Date on Master's Thesis/Doctoral Dissertation

5-2024

Document Type

Doctoral Dissertation

Degree Name

Ph. D.

Department

Humanities

Degree Program

Humanities, PhD

Committee Chair

Heinecken, Dawn

Committee Member

Omer-Sherman, Ranen

Committee Member

Hufbauer, Benjamin

Committee Member

Hoppenstand, Gary

Author's Keywords

Adaptation Studies; monster studies; comic books

Abstract

The influence of Gothic literature and its adaptations on the superhero genre has been profound. Both genres have an ideological project of the restoration of normalcy and order after disruption and disorder, thereby reinforcing cultural norms. However, their themes and methodologies are diametrically opposed. The Gothic is an exploration of the negative aesthetics of terror and horror, which reveal human weaknesses. The superhero is a power fantasy that celebrates justice and morality. A synthesis of the two creates a paradox: the monstrous hero—a Hoppen stand hero who takes on the attributes of a monster—who evolves into the heroic monster—a monster who is a hero. The monster is an embodiment of cultural anxieties which are traditionally sublimated through negation by the monster’s defeat. The heroic monster instead sublimates fears through heroism, becoming a site of cultural negotiation where what is once othered and different moves towards becoming legitimized as acceptable by American society. The methodology applies comic book studies and Gothic studies filtered through adaptation studies and new historicism. The dissertation is divided into three chapters. The introduction establishes the intersectionality of the Gothic and the superhero through adaptation studies on a genre level. Chapters 1 and 2 are divided between an analysis of the key conventions of each genre and their respective histories. Chapter 1 examines how the negative aesthetics of terror and horror are achieved through the sublime, the uncanny, the fantastic, and the abject and then applying them to the history of British and American Gothic to demonstrate how monsters embody cultural anxieties. Chapter 2 lays out the conventions of the superhero (costume, code name, secret identity, powers, and heroic ongoing mission) and the historical ages of superheroes. Chapter 3 consists of close readings of Batman, the Incredible Hulk, Ghost Rider, and Hellboy, with particular attention to their origins, across the twentieth century. The conclusion offers a glimpse into how the superhero Gothic has continued into the twenty-first century. The arc of the superhero Gothic reveals the redeeming values of terror and horror as vehicles of individual and social catharsis and of processing social change.

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