Issue Details: First known date: 2020... 2020 The Joy of a Gothic Fable : Form, Didacticism and ‘Happy-ness’ in Sonya Hartnett’s The Ghost’s Child and Jennifer Kent’s The Babadook
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'In this article, the novel The Ghost’s Child and the film The Babadook are discussed as extended fables in which the didacticism of the fable form is expressed in Gothic modes. While the Gothic is traditionally associated with disturbance, despair and fragmentation of identity, these works are striking for the joyful key in which they conclude and the optimistic messages that accompany the resolutions. Both are therefore related to Catherine Spooner’s (2017) concept of post-millennial “happy Gothic” which offers an alternative to the traditional view of Gothic. The happy-ness of these works is anchored in the fable form of the narratives, and examination of the form contributes to Spooner’s allied project to examine both what Gothic “is” and what it “does”. The happy-ness of these fables also inflects their connection to domestic traditions of Australian Gothic and the wider Gothic influences they exhibit. These are traced in the range of Sonya Hartnett’s uses of Gothic in her personal oeuvre, and the traces in The Babadook from European art film and the paranoid woman’s film of the mid-twentieth century.' (Publication abstract)

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    y separately published work icon Aeternum : The Journal of Contemporary Gothic Studies vol. 7 no. 1 June 2020 23605817 2020 periodical issue 'This issue of Aeternum is the product of academic publishing during the global COVID-19 pandemic and the Black Lives Matter civil rights revolution, and we are proud to have been able to bring the article and book reviews contained within it to you while living through an unquestionably Gothic time, to paraphrase Angela Carter all those decades ago. To attempt to make meaningful commentary on the current state of affairs that our world is facing in the context of a small volume of scholarship on the contemporary Gothic is perhaps too much for one editorial introduction to strive for, so instead we humbly offer to you the work of these dedicated scholars for your enjoyment. For, at its heart, that is what the Gothic provides to us all in its simplest form: enjoyment.' (Ashleigh Prosser : Editorial introduction) 2020 pg. 1-16
Last amended 17 Dec 2021 08:08:09
1-16 The Joy of a Gothic Fable : Form, Didacticism and ‘Happy-ness’ in Sonya Hartnett’s The Ghost’s Child and Jennifer Kent’s The Babadooksmall AustLit logo Aeternum : The Journal of Contemporary Gothic Studies
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