Hannibal Lecter’s Forms, Formulations, and Transformations: Cannibalising Form and Style

This book examines how the iconic character Hannibal Lecter has been revised and redeveloped across different screen media texts.

Hannibal "The Cannibal" Lecter has become one of Western culture’s most influential and enduring models of monstrosity since his emergence in 1981 in Red Dragon, Thomas Harris’ first Lecter book. Lecter is now at the centre of an extensive cross-mediated mythology, the most recent incarnation of which is Bryan Fuller’s television program, Hannibal (NBC, 2013-2015). This acclaimed series is the focus of Hannibal Lecter’s Forms, Formulations, and Transformations, which examines how Fuller’s program harnesses the iconic character to experiment with traditional boundaries of genre, medium, taste, and narrative form. Featuring chapters from established and emerging screen and popular culture scholars from around the world, the book outlines how the show operates as a striking experiment with televisual form and formula. The book also explores how this experimentation is embodied by the boundary-defying character, the savage cannibalistic serial killer, practicing psychiatrist, and cultured art enthusiast, Hannibal Lecter.

The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of the journal, Quarterly Review of Film and Video.

Jessica Balanzategui is Lecturer in Cinema and Screen Studies at Swinburne University of Technology, Australia. She is the author of The Uncanny Child in Transnational Cinema (AUP, 2018), the founding editor of Amsterdam University Press’s "Horror and Gothic Media Cultures" series, and editor of Refractory: A Journal of Entertainment Media.

Naja Later is Academic Tutor in Media and Communications at Swinburne University of Technology, Australia. She researches intersections between pop culture and politics, with a focus on superhero and horror genres. She has published papers in the Quarterly Review of Film and Video and Participations: Journal of Audience & Reception Studies, and chapters with Rutgers University Press; University of Mississippi Press; and McFarland.