This handbook examines the use of horror in storytelling, from oral traditions through folklore and fairy tales to contemporary horror fiction. Divided into sections that explore the origins and evolution of horror fiction, the recurrent themes that can be seen in horror, and ways of understanding horror through literary and cultural theory, the text analyses why horror is so compelling, and how we should interpret its presence in literature. Chapters explore historical horror aspects including ancient mythology, medieval writing, drama, chapbooks, the Gothic novel, and literary Modernism and…mehr
This handbook examines the use of horror in storytelling, from oral traditions through folklore and fairy tales to contemporary horror fiction. Divided into sections that explore the origins and evolution of horror fiction, the recurrent themes that can be seen in horror, and ways of understanding horror through literary and cultural theory, the text analyses why horror is so compelling, and how we should interpret its presence in literature. Chapters explore historical horror aspects including ancient mythology, medieval writing, drama, chapbooks, the Gothic novel, and literary Modernism and trace themes such as vampires, children and animals in horror, deep dark forests, labyrinths, disability, and imperialism. Considering horror via postmodern theory, evolutionary psychology, postcolonial theory, and New Materialism, this handbook investigates issues of gender and sexuality, race, censorship and morality, environmental studies, and literary versus popular fiction.
Kevin Corstorphine is Lecturer in American Studies at the University of Hull, UK. His work focuses on Gothic Studies, haunted space and place, the Ecogothic, and the study of popular fiction. Laura R. Kremmel is Assistant Professor of English at the South Dakota School of Mines & Technology, USA. Her work focuses on Gothic Studies, British Romanticism, Medical Humanities/History, Disability Studies, and Horror Film.
Inhaltsangabe
1. Introduction
Kevin Corstorphine
Part I: The Origins and Evolution of Literary Horror
2. Bhayanaka (Horror and the Horrific) in Indian Aesthetics
Dhananjay Singh
3. Horror in the Medieval North: The Troll
Ármann Jakobsson
4. The Horror Genre and Aspects of Native American Indian Literature
Joy Porter
5. Vampires, Shape-Shifters, and Sinister Light: Mistranslating Australian Aboriginal Horror in Theory and Literary Practice
Naomi Simone Borwein
6. Men, Women, and Landscape in American Horror Fiction
Dara Downey
7. Blood Flows Freely: The Horror of Classic Fairy Tales
Lorna Piatti-Farnell
8. Turning Dark Pages and Transacting with the Inner Self: Adolescents' Perspectives of Reading Horror Texts
Phil Fitzsimmons
9. Horror and Damnation in Medieval Literature
Andrew J. Power
10. The Jacobean Theater of Horror
Tony Perrello
11. "A mass of unnatural and repulsive horrors": Staging Horror in Nineteenth-Century English Theatre
Sarah A. Winter
12. Horror in Gothic Chapbooks
Franz J. Potter
13. "We stare and tremble": Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Horror Novels
Natalie Neill
14. "The Horror! The Horror!": Tracing Horror in Modernism from Conrad to Eliot
Matthias Stephan
15. Global Horror: Pale Horse, Pale Rider
David Punter
Part II: Themes of Literary Horror
16. Vampires: Reflections in a Dark Mirror
Wendy Fall
17. Zombie Fictions
Anya Heise-von der Lippe
18. "You don't think I'm like any other boy. That's why you're afraid": Haunted / Haunting Children from The Turn of the Screw to Tales of Terror
Chloé Germaine Buckley
19. Discussing Dolls: Horror and the Human Double
Sandra Mills
20. "They Have Risen Once: They May Rise Again": Animals in Horror Literature
Bernice M. Murphy
21. Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Woods?: Deep Dark Forests and Literary Horror
Elizabeth Parker
22. Disability and Horror
Alan Gregory
23. Monstrous Machines and Devilish Devices
Gwyneth Peaty
24. "And Send her Well-Dos'd to the Grave": Literary Medical Horror
Laura R. Kremmel
25. Imperial Horror and Terrorism
Johan Höglund
26. Postmodern Literary Labyrinths: Spaces of Horror Reimagined
Katharine Cox
Part III: Approaches to Literary Horror
27. Evolutionary Study of Horror Literature
Mathias Clasen
28. Transgressive Horror and Politics: The Splatterpunks and Extreme Horror
Aalya Ahmad
29. Boundary Crossing and Cultural Creation: Transgressive Horror and Politics of the 1990s
Coco d'Hont
30. "Maggot Maladies": Origins of Horror as a Culturally Proscribed Entertainment
Sarah Cleary
31. The Mother of All Horrors: Medea's Infanticide in African American Literature
Christina Dokou
32. Horror, Race, and Reality
Ordner W. Taylor, III
33. Postcolonial Horror
Tabish Khair
34. Conceptualizing Varieties of Space in Horror Fiction
Andrew Hock Soon Ng
35. Towards an Acoustics of Literary Horror
Matt Foley
36. Hesitation Marks: The Fantastic and The Satirical in Postmodern Horror
Laura Findlay
37. "It's Alive!" New Materialism and Literary Horror
