Postcolonial and Feminist Grotesque: Texts of Contemporary Excess

Table of Contents
Cultural and Literary Criticism: Locations of the Grotesque
	1. Introduction - 9
	2. Dialogism and the Poetics of the Carnivalesque-Grotesque - 31
	3. Historical Overview of Grotesque Art, Literature, and Criticism - 61
Dialogical Readings: Practices of the Grotesque
	1. Sacrificing the Animal-Woman
		1.1. Woman as Spectacle and Martyr in When Dreams Travel - 117
			1.1.1. Female grotesqueness: a dialogue with Mary Russo - 117
			1.1.2. Freakishness and the mutilated female body - 120
			1.1.3. Female sacrifice, the discourse of resistanceand Julia Kristeva’s theory of abjection - 140
		1.2. Feline Metamorphosis in Shame - 150
			1.2.1. René Girard’s theory of the sacrificial victim - 150
			1.2.2. Martha Reineke’s gender-informed perspectiveof the theory of the sacrificial victim:reconsidering the figure of the witch - 167
			1.2.3. Bakhtin and Girard meet and divide:the issue of violence - 169
			1.2.4. The carnivalesque-grotesque:Sufiya Zinobia and Omar Shakil - 177
		1.3. The Grotesque and Religious/Political Authority:Del amor y otros demonios and Shame - 208
			1.3.1. Sierva María: dog-woman and witch - 208
			1.3.2. The downfall of two tyrants andthe triumph of three mothers - 228
	2. Spiritual Realism or African Magical Realism: Hunger andthe Supernatural in The Famished Road - 279
		2.1. The Debate over the Concept of African Magical Realismand the Accusation of Cultural Imperialism - 279
		2.2. Rebirth and Nationhood: Spirits and Beggars - 293
		2.3. Madame Koto’s Well-fed Body: Unreliable Embodimentof Wickedness Applied to the Witch Stereotype - 305
		2.4. Ignoring the Grotesque: the Misogynist Approachto the Blind Old Man’s Character - 330
	3. In the Heart of Darkness: Travels Througha Grotesque Puppet Land in Pinocchio in Venice - 337
		3.1. Classicism versus the Grotesque: Academia versusCarnival and Fairy Tale versus Reality - 337
		3.2. Instances of Sacred Parody: Pinocchio as a Christ-like figure,the Madonna of the Organs as Demythologisationof the Virgin Mary, and the Engulfing Mamma - 356
		3.3. The Italian Tradition: Elements fromthe commedia dell’arte - 396
Conclusion - 407
Bibliography - 433