The Palgrave Handbook to Horror Literature Edited by Kevin Corstorphine · Laura R

The Palgrave Handbook to Horror Literature Edited by Kevin Corstorphine · Laura R. Kremmel The Palgrave Handbook to Horror Literature Kevin Corstorphine • Laura R. Kremmel Editors The Palgrave Handbook to Horror Literature Editors Kevin Corstorphine Laura R. Kremmel Department of English Department of Humanities University of Hull South Dakota School of Mines Hull, UK & Technology Rapid City, SD, USA ISBN 978-3-319-97405-7 ISBN 978-3-319-97406-4 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-97406-4 Library of Congress Control Number: 2018958968 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2018 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover credit: Katrina Brown / Alamy Stock Photo This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland FOREWORD In some ways, the word title “Handbook” is a profound misnomer for this exceptional collection of essays on the literary horror tradition. A “handbook” denotes a book that offers up information and that collects what is already known. Kevin Corstorphine and Laura R. Kremmel’s The Palgrave Handbook to Horror Literature certainly does this—but it does so much more. It opens up new reserves within the horror tradition, shapes new categories, offers insightful new readings of both literary subgenres and individual texts, and distills enduring and innovative critical approaches. In a discipline—horror studies—that has been dominated by analysis of film, The Palgrave Handbook to Horror Literature focuses squarely on literature. What is more, of the fourteen chapters in the first section, which maps the contours of an expansive, emergent global literary tradition of horror, only three take up what has arguably been the focus of studies of the literary horror tradition, late eighteenth- and nineteenth-century British gothic. And, even then, the focus is on drama and chapbooks, not only the novel. Indeed, Corstorphine and Kremmel’s collection describes an enormously rich and var- ied landscape of horror, encompassing Indian aesthetics in third century BCE, the troll in medieval Norse mythology, the “indighorror” of Australian Aboriginal literature, and Native American writers and their representations of the windigo. While familiar names like Stephen King and Peter Straub appear in this section, it is in relation to their roots in the writing of nineteenth-century American women, Sarah Orne Jewett and Edith Wharton, not quite so well known in the horror tradition. The Palgrave Handbook to Horror Literature takes up the major themes of literary horror in its second section, including the more familiar zombies, vampires, dolls, and haunted and haunting children but extending to the labyrinth, with its “ability to trap, nullify, and transform,” medical horror, “devilish” devices, disability in horror, imperialism, and the forests and animals of horror literature. Some entries in this section take up a single text—Sandra Mills’s chapter on dolls, for example, offers a close reading of Ramsey Campbell’s The Doll Who v vi Foreword Ate His Mother (1976)—while others offer invaluable surveys, such as Bernice Murphy’s wide-ranging discussion of the different functions that animals (from cats to dogs to birds to cattle) have served within horror narratives. Whatever the approach, each chapter offers a wealth of texts and critical approaches that will serve as an important resource, in particular, for anyone thinking of teaching a course on literary horror. The final section ofThe Palgrave Handbook to Horror Literature takes up theoretical approaches to horror literature—and it is especially worthy of note that three chapters (by Ordner Taylor III, Tabish Khair, and Christina Dokou) are devoted to reading race and postcolonialism within the literary horror tradition. These chapters make it clear that reading beyond the confines of white Western writing discloses new paradigms and preoccupations of horror. Taylor, for instance, reads the legacy of slavery and racism in African-American horror literature, and Dokou looks at how we must read the monstrous mother and abjection quite differently in African-American texts that show mothers “abject- ing” infants in dire circumstances that are not of their choosing. Chapters in this section take up ongoing approaches to horror, such as its distinctive ability to offer political commentary (e.g., in Aalya Ahmad’s discussion of extreme horror in the 1980s and 1990s and Coco d’Hont’s argument about the func- tion of transgressive horror in the 1990s), as well as explore the ways in which relatively new theoretical directions illuminate horror (Mathias Clasen’s evolu- tionary approach to horror and Susan Yi Sencindiver’s elaboration of new materialism). Corstorphine and Kremmel’s The Palgrave Handbook to Horror Literature is a dazzling resource—an invaluable companion for anyone seeking to learn about horror literature, to teach it, or to launch out on their own research project. It is an essential collection for every horror fan or critic, from those merely interested in horror to those who themselves plan to write about it. Chapters survey horror literature itself as well as distill critical conversations— and in every case chapters make the kinds of provocative arguments and ask the kinds of questions that will generate still more innovative horror scholarship. If I were limited to only one book on horror literature, this would be it. Lehigh University, Bethlehem, PA Dawn Keetley 2018 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS We would like to express our sincere gratitude to all of the thirty-seven authors whose chapters make this such a strong contribution to the field of horror studies. We could not have completed the project without their hard work and patience. We also owe a debt to those scholars who were involved in the project at the very beginning and formed its foundation: Dawn Keetley and Tabish Khair. We would also like to extend our thanks to Darryl Jones for his recommendation. We would like to thank our colleagues at the University of Hull, Lehigh University, and South Dakota School of Mines & Technology for their support and for providing a sounding board as we juggled the different aspects of the project. Thanks also to our colleagues and friends in the International Gothic Association for creating and sustaining the strong community of scholars from which we had to draw for the contents of this handbook. Thanks to the editors of Palgrave for their confidence in the project and their invaluable support throughout the process. Finally, we’d like to thank our families for their encouragement and moral support. Kevin would like to thank Lesley, Sophie, and Jacob Corstorphine for their patience. Laura would like to thank her parents for their support and dedicates her work on this project to the late Dr. Wendy Carse, who was com- mitted to undergraduate education in Gothic and horror studies at Indiana University of Pennsylvania. vii CONTENTS 1 Introduction 1 Kevin Corstorphine Part I The Origins and Evolution of Literary Horror 19 2 Bhayānaka (Horror and the Horrific) in Indian Aesthetics 21 Dhananjay Singh 3 Horror in the Medieval North: The Troll 33 Ármann Jakobsson 4 The Horror Genre and Aspects of Native American Indian Literature 45 Joy Porter 5 Vampires, Shape-Shifters, and Sinister Light: Mistranslating Australian Aboriginal Horror in Theory and Literary Practice 61 Naomi Simone Borwein 6 Men, Women, and Landscape in American Horror Fiction 77 Dara Downey 7 Blood Flows Freely: The Horror of Classic Fairy Tales 91 Lorna Piatti-Farnell 8 Turning Dark Pages and Transacting with the Inner Self: Adolescents’ Perspectives of Reading Horror Texts 101 Phil Fitzsimmons ix x Contents 9 Horror and Damnation in Medieval Literature 113 Andrew J. Power 10 The Jacobean Theater of Horror 127 Tony Perrello 11 “A Mass of Unnatural and Repulsive Horrors”: Staging Horror in Nineteenth-Century English Theater 139 Sarah A. Winter 12 Horror in Gothic Chapbooks 155 Franz J. Potter 13 “We Stare and Tremble”: Eighteenth- and Nineteenth- Century Horror Novels 165 Natalie Neill 14 “The Horror! The Horror!”: Tracing Horror in Modernism from Conrad to Eliot 181 Matthias Stephan 15 Global Horror: Pale Horse, Pale Rider 191 David Punter Part II Themes of Literary Horror 203 16 Vampires: Reflections in a Dark Mirror 205 Wendy Fall 17 Zombie Fictions 219 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 233 Chloé Germaine Buckley 19 Discussing Dolls: Horror and the Human Double 249 Sandra Mills 20 “They Have Risen Once: They May Rise Again”: Animals in Horror Literature 257 Bernice M.

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