Horror Literature through History

by Matt Cardin

  But a moment’s reflection is enough to disabuse one of that notion. Certainly, horror does involve fear, but simple introspection shows that the word refers to something more than this, to fear plus something, fear with an admixture or addition of something else. A person may fear losing a job, or facing a tiger, or being mugged or beaten up; this does not mean someone in those positions is experiencing horror. Conversely, one may witness, say, the emotional abuse of a child, or the despoiling of an ecosystem, or the ravaging of a loved one by cancer—things that do not involve the supernatural trappings or operatic violence and gore associated with many books and movies bearing the “horror” label—and yet say in all honesty that one feels horrified. What exactly is it, then, about the emotional response to such situations that warrants the use of the “h” word to describe it?

  These, along with a multitude of additional possible examples, may allow us to triangulate the inner element that makes horror horrifying, and to identify this element as some quality of wrongness or repulsiveness—physical, metaphysical, moral, or otherwise—that leads one to shrink from someone, something, some event, some idea, a monster, the sight of blood, a situation of gross immorality or injustice, or any number of other things. Horror, it seems, involves an irreducible element of revulsion or abhorrence, centered on a primal gut feeling, often implicit, that something should not be, that something is somehow fundamentally wrong about a given person, creature, act, event, phenomenon, environment, or situation. (Additionally, and significantly, there is a distinction to be made between horror and terror—another word that is of critical importance to the type of art generally labeled “horror” today—and this is addressed in the pages of this encyclopedia.)

  In his 1990 study of the aesthetics of horror titled The Philosophy of Horror, or Paradoxes of the Heart (1990), the philosopher and film scholar Noël Carroll famously noted the interesting and revealing fact that horror as a genre is named for the chief emotional reaction with which it is concerned, the emotional reaction that we have here called into question. Horror horrifies: it sets out to inspire a sense of fear and dread mingled with revulsion. Or, if one follows the lead of Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910), R. G. Collingwood (1889–1943), and other significant representatives of the expressive theory of art, one might argue that the works of horror that actually achieve the true status of art as such (defined as imaginative works possessing and displaying an intrinsically higher level of quality than “mere” genre or formula fiction, whose purpose is to entertain) do not so much seek to inspire horror in the reader or viewer as to communicate a sense of horror that has been experienced by the author. The horror critic and scholar S. T. Joshi, in such books as The Weird Tale (1990) and The Modern Weird Tale (2001), has advanced the idea that what distinguishes the most important and enduring authors of weird and supernatural horror fiction is their tendency to imbue their work with a consistent vision or worldview. In keeping with this, and regardless of the overall merit of Joshi’s specific assertion (which some have disputed), it may well be that one of the distinguishing qualities of the greatest authors in this area is an uncommonly and acutely deep personal sensitivity to the more fearsome, dark, and distressing aspects of life, so that these aspects become a true source of fear, suffering, and, yes, horror. Following Tolstoy and Collingwood, one would say that when this quality is present in an individual who possesses (or is possessed by) the inbuilt drive and skill that motivates some people to become writers and artists, it will naturally lead such an individual to tell the rest of us the truth about these dark insights and experiences. And it will empower such a person to use the vehicles of prose fiction, and/or poetry, stage drama, film, television, comic books, or video games, to communicate to others an actual experience of horror by recreating it, to some extent, in the reader, viewer, or player.

  Interestingly, and as demonstrated repeatedly over the long history of horror literature, this does not necessarily mean that such writers and artists convey their horror in just a single, easily identifiable type of work that can automatically be given a category or genre label. Horror, as has been persuasively argued—perhaps most famously by Douglas E. Winter in his 1998 speech, and later essay, “The Pathos of Genre”—is not really a genre, defined as a type of narrative that has developed recognizable characteristics through repeated use, which can then be used as a kind of formula for producing other, similar works. Rather, it is “a progressive form of fiction, one that evolves to meet the fears and anxieties of its times. . . . [S]ometimes it wears other names, other faces, marking the fragmentation and meltdown of a sudden and ill-conceived thing that many publishers and writers foolishly believed could be called a genre” (Winter 2000, 182). In other words, horror in art is not a genre but a mode that can be employed in any form or genre. Horror has thus had a long and fruitful relationship with, for example, science fiction, from such Ur-texts as Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818) and H. P. Lovecraft’s At the Mountains of Madness (1936), to the advent of the “New Weird” at the turn of the twenty-first century in such works as China Miéville’s Perdido Street Station (2000), to the fifty-year reign of zombies over the realm of apocalyptic and postapocalyptic horror that began in 1968 with writer/director George Romero’s Night of the Living Dead, which was itself partly inspired by Richard Matheson’s classic 1954 horror/science fiction novel I Am Legend. And there are also horror Westerns, horror romance novels, religious horror stories, horror thrillers, horror mysteries, and so-called “literary” horror (with “literary” denoting nongenre writing).

  Being so portable, as it were, horror can spread out into all types of storytelling, and indeed, this is what has been happening with increasing visibility and pervasiveness in the horror renaissance of the early twenty-first century, to the point where the creeping spread of horror throughout the literary and entertainment landscape is one of the defining characteristics of this new era. Horror has become unbound, and its fortunes have become those of literature at large. In this new state of things, horror’s reputation has begun to transcend its former questionable status, as some darlings of the literary establishment have produced works that could be considered pure horror even though they do not bear the category label. In fact, if these had been published during the great horror boom of the 1980s, when not just Stephen King and Anne Rice but a host of lesser authors virtually owned drugstore bookshelves and bookstore window displays, they would have been every bit as horrifying as (if not more so than) any 1980s paperback novel with garish Gothic typography and a leering monster on the cover.

  Again: Why Horror?

  So these, then, are some of the issues involved in identifying and defining horror in life and art. But the question with which we opened still remains: Why horror? Even having answered—perhaps provisionally, arguably, necessarily incompletely—the question of why some writers write it (because they are themselves subject to a deeper-than-average experience of the horrors of life and consciousness), the question remains as to why readers read it. Fear and loathing are conventionally unpleasant emotions. Why do people seek to be subjected to them?

  There are a number of customary answers to this question, many of which have been resorted to repeatedly by the interviewees mentioned above, and all of which carry some merit. For instance, what has sometimes been termed the roller coaster or funhouse theory of horror is surely true to an extent. There is something pleasant, even delightful—so this answer has it—about absorbing fictional stories of darkness, danger, and dread while remaining safely in one’s easy chair. There is something purely entertaining and enjoyable about entering an imaginative world of horror, rather like a carnival funhouse ride, in order to enjoy the thrills to be found in such a place. From this point of view, seeking horror in fictional, cinematic, or any other form is no different in principle from seeking an adrenaline rush by reading a thriller or seeking a laugh by watching a comedy. And some people do approach all of these things on this very level. Some horror fiction, including most
(but not all) of what appeared in Weird Tales and the other classic horror, fantasy, and science fiction pulps of the 1920s through the 1940s, as well as most of what was published during the late twentieth-century horror boom, seems precisely aimed at fulfilling this function.

  There is also surely something to the more profound theory of horror as catharsis, a position first advanced by Aristotle in his Poetics and still invoked more than two thousand years later to explain all kinds of artistic engagements, but especially those of a powerfully stark and unpleasant nature. Aristotle was talking specifically about Greek tragic plays, which brim with grief, betrayal, dark secrets, and unhappy endings, not to mention supernatural horrors and gruesome violence (as in, for example, Euripides’s Medea and Aeschylus’s Oresteia trilogy, both from the fifth century BCE). Such productions, the great philosopher argued, serve to purge viewers of their pent-up emotions of fear and pity in a safely walled-off fictional world, thus preparing them better to deal with the anxieties of real life. One would be foolish and naïve to deny that today’s horror fiction (and other forms) may serve this kind of function for some, and perhaps many, people.

  But even granting the validity of these views, there is another and deeper answer to be given, and this is where the possible sensitivity of the reader meets the sensitivity of the writer who uses imaginative literature to convey his or her own sense of profound horror at the vicissitudes and strangenesses of life, the world, consciousness, and everything. Perhaps, for some people, the great works of horror provide a deep, visceral, darkly electrifying confirmation of their own most personal and profound experiences and intuitions. After the spookhouse ride has let out, and after the catharsis has come and gone, horror in art, as Thomas Ligotti put it in his essay “The Consolations of Horror,” may actually, weirdly, provide some readers with a kind of comfort by showing that “someone shares some of your own feelings and has made of these a work of art which you have the insight, sensitivity, and—like it or not—peculiar set of experiences to appreciate” (Ligotti 1996, xxi). What is more, horror accomplishes this artistic-alchemical feat not by denying or diminishing the dark, dismal, dreadful, terrifying, and horrifying elements of life, but by amplifying them. Never mind the possible therapeutic or other conventionally beneficial results that might be imputed to such a thing; the point, for both writer and reader, is simply to confront, recognize, experience, name, and know horror as such, because it is in fact real. It is part of the human experience. We are, from time to time (and some of us more often than others), haunted by horror. The type of art named as such is an expression of this truth, a personal and cultural acknowledgment of and dialogue with it, a means by which we know it, and affirm it, and “stay with” it, instead of denying it and looking away, as is otherwise our wont.

  Like all art, horror literature and its associated other forms play out in ways that link up with a host of additional issues: historical, cultural, sociological, ideological, scientific, artistic, philosophical, religious, spiritual, and existential. It is the story of how exactly this has played out over the long span of human history, especially, but not exclusively, since the birth of literary Gothicism in the eighteenth century with the publication of Horace Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto (1764), that is the central focus of this encyclopedia. Whatever the reader’s purpose in picking up this work, and whichever the level at which he or she tends to engage personally with horror—as funhouse ride, cathartic tool, or personal consolation—it is hoped that the contents herein will help to clarify and illuminate the history, present, and possible futures of horror in both literary and other forms, while also fostering an enhanced appreciation of the central mystery and core of darkness that lies at the heart of the whole thing. It is in fact this darkness that serves as horror’s source of enduring power, and that makes it an undying and undead form of human literary and artistic endeavor.

  Matt Cardin

  Further Reading

  Carroll, Noël. 1990. The Philosophy of Horror, or Paradoxes of the Heart. New York: Routledge.

  Joshi, S. T. 1990. The Weird Tale. Austin: University of Texas Press.

  Joshi, S. T. 2001. The Modern Weird Tale. Jefferson, NC: McFarland.

  Ligotti, Thomas. 1996. The Nightmare Factory. New York: Carroll & Graf.

  Winter, Douglas E. 2000. “The Pathos of Genre.” In The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror, edited by Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling, 176–183. New York: St. Martin’s Press. Also available at http://omnimagazine.com/eh/commentary/winter/pages/0799.html.

  Timeline of Horror Literature

  Through History

  ca. 2100 BCE

  The Epic of Gilgamesh

  ca. 750–700 BCE

  Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey, featuring tales of gods, monsters, magic, a trip to the underworld; Hesiod’s Theogony, with additional descriptions of monstrous and supernatural entities

  5th century BCE

  Heyday of Greek tragedy in works of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, featuring supernaturalism and grisly scenes of physical horror

  3rd century BCE

  Apollonius Rodius, Argonautica, showing Jason and the Argonauts encountering multiple monsters and supernatural threats

  ca. 200 BCE

  Plautus, Mostellaria (“The Haunted House”)

  1st century CE

  Petronius, Satyricon, featuring the first extant account of a werewolf in ancient literature; Ovid, Metamorphoses, with tales of human beings transforming into plants and animals

  2nd century CE

  Apuleius, Metamorphosis, a.k.a. The Golden Ass, with transformation, witchcraft, and more

  ca. 750–1000

  Beowulf

  12th century

  Romance narratives rise to prominence in Europe, featuring many fantastical elements, including ghosts, fairies, werewolves, supernatural transformations, and mysterious castles

  14th century

  Middle English romances flourish, including tales of women seduced by demons (e.g., Sir Gowther), werewolves (William of Palerne, translated from Old French), and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, which teems with supernaturalism and horror

  1308–1320

  Composition of Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy, whose second section, Inferno, profoundly shapes Western Christian conceptions of demons, devils, Satan, and hell

  1487

  Heinrich Kramer and Jacob Sprenger, Malleus Maleficarum (The Hammer of the Witches)—the most famous (notorious) of the witch-hunting manuals

  1572

  English translation of Swiss theologian Ludwig Lavatar’s Of ghostes and spirites walking by nyght

  1584

  Reginald Scot, Discoverie of Witchcraft

  1587

  Thomas Kyd, The Spanish Tragedy

  1594

  Christopher Marlowe, Doctor Faustus; Thomas Nashe, The Terrors of the Night; William Shakespeare, Titus Andronicus

  1597

  King James I, Daemonologie

  1599

  John Marsten, Antonio’s Revenge

  1600

  William Shakespeare, Hamlet

  1605

  English translation of French scholar Pierre le Loyer’s A treatise of spectres or straunge sights, visions and apparitions appearing sensibly unto men

  1607

  Thomas Middleton, The Revenger’s Tragedy; William Shakespeare, Macbeth

  1612

  Thomas Middleton, The Witch

  1621

  Thomas Dekker, John Ford, and William Rowley, The Witch of Edmonton

  1623

  John Webster, The Duchess of Malfi

  1634

  Thomas Heywood and Richard Brome, The Late Lancashire Witches

  1667

  Publication of John Milton’s Paradise Lost, with a profoundly influential depiction of Christian angels, demons, and Lucifer

  1681

  Joseph Glanvill, Saducismus Triumphatus, an apparition narrative arguing for the reality of both biblical/Christian superna
turalism and witches, revenants, and other horrific supernatural beings

  1692

  Beginning of the Salem witch trials

  1693

  Publication of Cotton Mather’s Wonders of the Invisible World, focusing on the dangers of witchcraft, and published in the immediate wake of the Salem witch trials

  1704

  Publication of John Dennis, Grounds of Criticism in Poetry, an essay promoting the terror of the sublime as the most powerful driver of great poetry

  ca. 1722–1751

  Rise of the so-called Graveyard Poets, who wrote melancholy poetry set in graveyards and reflecting on death and mortality, e.g., Robert Blair’s “The Grave,” Edward Young’s The Complaint: Or Night-Thoughts on Life, Death and Immortality, and Thomas Gray’s “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard”

  1727

  Daniel Defoe, An Essay on the History and Reality of Apparitions

  1746

  Publication of Antoine Augustin Calmet’s “Dissertations on the Apparitions of Spirits and on the Vampires or Revenants of Hungary, Moravia, and Silesia”—an exhaustive study of angels, demons, witchcraft, lycanthropy, and related beings and occult phenomena (and a book of major importance in driving popular fascination with vampires for the next century)