Reading Hilary Mantel
by Dr Lucy Arnold
From the ghosts which reside in Midlands council houses in Every Day is Mother's Day to the resurrected historical dead of the Booker Prize-winning Wolf Hall and Bring up the Bodies, the writings of Hilary Mantel are often haunted by supernatural figures. One of the first book-length studies of the writer's work, Reading Hilary Mantel explores the importance of ghosts in the full range of her fiction and non-fiction writing and their political, social and ethical resonances. Combining material from original interviews with the author herself with psychoanalytic, historicist and deconstructivist critical perspectives, Reading Hilary Mantel is a landmark study of this important and popular contemporary novelist.
Paperback
English
Brand New
Author Biography
Lucy Arnold is a Lecturer in Contemporary English Literature at the University of Worcester, UK.
Table of Contents
AcknowledgementsIntroductionChapter 1 Not Giving up the Ghost: Preserving the spectral Mantel's MemoirChapter 2 Spectres of Margaret: Thatcherism, Care-giving and the Gothic in Every Day is Mother's Day (1985) and Vacant Possession (1986)Chapter 3 Spooks and Holy Ghosts: Spectral Politics and the Politics of Spectrality in Eight Months on Ghazzah StreetChapter 4 The Princess and the Palimpsest: Skin, Screen and Spectre in Beyond BlackChapter 5 'If the Dead Need Translators': Heresy, Haunting and Intertextuality in Wolf Hall and Bring Up the BodiesAfterwordBibliography
Review
A thoughtful and illuminating study and one which is likely to be invaluable to anyone interested in [textuality and spectrality]. * C21 Literature *
In this timely, comprehensive and smart study of Hilary Mantel's oeuvre, Arnold compellingly shows how Mantel's work is tied together by intricate situations of haunting in which ghosts of various kinds act as complex literary, political and ethical forces. * Esther Peeren, Professor of Cultural Analysis, University of Amsterdam, co-editor of The Spectralities Reader (Bloomsbury, 2013). *
Arnold writes with striking acuity to offer innovative and exciting readings of Mantel's spectral tropes. This compellingly argued and exemplarily researched volume is certain to become a key critical work in the burgeoning field of Mantelian studies. * Ginette Carpenter, co-editor of Hilary Mantel: Contemporary Critical Perspectives, senior lecturer in English, Manchester Metropolitan University, UK *
Promotional
One of the first full-length studies of the work of the Booker Prize-winning writer of Wolf Hall explores the significance of ghosts in Manel's writings.
Review Quote
"In this timely, comprehensive and smart study of Hilary Mantel's oeuvre, Arnold compellingly shows how Mantel's work is tied together by intricate situations of haunting in which ghosts of various kinds act as complex literary, political and ethical forces." -- Esther Peeren, Professor of Cultural Analysis, University of Amsterdam, co-editor of The Spectralities Reader (Bloomsbury, 2013). "Arnold writes with striking acuity to offer innovative and exciting readings of Mantel's spectral tropes. This compellingly argued and exemplarily researched volume is certain to become a key critical work in the burgeoning field of Mantelian studies." -- Ginette Carpenter, co-editor of Hilary Mantel: Contemporary Critical Perspectives, senior lecturer in English, Manchester Metropolitan University, UK
Promotional "Headline"
One of the first full-length studies of the work of the Booker Prize-winning writer of Wolf Hall explores the significance of ghosts in Manel's writings.
Feature
Draws on psychoanalytic, historicist and deconstructionist theoretical approaches as well as original interviews with Mantel herself
Details
