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The Grotesque as a Comic Strategy of Subversion. Mapping the Crisis of Masculinity in Patrick McGrath's The Grotesque
Author(s) -
Butter Stella
Publication year - 2007
Publication title -
orbis litterarum
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.109
H-Index - 8
eISSN - 1600-0730
pISSN - 0105-7510
DOI - 10.1111/j.1600-0730.2007.00896.x
Subject(s) - masculinity , comics , absurdity , uncanny , subversion , postmodernism , identity (music) , sociology , aesthetics , absurdism , literature , psychoanalysis , philosophy , carnivalesque , epistemology , art , law , psychology , gender studies , politics , political science
Patrick McGrath's novel The Grotesque (1989) provides a paradigm example of how the grotesque may be used to interrogate and ultimately subvert patriarchal notions of masculinity and authority. A working definition of the grotesque is provided by drawing on Peter Fuß’s conceptualization of the grotesque as a ‘chimerical field’, i.e. as rooted in the intersection of diverse aesthetic domains and modes, such as the comic, the uncanny, the fantastic, the absurd and satire. The structural aspects of the grotesque which potentially evoke the mixed emotion of laughter and fear in the recipient are highlighted. The developed theoretical framework serves as a point of reference for the analysis of McGrath's novel, which engages in an explicit dialogue with the complex tradition of the grotesque. The analysis focuses on a detailed reading of how the epistemic crisis staged in the novel is dramatized as a (grotesque) crisis in gender identity. It is argued that the grotesque deformation of the symbolic order and the conflation of gendered dichotomies in the medium of the grotesque (as well as the ridiculing of the ‘manly ideal’ [ sensu G. Mosse]) functions as a reader‐activating strategy, calling on us to find alternative models for forging our identity in the postmodern world.