Performativity of Villainy and Evil in Anglophone Literature and Media studies the performative nature of evil characters, acts and emotions across intersecting genres, disciplines and historical eras. This collection brings together scholars and artists with different institutional standings, cultural backgrounds and (inter)disciplinary interests with the aim of energizing the ongoing discussion of the generic and thematic issues related to the representation of villainy and evil in literature and media. The volume covers medieval literature to contemporary literature and also examines important aspects of evil in literature such as social and political identity, the gothic and systemic evil practices. In addition to literature, the book considers examples of villainy in film, TV and media, revealing that performance, performative control and maneuverability are the common characteristics of villains across the different literary and filmic genres and eras studied in the volume.
1. Contours of an Inherent Frame: The Underpinnings of Evil in
Everyman, Bibhash Choudhury.- 2. If You Only Knew: Mephistopheles, Master
Mirror, and the Experience of Evil, Dustin Lovett.- 3. Recognizable Patterns
of Evil in Muslim Characters in Late Medieval and Early Modern
Literature, Jeffrey McCambridge.- 4. Desiring Empire: The Colonial Violence
of Hijab Pornography, Ibtisam M. Abujad.- 5. Villains of the High Seas:
Apostasy and Piracy in George Peeles The Battle of Alcazar, the Anonymously
Authored Captain Thomas Stukeley, and William Dabornes A Christian Turned
Turk, Jared S. Johnson.- 6. The Psychological Origins of Evil: The Trickster
in Websters The Duchess of Malfi, Hend Hamed.- 7. A Show of Illusions:
Performing Villainous Magic in Shakespeares The Tempest & Macbeth, Lisann
Anders.- 8. The Demons Amorous Looking Glass: Reflections on the Villains
Performative Self-Fashioning in Richard III by William Shakespeare, Nizar
Zouidi.- 9. It is his hand: Villainy through letters in Shakespeares King
Lear and Twelfth Night, Sélima Lejri.- 10. Villainy as a facet of Nietzsches
Wirkliche Historie prefigured in Shakespeares Richard II and concretized in
Brechts Man Equals Man and The Measures Taken, Mariem Khmiri.- 11. Titubas
Stairway: Representations of Tituba in Historical and Fictional
Texts, Danielle Legros Georges.- 12. Colonial Idea and Work: The Evil in
Marlows Heart of Darkness, Ahmet Süner.- 13. Caught in a Feudal Hang-Up: My
Feudal Lord Mirroring a Villain and the Rebellion of a Pakistani
Woman, Humaira Riaz.- 14. Good Versus Evil in Maxs Lucha Libre Adventures
Series (2011-2020), Xavier Garza, Amy Cummins.- 15. Melville andFord: Ahab
and the Duke, John Price.- 16. Naught Beyond: A Phenomenology of Ahabs
Madness Maddened, Bill Scalia.- 17. Seductive Female Villains and
Rhetoricians in The Monk and Zofloya; or, The Moor, Hediye
Özkan.- 18. Dressed to Kill: Manipulating Perceived Social Class Through the
Con of Clothing in Nineteenth- and Early Twentieth-Century Fiction, Sabrina
Paparella.- 19. Supernatural Doppelgangers: Manifestations of Villainy in
Emily Brontes Wuthering Heights, Tammie Jenkins, 20. Debating the Nuclear
Evil in U.S. Nuclear Fiction, Inna Sukhenko.- 21. The Evil Gaze of the State
and the Post-Human Interrogator in 1984, Sadok Bouhlila.- 22. Wicked Speech
and Evil Acts: Performativity as Discourse and Murder as Responsibility in
Curtain Poirots Last Case (1975) and Speedy Death (1929), Federica
Crescentini.- 23. Host of Otherness: The Trope of the Urban Space Habitat and
the Concept of Evil in Contemporary Science Fiction Media, Mark
Filipowich.- 24. Busting Binaries: Beyond Evil in Youth Literature, a
Consideration of Emezis Pet, E. F. Schraeder.- 25. On the Performance of
Villainy and Evil in Joker (2019), Kelvin Ke Jinde.- 26. Making Our Work of
Art a Masterpiece: The Aesthetics of Evil in Alfred Hitchcocks
Rope, Brennan Thomas.- 27. Textual Evil and Performative Precarity in Bret
Easton Ellis American Psycho, Nicky Gardiner.
Nizar Zouidi is Assistant Professor of English Language and Literature at the University of Hail, Saudi Arabia, and at the University of Gafsa, Tunisia. Zouidi is the author of a number of book chapters and journal articles about the representations of evil in early modern drama.
