Angelica Michelis

'Dirty Mamma': Horror, Vampires, and the Maternal in Late Nineteenth-Century Gothic Fiction

Regarding the relations between analysis and literature, the result is not unlike the circular unfolding of a familial melodrama, in which scenes from the past constantly return to haunt the present; and it is perhaps no surprise therefore that, as though to re-enact the drama of origins yet again, the analytic tradition, in its dealings with the literary, has tended to privilege a certain type of text or genre, notably that of the Gothic tale or Romantic conte with its familiar repertoire of sexual enigma, violence, and obsession.1

A Country of One¿s Own? Gender and National Identity in Contemporary Women¿s Poetry

Over the last three decades the question of national identity has gained increased significance in contemporary British poetry. The developments in Northern Ireland, the progressing devolution of Scotland and Wales and the cultural challenge of what Stuart Hall has called ‘new ethnicities’ have produced a poetic discourse offering a heterogeneous and hybrid concept of British national identity which is as different from the aggressively colonialist/imperialist one of the late Victorian and Edwardian poets as from the simplistic, parochial and pantheistic evocation of England in Georgian poetry. Without doubt, this deconstruction of national identity as a unified concept is among other developments the result of the poetic intervention of female writers whose texts explore the relationship between national and gender identity by taking issue with John Lucas’s observation that ‘“Englishness” turns out to be a largely, or even exclusively, male affair’. But how exactly is the question of national identity in relation to gender approached and discussed in contemporary British Women’s poetry ? Does being female automatically prevent one from taking a nationalist stance? To what extent is ‘Englishness’ a female, or even a feminist issue? These are some of the questions I would like to explore. By referring to recent developments in Scottish and Northern Irish Poetry and by examining in particular works by the poets Liz Lochead and Medbh McGuckian, I will discuss a variety of problems underlying the construction of national identity in poetry. So I will ask, for instance, to what degree being marginalized from ‘mainstream’ English culture and language enables Lochead and McGuckian to offer a position which renders visible the very exclusiveness of ‘Englishness’, or even ‘Britishness’, in relation to issues of national, cultural and gender identity. Further discussions will include the question to what extent their poetry, by problematizing the links between

Food and Crime: What's eating the crime novel?

This article discusses the use of food as a metaphor and theme in Jay Rayners The Oyster House Siege and Andrea Camilleris The Snack Thief. By exploring the manner in which food and eating are related to crime and its investigation, the figure of the detective and the development of the genre itself, concepts of identity and the way they are constructed in narrative are discussed and problematized.