Briedik, A. (2024). Steampunk Aesthetics, Countercultural Ethics, and Victorian Genres: Subverting Steampunk Ethos in Margaret Killjoy’s “A Country of Ghosts” . Inter. J. Eng. Lit. Cult. 12(2): 56-64

International Journal of English Literature and Culture

IJELC

ISSN:2360-7831

International Journal of English Literature and Culture

Vol. 12(2), pp. 56-64, June 2024

ISSN: 2360-7831

https://doi.org/10.14662/ijelc2024070

Review

Steampunk Aesthetics, Countercultural Ethics, and Victorian Genres: Subverting Steampunk Ethos in Margaret Killjoy’s “A Country of Ghosts” (2014)

Adam Briedik

Department of English and American Studies, Constantine the Philosopher University in Nitra, Slovakia. Tel. +47 93965671, E-mail: a.briedik@centrum.sk

Accepted 10 May 2024

Abstract

This paper explored typological permutations of steampunk ethos in Margaret Killjoy’s “A Country of Ghosts” (2014). The novel by a transfeminist authors manifests some common generic elements of the genre such as idiosyncratic aesthetics of the particular chronotope, techno-iconography of industrial revolution, countercultural character of punk, and historical and intertextual referentiality. Whereas the essay mostly focused on previous generic and typological studies of the genre, it simultaneously employed other paradigmatic examples of the genre. The aim of this study was to address how Killjoy’s novel not only manifests the generic expectations of steampunk, but radically subverts them.

Keywords: A Country of Ghosts, Margaret Killjoy, steampunk, neo-Victorianism

Cite This Article As: Briedik, A. (2024). Steampunk Aesthetics, Countercultural Ethics, and Victorian Genres: Subverting Steampunk Ethos in Margaret Killjoy’s “A Country of Ghosts” . Inter. J. Eng. Lit. Cult. 12(2): 56-64