The Uses of Phobia Essays on Literature and Film

The essays brought together in this book understand phobia not as a pathology, but as a versatile moral, political, and aesthetic resource - and one with a history. They demonstrate that enquiry into strong feelings of aversion has enabled writers and film-makers to say and show things they could not otherwise have said or shown; and in this way to get profoundly and provocatively to grips with the modern condition.Makes extensive reference to original readings of a wide range of literary texts and films, from the 1850s to the present Places a strong emphasis on the value phobia has held, in particular, for women activists, writers, and film-makers Discusses a range of writers and film-makers from Dickens, Thackeray, and George Eliot through Hardy, Joyce, Ford and Woolf; from Jean Renoir through Hitchcock and Truffaut to Margarethe von Trotta and Pedro Almodóvar Intervention in key debates in cultural theory and cultural history

David Trotter is King Edward VII Professor of English Literature at the University of Cambridge. He was co-founder of the Cambridge Screen Media Group, and has published extensively on nineteenth- and twentieth-century British and American literature.