Gothic Metis: Cunning Monstrosity, Shapeshifting and Subversion Linking the Nineteenth Century to the Present (Gothic Literary Studies)

A rare book-length study of mētis, the art of cunning, and the first-ever examination of mētis in the context of Gothic studies. Exhuming and reanimating an ancient cunning associated with the monstrous, the hybrid, the feminine, and the nonhuman, Gothic Mētis offers a novel transdisciplinary framework for analyzing Gothic media and discourse through the lens of mētis. Mētis denotes a wily, adaptive intelligence shared by tricksters, humans, nonhumans, and objects, that is characterized by shapeshifting, twists, and duplicity. It is also an artful praxis for blurring categories, embracing multiplicity, navigating differences, and subverting authority. Gothic Mētis weaves together myth, literature, rhetorical theory, and critical posthumanism to analyze Gothic renditions of mētis in character and narration from the nineteenth century to the present. Reading Gothic works through the lens of mētis, this book highlights the Gothic mode as a timely, artful response to the rise of the Anthropocene, rendering a post-anthropocentric world beyond Man and illuminating the rhetorical and ethical value of monstrosity, divergence, liminality, and hybridity. Read more