Authors: Naomi Mandel

Description: This collection of critical essays on the American novelist Bret Easton Ellis examines the novels of his mature period: American Psycho (1991), Glamorama (1999), and Lunar Park (2005). Taking as its starting-point American Psycho's seismic impact on contemporary literature and culture, the volume establishes Ellis' centrality to the scholarship and teaching of contemporary American literature in the U.S. and in Europe. Contributors examine the alchemy of acclaim and disdain that accrues to this controversial writer, provide an overview of growing critical material on Ellis and review the literary and artistic significance of his recent work. Exploring key issues including violence, literature, reality, reading, identity, genre, and gender, the contributors together provide a critical re-evaluation of Ellis, exploring how he has impacted, challenged, and transformed contemporary literature in the U.S. and abroad.

Langue: en

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Categories: Literary Criticism

Authors: Bret Easton Ellis

Description: Vintage is rushing to put out the controversial book that everyone's talking about--especially after Simon & Schuster decided at the last minute not to publish it. Described by Publishers Weekly as "a grisly, gritty gross-out (about) the cool yuppie lifestyle of Patrick Bateman, 26, whose avocation is torturing and dismembering his female victims and festooning his apartment with their body parts", this new book by the author of Less Than Zero is sure to cause a stir.

Langue: en

Publisher: Vintage

Categories: Fiction

Authors: Tobias Utz

Description: Seminar paper from the year 2013 in the subject American Studies - Literature, grade: 1,0, Catholic University Eichstätt-Ingolstadt, language: English, abstract: “I'm always shocked when people want to make movies out of my books. [...] They have cinematic scenes, they have a lot of dialogue, but often they don't have that narrative momentum a movie needs” (Shulman, par. 12), said Bret Easton Ellis, the author of the novel American Psycho, in an interview about movie adaptations of his books. Ellis wrote a total of seven novels and became one of the most famous authors of postmodern American literature. His third novel American Psycho was published in 1991 and turned into a movie in 2000 by Mary Harron. Yet, the missing narrative momentum Ellis mentioned was not Harron’s only problem while adapting the novel. When American Psycho was published in 1991, it was not well received. Because of its extremely graphic scenes of violence and pornography the novel caused a chorus of outrage among critics. Female activist groups complained that it was “a how-to novel on the torture and dismemberment of women” (McDowell, par. 1). Ellis even received death threats and had to face furious outcries from women... Ellis was surprised that the novel provoked such reactions because he intended the novel to be a black comedy and a critique of the capitalist society in New York City in the 1980s. His intention was to decry the greed, envy and the urge for conformity present at Wall Street at that time. However, the satiric elements of his novel were almost completely overshadowed by the violent and pornographic passages which led many people to misinterpret the novel’s message. The reactions to Mary Harron’s movie adaptation of American Psycho were much friendlier: Watching "American Psycho" is like witnessing a bravura sleight-of-hand feat. In adapting Bret Easton Ellis's turgid, gory 1991 novel to the screen, the director Mary Harron has boiled a bloated stew of brand names and butchery into a lean and mean horror comedy classic. (Holden, par. 1) In view of this change of opinion from the novel to the movie adaptation, it is justified to take a closer look at how Harron adapted Ellis’s novel. In the framework of the seminar "Literature and Media: A Kaleidoscope", this paper analyzes the rehabilitation of the novel focusing on internal changes and the resulting changes in the effect on the audience. Mary Harron rehabilitated American Psycho by turning it into a feminist movie.

Langue: en

Publisher: GRIN Verlag

Categories: Literary Collections

Authors: Bret Easton Ellis

Description: NATIONAL BESTSELLER • From the New York Times bestselling author of American Psycho and Less Than Zero comes a chilling tale that combines reality, memoir, and fantasy to create a fascinating portrait of this most controversial writer but also a deeply moving novel about love and loss, parents and children, and ultimately forgiveness. “John Cheever writes The Shining.” —Stephen King, Entertainment Weekly Bret Ellis, the narrator of Lunar Park, is the bestselling writer whose first novel Less Than Zero catapulted him to international stardom while he was still in college. In the years that followed he found himself adrift in a world of wealth, drugs, and fame, as well as dealing with the unexpected death of his abusive father. After a decade of decadence a chance for salvation arrives; the chance to reconnect with an actress he was once involved with, and their son. But almost immediately his new life is threatened by a freak sequence of events and a bizarre series of murders that all seem to connect to Ellis’s past. His attempts to save his new world from his own demons makes Lunar Park Ellis’s most suspenseful novel.

Langue: en

Publisher: Vintage

Categories: Fiction

Authors: Sabine van Wesemael

Description: Michel Houellebecq sous la loupe approfondit le profil de l'oeuvre de l'auteur le plus controversé du paysage littéraire français actuel et s'attache à dépasser les études sur cet enfant terrible des Lettres françaises parues à ce jour. En effet, force est de reconnaître que l'intérêt suscité par le phénomène s'est surtout, jusque-là, traduit par l'engouement d'un public friand de la petite histoire, exception faite de quelques études d'envergure sur son oeuvre. Michel Houellebecq sous la loupe comble la béance du fossé entre l'écrivain et la recherche universitaire. En outre, ce recueil projette sur l'oeuvre un nouvel éclairage par rapport aux titres précédents. Ainsi les sujets peu ou prou explorés à ce jour comme l'esthétique générale des écrits, la poésie, la réception et la philosophie sous-jacente aux romans passent-ils dûment la revue dans des approches approfondies après avoir été quelque peu négligés. D'autre part, bien que l'amour, l'exotisme et l'abject aient été précédemment discutés, ces thèmes se teintent aujourd'hui d'un jour nouveau par l'angle original sous lequel ils sont abordés et la perspicacité des réflexions qui leur sont accordées. Enfin, et non des moindres, plusieurs articles interpellent le dernier roman La Possibilité d'une île (Fayard, 2005) ce qui confère à ce recueil un atout supplémentaire. En bref, Michel Houellebecq sous la loupe s'adresse aux houellebecquiens et houellebecquologues tout autant qu'aux houellebecquophiles et houellebecquophobes par la diversité des articles sans complaisance et la sagacité des analyses réunies dans un souci d'authenticité et de clarté car toutes ont en commun de débattre d'une série de points fondamentaux qui font la singularité de la fiction houellebecquienne.

Langue: fr

Publisher: Rodopi

Categories: Literary Criticism

Authors: Alan Bilton

Description: Contemporary American Fiction introduces the work of a range of American authors, all of whom can be said to engage with postmodernism: Don DeLillo, Paul Auster, Cormac McCarthy, Rolando Hinojosa, E. Annie Proulx, Bret Easton Ellis, Douglas Coupland and Thomas Pynchon. The overarching theme is an exploration of the current vitality and energy of contemporary writing in light of pessimistic proclamations on the state of postmodern American culture, and of the tension between 'realistic' description and linguistic self-consciousness in contemporary fiction.As an introductory text for both American Studies and English Literature students, it assumes no prior knowledge of the authors or the novels discussed. To encourage understanding and aid further study, the following features are included:* glossaries of literary and critical terms* bibliographies for each author* biographies of each author* links between the authors are highlighted* thematic and author indicesKey Features* Each chapter covers one author in depth - ideal for students writing essays, preparing for seminars, etc.* Authors covered have been selected on basis of their popularity on undergraduate courses* Finds a middle ground between literary theory and traditional narrative criticism - engages with both the texts and the relevant conceptual issues

Langue: en

Publisher: Edinburgh University Press

Categories: Literary Criticism

Authors: Alain-Philippe Durand

Description: Encore plus peut-être qu'un Michel Houellebecq (que l'on voit rarement à la télévision), Frédéric Beigbeder est le symbole d'une nouvelle génération de romanciers qui agace l'intelligentsia. Ainsi, la constatation initiale qui se trouve à l'origine de ce volume est qu'à cause de sa personnalité et de ses activités multiples, Beigbeder existe uniquement pour ses innombrables fidèles à travers le monde qui se satisfont de la lecture de ses romans. Pour les autres dans leur grande majorité - les critiques, les universitaires, les intellectuels - il ne mérite aucune attention sérieuse, ses oeuvres n'existent pas. Or, en ce qui nous concerne, l'équation n'est pas si simple. D'où les pages qui suivent. Ce premier volume entièrement consacré à Beigebder réunit donc des romanciers, des journalistes et des universitaires des deux côtés de l'Atlantique. Il contient également un entretien et une correspondance inédits de Beigbeder.

Langue: fr

Publisher: Rodopi

Categories: Literary Criticism

Authors: Michael Thomas Carroll ,Eddie Tafoya

Description: Within popular culture studies, one finds discussions about quantitative sociology, Marxism, psychoanalysis, myth criticism, feminism, and semiotics, but hardly a word on the usefulness of phenomenology, the branch of philosophy concerned with human experience. In spite of this omission, there is a close relationship between the aims of phenomenology and the aims of popular culture studies, for both movements have attempted to redirect academic study toward everyday lived experience. The fifteen essays in this volume demonstrate the way in which phenomenological approaches can illuminate popular culture studies, and in so doing they take on the entire range of popular culture.

Langue: en

Publisher: Popular Press

Categories: History

Authors: Christian Hensgens

Description: Examination Thesis from the year 2006 in the subject American Studies - Literature, grade: 1,3, University of Cologne, 77 entries in the bibliography, language: English, abstract: Autobiographische Werke erfreuen sich zunehmender Beliebtheit. Nicht zuletzt unterstreichen st ndig steigende Verkaufszahlen den Vormarsch von Autobiographien auf dem Buchsektor und legitimieren diese Textsorten immer deutlicher als eigenst ndige Gattung. Begriff und Umfang der "Autobiographie" sind dabei umstritten und seit jeher einem geschichtlichen Wandel unterworfen. Was macht eine Autobiographie aus? Was unterscheidet eine Autobiographie vom Roman, was von einer Biographie oder gar von Memoiren? Auf diese und andere Fragen der Begriffsbestimmung einer Autobiographie geht die vorliegende Arbeit ein. Sie gibt nicht nur einen berblick ber den geschichtlichen Wandel des Begriffes, sondern entwickelt au erdem einen Katalog konstituierender Merkmale einer Autobiographie. Anhand dieser Kriterien werden die Werke des US-Erfolgsautors Bret Easton Ellis untersucht und herausgearbeitet, ob und inwiefern sie als autobiographisch bezeichnet werden k nnen. Im Mittelpunkt der Untersuchung steht dabei Ellis' Werk "Lunar Park", mit dem der Autor den Leser auf eine Reise zwischen Traum und Wirklichkeit schickt. Es ist eine Reise zwischen Autobiographie und Roman, die den Leser in vielf ltiger Weise ma regelt und seine Leseerwartung dadurch nachhaltig beeinflussen wird. This work examines autobiographical theories in their development over the last decades and gives an overview of predominant theoretical approaches until today. Against this background, a catalogue of constitutive conditions of autobiography is being created. In the following, the works of Bret Easton Ellis are examined for these autobiographical characteristics, especially his latest work "Lunar Park" will be in the center of this paper.

Langue: en

Publisher: GRIN Verlag

Categories: Biography & Autobiography

Authors: Christopher Burlingame

Description: This book examines the role that the film and publishing industries play in promoting narratives that preserve and consolidate power among society's elite.

Langue: en

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA

Categories: Literary Criticism

Authors: Florian Burkhardt

Description: Seminar paper from the year 2005 in the subject American Studies - Culture and Applied Geography, grade: 2,0, University of Stuttgart, language: English, abstract: Bret Easton Ellis’American psychohas been a highly controversial book. Many critics condemned this novel before it had been published so Ellis even had to search for a new publishing company. The indignation atAmerican psychohad been so fierce, it verged on hysteria and some interest groups (feminist and religious groups for instance) agitated against the author and his work1. The main reason why critics reacted that outraged was the explicit and detailed description of violence in this book2. In this paper I will discuss the appearence of violence inAmerican psycho.But first I want to create a picture of social phenomena in the USA of the 80’s as they are described in the novel, in order to provide the setting, the atmosphere in which the violence takes place. This will help to give an opinion of this violence and to interpret it. Then I will discuss how violence is presented in the text. In the fourth

Langue: en

Publisher: GRIN Verlag

Categories: Literary Collections

Authors: Bárbara Arizti ,Silvia Martínez-Falquina

Description: On the Turn: The Ethics of Fiction in Contemporary Narrative in English is an attempt to listen to the various voices that participate in the current dialogue on the relationship between fiction and ethics. The editors’ introduction investigates the current state of affairs on the return to ethics in critical and literary consideration, and it opens up the way for the variety of approaches that follows. Participants include internationally recognized scholars like Andrew Gibson, Patricia Waugh, or Native American fiction writer and poet Gordon Henry, winner of the American Book Award in 1995. All in all, contributors cover a significant geographical diversity, and their approaches also vary from general theory to particular examples, from traditional interpretations to post-deconstruction ethics. Authors analyze texts both mainstream and marginal, colonial and postcolonial; they examine the ethics of race, gender and sexuality; the ethics of self-positioning and orientation; the ethics of style; the ethics of reception; the ethics of mode and genre; the ethics of extreme situations of evil, disease and fascism. In its search for a better understanding of the global/nationalistic world of today, On the Turn therefore moves beyond the scope of literary criticism into issues of wider, more urgent relevance. What should I, ought I, may I, must I, do, if anything, on the basis of reading, when I have read a literary work? What does reading a literary work authorize, or even command, me to do? Writing an essay about the work would be one response. On the Turn is a wonderfully diverse, learned, challenging, provocative, even sometimes controversial, collection of essays on the ethical dimensions of literature. This book is testimony to the continued lively interest in the ethical turn in literary studies. The authors are, for the most part, concerned with ethical theory and with ethically charged situations in postmodern novels in English, as they shape readers’ values and judgments. Poetry and non-print media are, however, also discussed. J. Hillis Miller UCI Distinguished Research Professor of Comparative Literature and English, University of California at Irvine The Ethics of Fiction is an important and exciting volume that explores with energy and rigour the connections between ethics and literature. Relating literature to philosophy, neurobiology, politics, religion, deconstruction and psychoanalysis, the twenty two contributors richly advance ‘the ethical turn’ recently embraced by many critics. Works by authors such as Ian McEwan, A.S.Byatt, Charles Palliser, Hanif Kureishi, J.M. Coetzee, David Malouf, George Orwell, E.L. Doctorow, Flannery O’Connor, Toni Morrison and Paul Auster are presented in a new light and complex topics such as territoriality, the nature of love, Islamophobia and the politics of representation are tackled with imagination and intellectual integrity. This book is essential reading for anyone interested in the dialogue between ethics and literature. Avril Horner, Professor of English, Kingston University

Langue: en

Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing

Categories: Literary Criticism

Authors: Mark Osteen

Description: From early silent features like The Lodger and Easy Virtue to his final film, Family Plot, in 1976, most of Alfred Hitchcock’s movies were adapted from plays, novels, and short stories. Hitchcock always took care to collaborate with those who would not just execute his vision but shape it, and many of the screenwriters he enlisted—including Eliot Stannard, Charles Bennett, John Michael Hayes, and Ernest Lehman—worked with the director more than once. And of course Hitchcock’s wife, Alma Reville, his most constant collaborator, was with him from the 1920s until his death. In Hitchcock and Adaptation: On the Page and Screen, Mark Osteen has assembled a wide-ranging collection of essays that explore how Hitchcock and his screenwriters transformed literary and theatrical source material into masterpieces of cinema. Some of these essays look at adaptations through a specific lens, such as queer aesthetics applied to Rope, Strangers on a Train, and Psycho, while others tackle the issue of Hitchcock as author, auteur, adaptor, and, for the first time, present Hitchcock as a literary source. Film adaptations discussed in this volume include The 39 Steps, Shadow of a Doubt, Lifeboat, Rear Window, Vertigo, Marnie, and Frenzy. Additional essays analyze Hitchcock-inspired works by W. G. Sebald, Don DeLillo, Bret Easton Ellis, and others. These close examinations of Alfred Hitchcock and the creative process illuminate the significance of the material he turned to for inspiration, celebrate the men and women who helped bring his artistic vision from the printed word to the screen, and explore how the director has influenced contemporary writers. A fascinating look into an underexplored aspect of the director’s working methods, Hitchcock and Adaptation will be of interest to film scholars and fans of cinema’s most gifted auteur.

Langue: en

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC

Categories: Performing Arts

Authors: Sabine Buchholz

Description: Seminar paper from the year 2006 in the subject American Studies - Literature, grade: 1,0, University of Siegen (FB 3 (Literatur-, Srach- und Medienwissenschaften)), course: „Postmodern Fiction“, language: English, abstract: With the attention-grabbing novel "American Psycho" Bret Easton Ellis entered quite a dangerous ground. The bizarre mixture of yuppie satire and splatter horror caused reactions of scathing criticism, indignation, yes, even murder threat. As a consequence, the publishing house that had the first contract with Ellis and was supposed to edit the novel, namely Simon & Schuster, responded to this radical refusal and cancelled the deal already made. This decision, not to publish a book due to the negative responds against it, meant another scandal since it was a sensation in the American publishing business. Anyway, brushing aside all moral standards, Ellis’ shocker was published in 1991 by Vintage books, and for a while, the young writer became the “meistgehaßte[...] Autor der Welt” – evidently, because critics considered his narration too pornographic, sexist, anti-women, disgusting, boring and beyond belief. Yet, American Psycho was regarded with interest – probably last but not least because Bret Easton Ellis had been celebrated as a great talent when publishing "Less than Zero". Meanwhile, countless studies with many diverging approaches manifest that American Psycho may not be condemned and dismissed as a pure splatter work glorifying violence. There are works analysing the publication and the reception of the novel as well as the socio-cultural background; other studies focus on content and stylistic device , or on the motif of the serial killer as postmodern anti-hero. Additionally, some special analyses examine the position of the novel within the American history of censorship or even attempt to draw a parallel from Ellis’ Bateman to Goethe’s Faust. Thus, it is substantiated that the interest in "American Psycho" has spread widely and quickly. And still, 15 years after its publication the ambiguous novel, which was, besides, brought to screen in 2000, offers many subjects of discussion. The aim of this paper is to analyse in what way and to what extent Ellis’ work is distinctive for the period of literary postmodernism. Definitively, there are several innovative and scandalous stratagies applied in "American Psycho", but are these devices really symptomatic for a postmodern perception? To answer a question like that, first of all, an essential condition is of course a definition of postmodern terms. [...]

Langue: en

Publisher: GRIN Verlag

Categories: Literary Collections

Authors: Bret Easton Ellis

Description: Que raconte White, première expérience de " non-fiction " pour Bret Easton Ellis ? Tout et rien. " Tout dire sur rien et ne rien dire surtout " pourrait être la formule impossible, à la Warhol, susceptible de condenser ce livre, d'en exprimer les contradictions, d'en camoufler les intentions. White est aussi ironique que Moins que zéro, aussi glaçant qu'American Psycho, aussi menaçant que Glamorama, aussi labyrinthique que Lunar Park, aussi implacable que Suite(s) impériale(s). Loin des clichés toujours mieux partagés, plus masqué que jamais, Bret Easton Ellis poursuit son analyse décapante des Etats-Unis d'Amérique, d'une façon, comme il le dit lui-même, " ludique et provocatrice, réelle et fausse, facile à lire et difficile à déchiffrer, et, chose tout à fait importante, à ne pas prendre trop au sérieux ". Que raconte White en ayant l'air à la fois de toucher à tout et de ne rien dire ? Peut-être que le fil à suivre est celui du curieux destin d'American Psycho, roman d'horreur en 1991 métamorphosé en comédie musicale à Broadway vingt-cinq ans plus tard. Ellis a dit autrefois : " Patrick Bateman, c'est moi ". Il ne le dit plus. Et si Patrick Bateman était devenu président ?

Langue: fr

Publisher:

Categories:

Authors: Steven C. Dubin

Description: First Published in 1994. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Langue: en

Publisher: Psychology Press

Categories: Art

Authors:

Description:

Langue: fr

Publisher:

Categories: Popular culture

Authors: Dirk Wiemann

Description: The issues of violence and its control, containment or overcoming range prominently in the social sciences. Empirical sociology seeks to derive generalizable explanations from its research into concrete cases of the occurrence or absence of violent conflict, aspiring to transform such explanations into instructions for strategic action. Within cultural studies, discursive and epistemic formations are assumed to be fundamentally and endemically violent. In these perspectives, the quotidian violence that ineluctably inheres in modern discourses manifests itself as, e.g., normalisation, privilege and exclusion, thus sharing a wide range of common objects and objectives with the social sciences. The essays collected in this volume address contemporary conjunctures and discourses of violence in world society from different disciplines ranging from cultural studies, social science, political science and philosophy to history, literary criticism and psychology.

Langue: en

Publisher: Peter Lang Gmbh, Internationaler Verlag Der Wissenschaften

Categories: History

Authors: Elizabeth Young

Description: For many years, Elizabeth Young has been one of the few critics in England to champion new writing and the avant-garde. Pandora's Handbag is a unique combination of autobiography, commentary, published journalism and writer's guide for would-be Arts journalists. A riveting read, the book contains revealing interviews with Herbert Huncke, Jayne County, Dennis Cooper, Edward Gorey and Poppy Z. Brite, amongst others. o Flyer Mailing to American fiction departments o Ad in The Nation Elizabeth Young is a critic, arts journalist, and the co-author of Shopping in Space: Essays on American "Blank Generation" Fiction published by Grove Atlantic.

Langue: en

Publisher:

Categories: Education

Authors:

Description:

Langue: en

Publisher:

Categories: Dressmaking