associate Professor in American Literature and Culture at the Center for American Studies at the University of Southern Denmark. In addition to the co-edited anthology Dark Scenes from Damaged Earth: The Gothic Anthropocene (2022), he has published widely on gothic, the New Weird, science fiction, cli-fi and grotesque.