Tony Magistrale – författare

Surely one of America's most popular novelists, Stephen King has only recently begun to receive serious attention from scholars and literary critics. The Dark Descent assembles fifteen illuminating original essays that consider King from a variety of intellectual orientations, addressing the major novels and central thematic concerns that represent King's contributions to American letters and elevating King scholarship to a new level of critical discourse. This volume places King firmly within the canon of contemporary American fiction.The essayists are concerned with explicating the meanings of individual narratives and creating critical contexts for their interpretion. While covering a broad range of his works and using multiple theoretical approaches--including reader-response, mythic, psychoanalytic, and structuralist criticism--to offer insights into King's fiction, most of the essayists reflect on one of two central theses: that King's body of literature may be seen as having been deeply influenced by the mainstream traditions of nineteenth- and twentieth-century American and European fictions, and that the narratives may be read as profound commentary on the major political and social tensions shaping contemporary American life. King's supernatural horrors reflect actual horrors, and his compelling style makes art out of horror fiction. A King chronology, bibliography and an expository introduction flank the analytical essays.

?? [[ Best known as the author of imaginative short fiction, such as The Fall of the House of Usher and The Cask of Amontillado, and as the author of hauntingly sonorous poems such as The Raven, Edgar Allan Poe was a leading practitioner of the American Gothic and helped popularize the short story as a genre. This reference work assembles in dictionary format a complete and current body of information on Poe's life and work. More than 1900 entries cover all phases of Poe's art and literary criticism, his family relationships, his numerous travels and residences, and the abundance of critical responses to his works. Each entry provides bibliographical information, and the volume concludes with an extensive listing of works for further consideration. ]] ??Best known for his mysterious and imaginative short fiction, such as The Fall of the House of Usher and The Cask of Amontillado, as well as hauntingly sonorous poems such as The Raven, Edgar Allan Poe has secured a lasting place in the American literary canon. He was one of the first American authors to be given serious attention in Europe, and his works popularized the Gothic, the short story, and detective fiction in America. Poe's works are frequently studied in schools and colleges, but he also retains his appeal as one of America's most demanding popular authors. His works reflect his vast and sometimes arcane erudition, his probing insights into the workings of the mind, his theories of literature and aesthetics, and his interest in science and the supernatural.Through more than 1900 alphabetically arranged entries, this reference book provides complete and current coverage of Poe's life and work. Some entries treat Poe's known reading and his responses to literary contemporaries and international literary figures. Others comment on the impact of various writers and literary traditions on Poe's imagination. Still others address Poe's views on subjects ranging from Shakespeare to mesmerism to phrenology. Each entry is supplemented by a bibliographical note which gives the basis for the entry and suggests sources for further investigation. Each entry for Poe's fiction and poetry contains a critical synopsis, and an extensive bibliography at the end of the volume lists the most important critical and biographical studies of Poe.

The contributions of Edgar Allan Poe have withstood the test of time; his best poems and fiction are more popular and carry greater significance now than they did during his own era. This highly readable introduction to the life, times, and major works of Poe offers fresh interpretations of timeless masterpieces like The Raven and The Purloined Letter. Carefully considering important thematic elements as well as genre, this book organizes the works of Poe into four significant groupings: the poetry, Vampiric love stories, tales of psychological terror, and the detective stories. Close readings are given for a selection of the most important works that represent Poe's canon of writings, including the chilling Tell Tale Heart and The Black Cat.This introductory study to Edgar Allan Poe begins with a concise biographical chapter that explores Poe's troubled experiences. The Literary Heritage chapter chronicles Poe's influence on other writers, artists, and filmmakers who followed. This work examines the major poems from Poe's canon, with special attention to those works that are most often taught and anthologized. Poe's most famous tales of terror and revenge are juxtaposed because they all revolve around murders and the elements of terror associated with the act of killing. Likewise, his love stories are brought together in a chapter that deals with vampirisim and gender. The final chapter, The Origins of the Detective Tale, examines Poe's tales of ratiocination, and traces the evolution of many popular culture super sleuths to Poe's Dupin. A selective bibliography of biographical and critical works on Poe, including contemporary reviews, completes this thorough volume. Students, general readers, and fans of all things Gothic will enjoy the fascinating insights this volume offers.

This analysis of the work of Stephen King explores the distinctly American fears and foibles that King has celebrated, condemned, and generally examined in the course of his wildly successful career.Stephen King: America's Storyteller explores the particular American-ness of Stephen King’s work. It is the first major examination to follow this defining theme through King’s 40-year career, from his earliest writings to his most recent novels and films made from them.Stephen King begins by tracing Stephen King’s rise from his formative years to his status as a one of the most popular writers in publishing history. It then takes a close look at the major works from his canon, including The Shining, The Stand, It, Dolores Claiborne, and The Dark Tower. In these works and others, author Tony Magistrale focuses on King’s deep rooted sense of the American experience, exemplified by his clear-eyed presentation of our historical and cultural foibles and scars; his gallery of unlikely friendships that cross race, age, and class boundaries; and his transcendent portrayals of uniquely American survival instincts, fellowship, and acts of heroism from the least likely of sources.Presents separate chapters on major works of Stephen King, including The Shining, The Stand, It, Dolores Claiborne, and The Dark TowerIncludes a chronology of Stephen King’s life and 40-year careerOffers a concluding interview with Stephen King

This book surveys the labyrinthine relationship between Stephen King and American History. By depicting American History as a doomed cycle of greed and violence, King poses a number of important questions: who gets to make history, what gets left out, how one understands one's role within it, and how one might avoid repeating mistakes of the past. This volume examines King's relationship to American History through the illumination of metanarratives, adaptations, "queer" and alternative historical lenses, which confront the destructive patterns of our past as well as our capacity to imagine a different future. Stephen King and American History will present readers with an opportunity to place popular culture in conversation with the pressing issues of our day. If we hope to imagine a different path forward, we will need to come to terms with this enclosure—a task for which King's corpus is uniquely well-suited.

This book surveys the labyrinthine relationship between Stephen King and American History. By depicting American History as a doomed cycle of greed and violence, King poses a number of important questions: who gets to make history, what gets left out, how one understands one's role within it, and how one might avoid repeating mistakes of the past. This volume examines King's relationship to American History through the illumination of metanarratives, adaptations, "queer" and alternative historical lenses, which confront the destructive patterns of our past as well as our capacity to imagine a different future. Stephen King and American History will present readers with an opportunity to place popular culture in conversation with the pressing issues of our day. If we hope to imagine a different path forward, we will need to come to terms with this enclosure—a task for which King's corpus is uniquely well-suited.

One of the very first books to take Stephen King seriously, Landscape of Fear (originally published in 1988) reveals the source of King's horror in the sociopolitical anxieties of the post-Vietnam, post-Watergate era. In this groundbreaking study, Tony Magistrale shows how King's fiction transcends the escapism typical of its genre to tap into our deepest cultural fears: ""that the government we have installed through the democratic process is not only corrupt but actively pursuing our destruction, that our technologies have progressed to the point at which the individual has now become expendable, and that our fundamental social institutions - school, marriage, workplace, and the church - have, beneath their veneers of respectability, evolved into perverse manifestations of narcissism, greed, and violence.

This book features an in-depth analysis of the world’s most popular movie, The Shawshank Redemption, delving into issues such as: the significance of race in the film, its cinematic debt to earlier genres, the gothic influences at work in the movie, and the representation of Andy’s poster art as cross-gendered signifiers.

This book is about culture shock and the writing process. For a student, the relationship between writing and the challenge of living in a foreign culture may not be obvious. The purpose of Writing Across Culture is to aid the student in documenting and analyzing the connection. If culture can be broadly defined as the unwritten rules of every-day life, one effective method for learning these rules is to write about them as they are discovered. In this way, it is possible to see writing as a tool for cultural inquiry and comprehension, and, hence, an antidote for culture shock. Writing Across Culture encourages its readers to become writers engaged in a dialogue—between the individual and the new society—about everyday cultural differences.

Over the past thirty years, Stephen King has received enormous attention from both the popular press as well as academics seeking to explain the unique phenomenon of his success. Books on King explore his canon in religious contexts, in political and historical contexts, in mythic—specifically Jungian—contexts, in Gothic/horror (especially American literary) contexts, and in a wide variety of other contexts appropriate to a writer who, over the past half century, has become "America’s Storyteller." Beginning with a never-published chapter authored by Stephen King himself on the influence of the genre on his own writing, King Noir makes an invaluable contribution to King scholarship by placing King’s works in conversation with American crime fiction.This is the third book that Tony Magistrale and Michael J. Blouin have coauthored on the work of Stephen King, and the first to consider King’s canon through the lens of crime fiction. King Noir examines not only King’s own efforts at writing in the detective genre, but also how the detective genre finds its way into work typically regarded as horror fiction. In interviews, King has acknowledged his debt to earlier writers in the genre, such as Ed McBain and Raymond Chandler, and he much more often references hardboiled writers than he does horror writers. One could speculate that King became a writer because of his love of pulpy crime fiction, which he continues to hold in high esteem. From The Dead Zone to Mr. Mercedes, from the crime fiction of his pseudonym Richard Bachman to his most recent novel Holly, King returns obsessively to patterns established by American sleuths of every stripe, paying homage to them at the same time as he innovates on the formulas he has inherited. To focus upon a hardboiled Stephen King is to discover exciting new avenues for inquiry into one of America’s most enduring, and adaptable, storytellers.

Over the past thirty years, Stephen King has received enormous attention from both the popular press as well as academics seeking to explain the unique phenomenon of his success. Books on King explore his canon in religious contexts, in political and historical contexts, in mythic—specifically Jungian—contexts, in Gothic/horror (especially American literary) contexts, and in a wide variety of other contexts appropriate to a writer who, over the past half century, has become "America’s Storyteller." Beginning with a never-published chapter authored by Stephen King himself on the influence of the genre on his own writing, King Noir makes an invaluable contribution to King scholarship by placing King’s works in conversation with American crime fiction.This is the third book that Tony Magistrale and Michael J. Blouin have coauthored on the work of Stephen King, and the first to consider King’s canon through the lens of crime fiction. King Noir examines not only King’s own efforts at writing in the detective genre, but also how the detective genre finds its way into work typically regarded as horror fiction. In interviews, King has acknowledged his debt to earlier writers in the genre, such as Ed McBain and Raymond Chandler, and he much more often references hardboiled writers than he does horror writers. One could speculate that King became a writer because of his love of pulpy crime fiction, which he continues to hold in high esteem. From The Dead Zone to Mr. Mercedes, from the crime fiction of his pseudonym Richard Bachman to his most recent novel Holly, King returns obsessively to patterns established by American sleuths of every stripe, paying homage to them at the same time as he innovates on the formulas he has inherited. To focus upon a hardboiled Stephen King is to discover exciting new avenues for inquiry into one of America’s most enduring, and adaptable, storytellers.

Although there have been over 700 illustrators of Poe’s work over the past two centuries, this book chooses to examine only the best of them. Beginning with the French in the nineteenth century and tracing the great illustrators of Poe to the present, this book not only provides close analyses of individual visualizations but also seeks to supply an art history context to understanding their emergence.  The majority of the artists featured remain unknown, even to Poe scholars, although their artwork represents iterations inspired by the most famous of Poe’s poems and stories.  In some cases, the illustrations helped increase the visibility of particular Poe works and to make them part of the international Poe canon.  A few of the illustrators featured in this book (e.g., Manet, Doré, Redon, Beardsley) are recognized among the most famous artists in the world.  Others, such as Martini and Blumenschein, while remaining minor figures in art history, nevertheless produced immortal work based on Poe’s fiction and poetry.  While still other visual artists represented here (Rackham, Dulac, Clarke) achieved artistic fame as book illustrators based on homages to other writers and fairy tales in combination with their Poe studies; their work on Poe, however, helped to solidify their larger reputations as professional illustrators.  The last chapter extends traditional visualizations influenced by Poe to include his impact on twentieth- and twenty-first century filmmakers and cartoonists.  They, too, found in Poe’s writing either a source for direct re-creation or an inspiration for their own atmospheric excursions into the bizarre, the exotic, and the psychologically complex.

In Violence in the Films of Stephen King, contributors analyze the theme of violence in the film adaptations of Stephen King’s work—ranging from the earliest films in the King canonto his most recent iterations—through a variety of lenses. Investigating the diverse and varying roles that violence continues to play as both the level of violence and the gendered depictions of violence have evolved, many of the contributors come to the conclusion that King’s films have grown more violent over time. This book also examines the fine line between necessary violence and sensationalist violence, discussing the complexity of determining what constitutes violence with a narrative and ethical significance versus violence intended solely to titillate, repulse, or otherwise draw an emotional reaction from viewers. Scholars of film studies, horror studies, literary studies, and gender studies will find this book particularly useful.

In Violence in the Films of Stephen King, contributors analyze the theme of violence in the film adaptations of Stephen King’s work—ranging from the earliest films in the King canonto his most recent iterations—through a variety of lenses. Investigating the diverse and varying roles that violence continues to play as both the level of violence and the gendered depictions of violence have evolved, many of the contributors come to the conclusion that King’s films have grown more violent over time. This book also examines the fine line between necessary violence and sensationalist violence, discussing the complexity of determining what constitutes violence with a narrative and ethical significance versus violence intended solely to titillate, repulse, or otherwise draw an emotional reaction from viewers. Scholars of film studies, horror studies, literary studies, and gender studies will find this book particularly useful.

Although there have been over 700 illustrators of Poe’s work over the past two centuries, this book chooses to examine only the best of them. Beginning with the French in the nineteenth century and tracing the great illustrators of Poe to the present, this book not only provides close analyses of individual visualizations but also seeks to supply an art history context to understanding their emergence.  The majority of the artists featured remain unknown, even to Poe scholars, although their artwork represents iterations inspired by the most famous of Poe’s poems and stories.  In some cases, the illustrations helped increase the visibility of particular Poe works and to make them part of the international Poe canon.  A few of the illustrators featured in this book (e.g., Manet, Doré, Redon, Beardsley) are recognized among the most famous artists in the world.  Others, such as Martini and Blumenschein, while remaining minor figures in art history, nevertheless produced immortal work based on Poe’s fiction and poetry.  While still other visual artists represented here (Rackham, Dulac, Clarke) achieved artistic fame as book illustrators based on homages to other writers and fairy tales in combination with their Poe studies; their work on Poe, however, helped to solidify their larger reputations as professional illustrators.  The last chapter extends traditional visualizations influenced by Poe to include his impact on twentieth- and twenty-first century filmmakers and cartoonists.  They, too, found in Poe’s writing either a source for direct re-creation or an inspiration for their own atmospheric excursions into the bizarre, the exotic, and the psychologically complex.