摘要：Maria Sofia Pimentel Biscaia took her doctoral degree in English Studies at the University of Aveiro, Portugal, in 2005. Her areas of expertise are Postcolonial Literatures and Contemporary Fiction in English. Here she presents a comparative analysis of two interrelated literary fields – postcolonial and feminist theory – through the prism of the grotesque. The author is interested in the deconstruction of postcolonial and gender politics. Postcolonial and Feminist Grotesque: Texts of Contemporary Excess is a comprehensive study, drawing in a complex weave of theories and contemporary fictions. Postcolonial and Feminist Grotesque divides into two sections: the first third of the text is devoted to cultural and literary criticism and the location of the Grotesque; the remaining section is given over to dialogical readings and practices of the postcolonial and feminist grotesque. Pimentel Biscaia systematically accounts for the canon, a pantheon of names whose usefulness as references might be enhanced with a handy index. She presents an historical overview, discusses dialogism as methodology and links the research to the poetics of the carnivalesque-grotesque. She also introduces various theorists – René Girard, Mary Russo, Julia Kristeva, Marthe Reineke and others – who provide the wall for a series of dialogical readings; these gender-informed perspectives are used to critique the iconic images of female grotesqueness, the abject and versions of a sacrificial economy. The author then focuses upon the contemporary novel as an extension of the hyperbolic carnival tradition. She envisages the carnivalesque-grotesque as a resurgent mode in postmodern literature and engages with a selection of ‘texts of contemporary excess’ by Githa Hariharan, Salman Rushdie, Gabriel García Márquez, Ben Okri and Robert Coover.
