Reading Popular Narrative A Source Book Edited by Bob Ashley Leicester University Press London and Washington
CONTENTS Preface Acknowledgements vn ix Part 1: Introduction: the reading of popular texts: some initial problems 1 2 3 4 K., Worpole L. Fiedler R. Rollin P. O'Flinn Reading by numbers: contemporary publishing and popular fiction (1984) 'Towards a definition of popular literature' (1975) 'Against evaluation: the role of the critic of popular culture' (1975) 'Production and reproduction: the case of Frankenstein' (1983) 5 9 13 18 Part 2: Mass society theory: British 'literary' and continental 'sociological' approaches Theory and methodology 5 Q.D. Leavis Fiction and the reading public (1932) 6 R. Williams The long revolution (1961) 7 T.W. Adorno 'Culture industry reconsidered' (1967) 8 S. Hall and P. Whannel The popular arts (1964) 9 Walter Benjamin 'The storyteller' (n.d.) Applications 33 36 36 39 43 49 52 56 10 Q.D. Leavis 11 T.W. Adorno 'The case of Miss Dorothy Sayers' (1937) 'On popular music' (1941) 56 59
Part 3: Formula, genre and the structuralist analysis of narrative 67 Theory and methodology 71 12 John G. Cawelti 'The concept of formula in the study of popular literature' (1969) 71 13 Vladimir Propp Morphology of the folk tale (1928) 75 14 Roland Barthes 'Introduction to the structural analysis of narratives'(1966) 79 15 Will Wright Sixguns and society: a structural study of the Western (1975) 86 16 Stephen Neale Genre (1980) 87 Applications 92 17 John G. Cawelti The six-gun mystique (n.d.) 92 18 Elizabeth 'Thrilling structures? science fiction Kwasniewski from the early Amazing and detective fiction' (1987) 96 19 Umberto Eco 'The narrative structure in Fleming' (1966) 101 Part 4: Ideology, readers, pleasure: post-structuralism, deconstruction, psychoanalysis 111 Theory and methodology 120 20 Louis Althusser 'Ideology and ideological state apparatuses' (1971) 120 21 English Studies 'Recent developments in English Studies Group, CCCS, at the Centre' (1976) University of Birmingham 121 22 Roger Bromley 'Natural boundaries: the social function of popular fiction' (1978) 123 IV
23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 Pierre Macherey Roland Barthes Roland Barthes Stuart Hall Tony Bennett Sigmund Freud J. Lacan Otto Rank Julia Kristeva A theory of literary production (1978) 'The death of the author' (1978) The pleasure of the text (1973) 'A critical survey of the theoretical and practical, achievements of the past ten years' (1976) 'Marxism and popular fiction' (1981) Classic psychoanalytic texts: 'Anxiety'(1926), 'Totem and taboo' (1912-13), 'The uncanny' (1919), 'Medusa's head' (1922), 'Fetishism' (1927) 'The dream of Irma's injection' (1954-55) The double: a psychoanalytic study (1914) The powers of horror (1980) 129 132 134 137 143 152 162 164 166 Applications 32 Bob Dixon 33 Jerry Palmer 34 Tom Moylan 35 Joseph Grixti 36 Noel Carroll 37 Robin Wood 38 Carol Clover 39 Mladen Dolar 40 Roger Dadoun 41 Barbara Creed 42 Kaja Silverman 167 Catching them young 2: political ideas in children's fiction (1977) 167 'Thrillers: the deviant behind the consensus' (1973) 170 Demand the impossible: science fiction and the Utopian imagination (1986) 176 Terrors of uncertainty: the cultural contexts of horror fiction (1989) 180 The philosophy of horror (1990) 182 'An introduction to the modern American horror film' (1984) 189 Men, women and chain saws: gender in the modern horror film (1992) 192 '"I shall be with you on your wedding night": Lacan and the uncanny' (1991) 198 'Fetishism in the horror film' (1989) 202 The monstrous-feminine: film, feminism and psychoanalysis (1993) 204 The acoustic mirror (1988) 208
43 Cora Kaplan 'An unsuitable genre for a feminist?' (1986) 211 44 Angela 'Jackie: an ideology of adolescent McRobbie femininity' (1978) 215 45 Janet Batsleer 'Pulp in the pink'(1981) 217 46 Alison Light '"Returning to Manderley": romance fiction, female sexuality and class' (1984) 222 47 Elizabeth Frazer 'Teenage girls reading Jackie' (1987) 226 48 Catherine Belsey Critical practice (1980) 236 Bibliography 240 Index 245 VI