Introduction -- Household clearances in Victorian fiction -- The invention of agoraphobia -- Naturalism's phobic picturesque -- Feminist phobia -- Modernist toilette -- British First World War combat fiction -- Ford against Joyce and Lewis -- Hitchcock's modernism -- Phoning it in -- Lynne Ramsay's Ratcatcher.
Summary
The essays brought together in this book understand phobia not as a pathology, but as a versatile moral, political, and aesthetic resource with a history. They demonstrate that enquiry into strong feelings of aversion has enabled writers and film-makers to say and show things they could not otherwise have said or shown.
