Skip to main content

Bloomsbury Home

Critical Perspectives on Dario Argento

Critical Perspectives on Dario Argento cover

Critical Perspectives on Dario Argento

Quantity
Pre-order. Available Jan 08 2026
$157.95 RRP $175.50 Website price saving $17.55 (10%)

Payment for this pre-order will be taken when the item becomes available

Description

This edited volume provides a comprehensive, interdisciplinary, and up-to-date analysis of the entire filmography of Dario Argento, one of the most renowned directors from the world of Euro-Horror.

An interdisciplinary roster of contributors bring together approaches from philosophy, film, and media studies to engage with Dario Argento's oeuvre through a variety of lenses, including posthumanism, art cinema, gender studies, historical contextual analysis, and the aesthetics of blindness. The book focuses not only on films made by Argento himself, but also on homages and remakes, illuminating and demonstrating the lasting contributions and influence of his perspective and works on the horror genre.

Table of Contents

Introduction
PART I: GIALLO
1. Eyes (Propped) Wide Open: Predatory Capitalism as Sadistic Gendered Violence in Argento's Opera and Four Flies on Grey Velvet
Eric Brinkman (Indiana University, USA)
2. Family Psychology, Mental Illness, and Social Stigma in Trauma
Andrew Burt (Gogebic Community College, USA)
3. Blindness, Aesthetics, and Radical Contingency in Dario Argento's The Cat O' Nine Tails (1971) and Dark Glasses (2022)
L. Andrew Cooper (Independent Scholar, USA)
4. "Real Dead Bodies": The Death of American Authorship in Dario Argento's Tenebre
Derek Graf (New York Institute of Technology, USA)
5. Violence in the Streets: Italy's anni di piombo through La porta sul buio
Jorge Traversa (Universidad de Buenos Aires, Argentina) and Guillermo Link (Universidad de BuenosAires, Argentina)
6. Has the Yellow Fever Broken: Dario Argento and the 21st Century Giallo
Mateja Ðedovic (Independent Scholar, UK)

PART II: PHILOSOPHIES OF HORROR
7. Dario Argento's Apollonian-Dionysian Dialectic
Gavin Hurley (Ave Maria University, USA)
8. The Signification of Murder in Dario Argento's Sleepless (2001)
Sean Woodard (University of Texas at Arlington, USA)
9. Mother's Mayhem: Abjection and Neurotic Surplus Repression in Dario Argento's La terza madre
Casey Cockrum (Virginia Tech, USA) and Antonio Sanna (University of Westminster London, USA)
10. Vulnerabilities of the Super-Natural: Plasticity in Dario Argento's Phenomena
Sony Jalarajan Raj (MacEwan University, Canada) and Adith K Suresh (MacEwan University, Canada)
11. Beelzebabes: An Ontological Interrogation of the Nonhuman in Argento's Phenomena
Molly Follette (University of Pittsburgh, USA)
12. The Animal Turn in Phenomena, Il fantasma dell'opera, Dracula 3D, 'Jenifer' and 'Pelts'
Fernando Gabriel Pagnoni Berns (Universidad de Buenos Aires, Argentina)

PART III: ADAPTATIONS, HOMAGES
13. Art Cinema and the Grotesque: Dario Argento's Le cinque giornate
Clayton Dillard (Texas Christian University, USA)
14. Trauma, Metadaptation, and Fidelity's Recuperative Claim in Suspiria (1977 and 2018)
Jamie L. McDaniel (Radford University, USA)
15. Galleria Oscura: Paintings in Dario Argento's Giallo Films
Alexandra Heller-Nicholas (Independent Scholar, Australia)
16. Virtual/Real Bodies in Lamberto Bava and Dario Argento's Demoni
Emiliano Aguilar (Universidad de Buenos Aires, USA)
17. The Fourth Mother: Postmodernism, Metacinema, and Autobiography in Luigi Cozzi's The Black Cat
Felipe M. Guerra (Independent Scholar, Brazil)
18. Iconic Personality: The Public Image of Dario Argento
Marco Chiaretti (Universidad De Murcia and La Sapienza, Italy)

About the Contributors
Index

Product details

Bloomsbury Academic Test
Published Jan 08 2026
Format Hardback
Edition 1st
Extent 368
ISBN 9781666973648
Imprint Bloomsbury Academic
Dimensions 229 x 152 mm
Series Critical Perspectives on Contemporary Directors
Publisher Bloomsbury Publishing

About the contributors

Anthology Editor

Fernando Gabriel Pagnoni Berns

Fernando Gabriel Pagnoni Berns is Professor in the…

Related Titles

Environment: Staging