, to see if you have full access to this publication.
Book Titles No access
Journeys into Darkness
Critical Essays on Gothic Horror
Authors:
Publisher:
2014
Summary
The tradition of supernatural horror fiction runs deep in Anglo-American literature. From the Gothic novels of the eighteenth century to such contemporary authors as Stephen King and Anne Rice, writers have employed horror fiction to unearth many disquieting truths about the human condition, ranging from mistreatment of women and minorities to the ever-present dangers of modern city life.
In Journeys into Darkness: Critical Essays on Gothic Horror, James Goho analyzes many significant writers and trends in American and British horror fiction. Beginning with Charles Brockden Brown’s disturbing novels of terror and madness, Goho proceeds to discuss the influence of Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Fall of the House of Usher” on H. P. Lovecraft, who is treated in several penetrating essays. Lovecraft was a uniquely philosophical writer, and Goho approaches his work through the lens of existentialist philosopher Søren Kierkegaard, while also probing Lovecraft’s racism as exhibited in several tales about Native Americans. Goho also discusses the Welsh writer Arthur Machen’s tortured tales of suffering and evil and Algernon Blackwood’s numerous stories set in the wilds of the Canadian backwoods. The book concludes with a centuries-spanning essay on the witchcraft theme in the American Gothic tradition and a comprehensive essay on Fritz Leiber’s invention of the urban Gothic.
In this wide-ranging study, James Goho examines the varied ways in which supernatural fiction can address the deepest moral, social, and political concerns of the human experience. Journeys into Darkness will be of interest to readers and scholars of horror fiction and to students of literary history and culture in general.
Search publication
Bibliographic data
Copyright year
2014
ISBN-Print
978-1-4422-3145-0
ISBN-Online
978-1-4422-3146-7
Publisher
Rowman & Littlefield, Lanham
Language
English
Pages
223
Product type
Book Titles
Table of contents
ChapterPages
Contents No access
Acknowledgments No access
Introduction No access Pages 1 - 4
1 Dark Beginnings No access Pages 5 - 20
2 Poe’s “The Fall of the House of Usher” No access Pages 21 - 34
3 The Realm of Suffering No access Pages 35 - 56
4 Suffering and Evil in the Short Fiction of Arthur Machen No access Pages 57 - 78
5 The Haunted Wood No access Pages 79 - 96
6 The Sickness unto Death in H. P. Lovecraft’s “The Hound” No access Pages 97 - 110
7 What Is “The Unnamable”? No access Pages 111 - 144
8 The Aboriginal in the Works of H. P. Lovecraft No access Pages 145 - 162
9 From Salem to Eastwick No access Pages 163 - 180
