Keetley Dawn, Tenga Angela (eds.) Plant Horror: Approaches to the Monstrous Vegetal in Fiction and Film

Palgrave Macmillan, 2016. — xxiv, 278 p. — ISBN 978-1-137-57062-8.This collection explores artistic representations of vegetal life that imperil human life, voicing anxieties about our relationship to other life forms with which we share the earth. From medieval manuscript illustrations to modern works of science fiction and horror, plants that manifest monstrous agency defy human control, challenge anthropocentric perception, and exact a violent vengeance for our blind and exploitative practices. Plant Horror explores how depictions of monster plants reveal concerns about the viability of our prevailing belief systems and dominant ideologies — as well as a deep-seated fear about human vulnerability in an era of deepening ecological crisis. Films discussed include The Day of the Triffids, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, The Wicker Man, Swamp Thing, and The Happening.Abstracts.
List of Figures.Introduction: Six Theses on Plant Horror; or, Why Are Plants Horrifying? Dawn Keetley.
The Pre-cosmic Squiggle: Tendril Excesses in Early Modern Art and Science Fiction Cinema. Agnes Scherer.
Seeds of Horror: Sacrifice and Supremacy in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, The Wicker Man, and Children of the Corn. Angela Tenga.
The Mandrake’s Lethal Cry: Homuncular Plants in J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. Keridiana W. Chez.
Green Hells: Monstrous Vegetations in Twentieth-Century Representations of Amazonia. Camilo Jaramillo.
What We Think About When We Think About Triffids: The Monstrous Vegetal in Post-war British Science Fiction. Graham J. Matthews.
The Revenge of the Lawn: The Awful Agency of Uncontained Plant Life in Ward Moore’s Greener Than You Think and Thomas Disch’s The Genocides. Jill E. Anderson.
Vegetable Discourses in the 1950s US Science Fiction Film. Adam Knee.
Sartre and the Roots of Plant Horror. Randy Laist.
What Do Plants Want? Gary Farnell.
Monstrous Relationalities: The Horrors of Queer Eroticism and “Thingness” in Alan Moore and Stephen Bissette’s Swamp Thing. Robin Alex McDonald and Dan Vena.
“Just a Piece of Wood”: Jan Švankmajer’s Otesánek and the EcoGothic. Elizabeth Parker.
An Inscrutable Malice: The Silencing of Humanity in The Ruins and The Happening. Jericho Williams.
The Sense of the Monster Plant. Matthew Hall.