A Vindication of the Redhead

The Typology of Red Hair Throughout the Literary and Visual Arts

• Author(s): Brenda Ayres, Sarah E. Maier,
• Publisher: Springer Nature
• Pages: 294
• ISBN_10: 3030835154
  ISBN_13: 9783030835156
  
• Language: en
• Categories: Literary Criticism / Modern / 19th Century , Literary Criticism / Modern / General , Literary Criticism / General , Social Science / Popular Culture , Fiction / Gothic , History / Social History , Language Arts & Disciplines / Linguistics / Historical & Comparative , Fiction / Horror ,

Description:... A Vindication of the Redhead investigates red hair in literature, art, television, and film throughout Eastern and Western cultures. This study examines red hair as a signifier, perpetuated through stereotypes, myths, legends, and literary and visual representations. Brenda Ayres and Sarah E. Maier provide a history of attitudes held by hegemonic populations toward red-haired individuals, groups, and genders from antiquity to the present. Ayres and Maier explore such diverse topics as Judeo-Christian narratives of red hair, redheads in Pre-Raphaelite paintings, red hair and gender identity, famous literary redheads such as Anne of Green Gables and Pippi Longstocking, contemporary and Neo-Victorian representations of redheads from the Black Widow to The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, and more. This book illuminates the symbolic significance and related ideologies of red hair constructed in mythic, religious, literary, and visual cultural discourse.