The Palgrave Handbook to Horror Literature
Abstract
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.
... In the thematic representation and construction of Gothic motifs and horrors, many discourse studies have focused on exploring the social, political, economic, and cultural aspects of concepts in Gothic fiction (Buckley, 2016;Corstorphine & Kremmel, 2018;Dunne, 2001;Wisker, 2016). In Reading Gothic Fiction, for instance, Howard (1994) re-analyses Gothic novels through the Bakhtinian approach to discourse analysis. ...
The recent horrors of the COVID-19 pandemic have renewed interest in Gothic fiction in general and Mary Shelley's Frankenstein in particular. The image of Frankenstein has become associated with the COVID-19 discourses (e.g. literary, journalistic, medical, and social media) as reflected in the representation of the horrors of isolation and contagion. The influence of the novel is clearly reflected in literary, medical, scientific, and everyday discourses today. Despite the prolific literature on the representation of Gothic elements and motifs, reflections on Gothic motifs in the reproduction of COVID-19 discourse have not yet been elaborated. In light of this, the paper seeks to explore the manipulation and reproduction of Shelley’s Frankenstein in the COVID-19 journalistic discourse. A corpus of 542 editorials and opinion commentaries from 83 newspapers was built. The corpus included only editorials and opinions written in English. Corpus-based critical discourse analysis was used. The results indicate that the Gothic motifs of Frankenstein are manipulated and reproduced in the journalistic discourse of COVID-19 to depict the chaos and destruction caused by the enormously powerful and catastrophic virus/monster that has come to rule the world. The COVID-19 journalistic discourse based on the fictional image of Frankenstein represents a distinct discourse genre that manipulates Gothic motifs in the thematic representations of the horrors associated with the pandemic itself on the one hand, and the social, economic and political problems and crises that have shaken the stability of the entire world on the other. It can be concluded that this representation has been developed and generated from the interaction between the writers and the text of Frankenstein.
The aim of this chapter is to examine the ways in which zombie imagination has been used in Ryan Mecum’s Dawn of Zombie Haiku in order to envisage individual and society’s “zombification” through a series of interplays between human and non-human life-forms. By studying zombies as posthuman subjectivities that are diffused into each other within a ‘zombified’ environment, we explore the zombie imaginary and its endemic discourse contaminated to the poetic narrative. Through a series of embodied experiences, emotions, thoughts and anxieties about the future Mecum’s collection is a ‘walking’ and ‘undead’ narrative, ‘contaminated’ by the modern society’s bad effects, raising moral reasoning for survival in a more-than-human world.
The paper outlines a framework for approaching the complexities of translating multimodal means in horror fiction. Nowadays, the horror genre is reaching its peak, becoming the most remarkable mass product in demand. It is sharply distinguished from other literary genres due to generating a morbid mood and heart-stopping suspense in the textual canvas. From this perspective, the research aims to identify multimodal means essential for creating suspense in King’s horror novels “Pet Sematary” (1983) and “Outsider” (2018) and determine the translation strategies used to render them into Ukrainian. In this regard, multimodal means stir fresh interest since they implicitly complement and clarify the information transmitted verbally. The research framework is designed with two primary objectives. Firstly, to disclose the phonic and graphic means utilized in recreating horror imagery in the TL text. Secondly, to examine the translation strategies employed in rendering the multimodal means into the TL. The principles of the comparative approach were chosen to identify the similarities and differences between translation strategies in the analyzed texts. The research methodology adopted in this study enables a comprehensive study of the multimodal means in the horror fiction genre, employing a meticulous approach that involves data collection, analysis, and interpretation through the lens of translation strategies, contextual and pragmatic analyses. The conducted research reveals the involvement of phonic and graphic means to influence the readership unconsciously. The frequency of phonic means depends on the context of their occurrence. Graphic means are represented by syngraphemic, supragraphemic, and topographemic elements. To render the sense of the SL adequately and meet the TL audience expectations, the translators of “Pet Sematary” and “Outsider” advocated semantic, grammatical, and pragmatic translation strategies. Synonymous and contextual substitution, loan, antonymous and descriptive translation, addition, and compression proved to be the dominant translation transformations. The in-depth analysis has shown that the translators faced multiple hindrances, making some errors in encoding polysemiotic signs. However, the TL version makes sense, undeniably affecting the reader and retaining the author’s communicative intent.
قد يبدو أدب الماورائيات للوهلة الأولى مقتصرا على بث المتعة وإثارة الرعب والغموض في عقول القراء المفتونين بعالم ما وراء الطبيعة، إلا أن هذا الصنف الأدبي لا يقتصر على الرعب كعنصر أساسي في تكوينه بمعزلٍ عن الاتجاهات والنزعات الثقافية والسياسية والعلمية الأخرى الملازمة لظهور أدب الماورائيات بنوعيه الإنجليزي والأمريكي وازدهاره في القرن التاسع عشر. يسعى هذا البحث لتحليل المكونات الأساسية التي شكلت أدب الماورائيات في القرن التاسع عشر وربطها بفلسفة (الشك) بأشكالها وأبعادها المختلفة
The ways Gothic fairy tales and fairy-tale feminism interact are not always clear. An undercurrent of feminist studies of fairy tales is fueled by the 1970s Lurie-Lieberman debate, which focused on the question of whether fairy tales liberate or repress women. Meanwhile, critics such as Lorna Piatti-Farnell and Lucie Armitt have offered studies of the interplay between Gothic horror and fairy tales. However, these studies have limits, often emphasizing the violence, self-mutilation, and cannibalism of women, like those in Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm’s versions of “Cinderella” and “Snow White”. This paper argues that “Rapunzel” (1812) is key for understanding the Gothic and feminist discourses of Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre (1847). Firstly, this paper argues that a self-reflexive and self-productive relationship between subjectivity and desire shapes and disrupts the Gothic, fairy-tale, and feminist discourses of Jane Eyre, resulting in a specular feminine-I that has inspired pluralistic readings of the text. Secondly, an analysis of the Rapunzelian metaphors of ‘wicked’ hunger and ideological towers unmasks the double consciousness that not only fetters feminine subjectivity but delimits the domestic structures of marriage and home. Multiplying the ways nineteenth-century Gothicism, fairy tales, and feminism may interact, Brontë’s specular study of feminine desire makes way for a productive and agential feminine speaking-I.
With its suspenseful atmosphere, mysterious and murderous male protagonist, and magical objects, it is hardly surprising that Charles Perrault’s conte bleu ‘La Barbe bleue’ (1697) was the inspiration for numerous Gothic tales in the nineteenth century. Some of these adaptations placed Gothic devices such as the representation of the terror experienced by Bluebeard’s latest wife within the broader nineteenth-century cultural discourse on female deviance, and its relations with masculine authority and dominance. By removing from the tale Perrault’s warning against female curiosity and imprudence and focusing on the wife’s feelings of fear and terror, these adaptations amplify the intrinsic Gothicism of the Bluebeard story, thus providing the female protagonist with a psychological depth that includes, as I demonstrate in this study, a display of a variety of abnormal behaviours. In these Gothic adaptations, the terror experienced by Bluebeard’s wife serves as a springboard for the representation of psychological and nervous disorders commonly diagnosed in the nineteenth century such as hysteria, monomania, female depravity, and masochism. Showing the interculturality and intermediality of these themes, this essay analyses rewritings of Perrault’s ‘Bluebeard’ from nineteenth-century Britain, France, and the United States, including Gothic bluebooks, poems, dramas, and short stories.
Kevin Corstorphine is a lecturer in American Literature at the University of Hull, and Programme Director in American Studies. His research interests lie in horror and Gothic fiction, both literary and popular, and he is particularly interested in representation of space and place, the environment, and haunted locations. He has published widely on authors including Bram Stoker, H.P. Lovecraft, Ambrose Bierce, Shirley Jackson, Stephen King, and Clive Barker. He was the co-editor for The Palgrave Handbook to Horror Literature, published in 2018. He is currently working on several research projects including US imperialism, haunted graveyards, and the use of dungeon spaces in gaming.
We are here interested in the innovative potential of horror outside of film. According to our thesis, other media formats are not only characterised by their technical possibilities and sensual modes of efficacy but also enable the development of narratives that are not typical of films. For this we focus on the phenomenon of the female child as a protagonist in horror video games. We first contextualise horror video games, then describe the development of the emerging trope of the child heroine and situate her characteristics within the framework of the representations of females in horror and the media-technical presentation of horror in video games. We thereby want to argue for a more media-format-sensitive or comparative conception of horror.
Link:
https://refractoryjournal.net/halloween-issue-nightmares-nations-and-innovations/
This chapter has four sections: 1: Periodicals; 2. Editions and Catalogues; 3. Bibliography, Associated Books and Articles, Histories, and Companions; 4. Shakespeare and Miscellaneous, Including Reference Materials. These sections are not inviolable. With some exceptions this review of the year’s work published in 2018 in the areas of bibliography, textual criticism, and reference materials is alphabetically arranged. Within the alphabetical arrangement by author there are some exceptions where publications are grouped under the respective authors rather than under editors of, for instance, the correspondence. There is also included in this chapter work that has been missed in some of the other chapters in this volume. Readers should be aware that coverage is largely limited to those items that have been received by the contributor, who would like to thank James Fergusson, James E. May, who contributed the section on the Eighteenth-Century Intelligencer, Patrick Scott, who contributed the items on Scottish literature, and Jan Webster for their assistance.
Evolutionary horror study is an emerging research field that uses as its theoretical foundation the sciences of human nature. Evolutionary horror scholars claim that we can understand horror fiction as a cultural technology that works by tapping into ancient, defensive psychological mechanisms to satisfy an adaptive appetite for vicarious experience with threat scenarios. The genre elicits negative emotions ranging from disgust to terror, usually via the representation of fictional monsters that engage the evolved fear system by mimicking cues of threat. Immersion in a fictional world of horror is rewarding because it serves the adaptive functions of emotional, moral, and cognitive calibration. Although evolutionary horror study is growing in visibility and productivity, it is an emerging enterprise in need of much theoretical and interpretative work.
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