Synopses & Reviews
The tale of the serial wife-murderer Bluebeard, his defiant, and surviving, final wife, a bloodied key and a secret chamber of horrors, has fascinated writers, composers, artists and film-makers throughout modern times. It is a unique story that dares to disclose and explore masculine violence: the homme fatal.
This transdisciplinary book explores the deep appeal of the Bluebeard story for twentieth-century culture. Its major focus is how the modernist imagination used the elements of Bluebeards tale to explore masculinitys anxieties in the face of the emerging demands of women for redefinition and sexual equality: anxieties also of ethnic and cultural difference, and fundamental disquiet about sexuality, pathology and violence in the masculine.
Starting with investigations into Bartóks opera 'Duke Bluebeards Castle', major cultural thinkers, including Elisabeth Bronfen, Ian Christie, Griselda Pollock and Maria Tatar, trace Bluebeards evolution from Perrault in the seventeenth century to the cinematic hommes fatals of Méliès, Fritz Lang and Hitchcock.
The result is an intriguing kaleidoscope of sexuality, curiosity, violence and death.
Synopsis
Perrault's grisly but perennially fascinating fairytale Duke Bluebeard's Castle has had an enduring presence across the arts. A tale of an "homme fatale" rather than a "femme fatale," it tells the story of the final confrontation between a blue-bearded serial killer and his eighth wife. The book is notable for corresponding to the facts of the social case: that men murder women far more frequently than women murder men. Looking at Bluebeard's representation in art and in cinema, from Melies to Hollywood, as well as opera and women's literature, Bluebeard's Legacy asks who is the real subject of the tale--the dangerous husband or the transgressive wife--and explores the complex relationships between curiosity, sexuality and violence.
About the Author
Griselda Pollock is Professor of Social and Critical Histories of Art and Director of the Centre for Cultural Analysis, Theory and History at the University of Leeds. Her numerous books include Vision and Difference, Differencing the Canon, Theatre of Memory and Conceptual Odysseys (IBT, 2008). She is the Series Editor of Tauris' "New Encounters" Series.
Victoria Anderson is Lecturer in Visual Cultures, Goldsmiths College, University of London. She is the author of Outfoxed: the Secret Life of a Fairy Tale.
Table of Contents
* List of Illustrations * Acknowledgements * Preface -- Griselda Pollock * Introduction: A Perrault in Wolfs Clothing -- Victoria Anderson * Bluebeards Curse: Repetition and Improvisational Energy in the Bluebeard Tale -- Maria Tatar * Bluebeard, Hero of Modernity: Tales at the fin de siècle -- Mererid Puw Davies * ‘Béla Bartóks Duke Bluebeards Castle: A Musicological Perspective -- David Cooper * The Tale of the Eye: Revealing the Jew in Duke Bluebeards Castle -- Victoria Anderson * Hidden Debates Under a Baroque Surface: Barbe-bleue by Georges Méliès (1901) -- Michael Hiltbrunner * Hommes Fatales: Murder, Pathology and Hollywood Cinemas Bluebeards -- Griselda Pollock * The Enigma of Homecoming: The Secret Beyond the Door -- Elisabeth Bronfen * Dying for Art: Michael Powell, Duke Bluebeard's Castle and the filmic art-work of the future -- Ian Christie * Authors Biographies * Bibliography * Index *