Download or read book Catholic Horror and Rhetorical Dialectics written by Gavin F. Hurley and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2024-06-15 with total page 203 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Identifying an important subgenre of horror literature, this book argues that Catholic horror fiction works distinctively to inspire the philosophical, theological, and spiritual imaginations of readers from all backgrounds and faith traditions. Hurley analyzes four novels that are foundational to the genre of Catholic horror: J.K. Huysmans’s Là-Bas (1891), Robert Hugh Benson’s The Light Invisible (1903) and A Mirror of Shalott (1907), and William Peter Blatty’s The Exorcist (1971). Putting these texts in conversation with the classical liberal arts, the book shows how Catholic horror fiction coheres in a commitment to dialectical thinking that aims both to resolve—and to accommodate—contrasting world views. Given its use of this methodology, Catholic horror literature is uniquely positioned to draw readers into a contemplative mindset. In presenting ghost stories, tales of possession, and narratives about evil, Catholic horror invites audiences to confront and reflect on profound existential questions—questions about the line between life and death, the nature of being, and the meaning of reality.
Download or read book Youth Horror Television and the Question of Fear written by Kyle Brett and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2024-09-24 with total page 171 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Focusing on programs from the 1970s to the early 2000s, this volume explores televised youth horror as a distinctive genre that affords children productive experiences of fear. Led by intrepid teenage investigators and storytellers, series such as Scooby-Doo! Mystery Incorporated and Are You Afraid of the Dark? show how young people can effectively confront the terrifying, alienating, and disruptive aspects of human existence. The contributors analyze how televised youth horror is uniquely positioned to encourage young viewers to interrogate—and often reimagine—constructs of normativity. Approaching the home as a particularly dynamic viewing space for young audiences, this book attests to the power of televised horror as a domain that enables children to explore larger questions about justice, human identity, and the preconceptions of the adult world.
Download or read book Lord Dunsany H P Lovecraft and Ray Bradbury written by William F. Touponce and published by Scarecrow Press. This book was released on 2013-10-10 with total page 167 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In his classic study Supernatural Horror in Literature, H. P. Lovecraft discusses the emergence of what he called spectral literature—literature that involves the gothic themes of the supernatural found in the past but also considers modern society and humanity. Beyond indicating how authors of such works derived pleasure from a sense of cosmic atmosphere, Lovecraft did not elaborate on what he meant by the term spectral as a form of haunted literature concerned with modernity. In Lord Dunsany, H. P. Lovecraft, and Ray Bradbury: Spectral Journeys, William F. Touponce examines what these three masters of weird fiction reveal about modernity and the condition of being modern in their tales. In this study, Touponce confirms that these three authors viewed storytelling as a kind of journey into the spectral. Furthermore, he explains how each identifies modernity with capitalism in various ways and shows a concern with surpassing the limits of realism, which they see as tied to the representation of bourgeois society. The collected writings of Lord Dunsany, H. P. Lovecraft, and Ray Bradbury span the length of the tumultuous twentieth century with hundreds of stories. By comparing these authors, Touponce also traces the development of supernatural fiction since the early 1900s. Reading about how these works were tied to various stages of capitalism, one can see the connection between supernatural literature and society. This study will appeal to fans of the three authors discussed here, as well as to scholars and others interested in the connection between literature and society, criticism of supernatural fiction, the nature of storytelling, and the meaning and experience of modernity.
Download or read book Gothic Afterlives written by Lorna Piatti-Farnell and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2019-09-13 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Gothic Afterlives examines the intersecting dimensions of contemporary Gothic horror and remakes scholarship, bringing together innovative perspectives from different areas of study. The research compiled in this collection covers a wide range of examples, including not only literature but also film, television, video games, and digital media remakes. Gothic Afterlives signals the cultural and conceptual impact of Gothic horror on transmedia production, with a focus on reimagining and remaking. While diverse in content and approach, all chapters pivot on two important points: first, they reflect some of the core preoccupations of Gothic horror by subverting cultural and social certainties about notions such as the body, technology, consumption, human nature, digitalization, scientific experimentation, national identity, memory, and gender and by challenging the boundaries between human and inhuman, self and Other, and good and evil. Second, and perhaps most important, all chapters in the collection collectively show what happens when well-known Gothic horror narratives are adapted and remade into different contexts, highlighting the implications of the mode-shifting registers, platforms, and chronologies in the process. As a collection, Gothic Afterlives hones in on contemporary sociocultural experiences and identities as they appear in contemporary popular culture and in the stories told and retold in the twenty-first century.
Download or read book Ramsey Campbell written by Gary William Crawford and published by Scarecrow Press. This book was released on 2013-12-05 with total page 206 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As the author of more than two dozen novels and hundreds of short stories, as well as essays, reviews, and columns, Ramsey Campbell is one of the most prolific writers in the field of horror literature. The consistently high level of quality in his work has resulted in every major award that weird fiction has to offer, including the Grand Master Award of the World Horror Convention, the Lifetime Achievement Award of the Horror Writers Association, and the Living Legend Award of the International Horror Guild. Strangely, though, relatively little criticism has been written about Campbell. In Ramsey Campbell: Critical Essays on the Modern Master of Horror, Gary William Crawford has assembled a collection of articles that examine the work of one of weird fiction’s most revered writers. These essays looks at a number of elements that characterize Campbell’s stories and novels, including comparisons to H.P. Lovecraft, who was an early inspiration; Campbell’s modern variations of Gothic fiction; his concept of evil; religious subtext in his fiction; and how adversities Campbell has faced have shaped his life and his work. In all, these essays pay homage to Campbell’s painstaking craftsmanship and show that there is much to be mined in his fiction. Because Campbell is so important in the genre of horror literature, this book serves as a much needed affirmation of his work. It will be of interest to scholars of supernatural fiction in general, but also to devoted fans of this major figure in weird fiction.
Download or read book Images of the Modern Vampire written by Barbara Brodman and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2013-10-04 with total page 277 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the predecessor to this book, The Universal Vampire: Origins and Evolution of a Legend, Brodman and Doan presented discussions of the development of the vampire in the West from the early Norse draugr figure to the medieval European revenant and ultimately to Dracula, who first appears as a vampire in Anglo-Irish Bram Stoker’s novel, Dracula, published in 1897. The essays in that collection also looked at the non-Western vampire in Native American and Mesoamerican traditions, Asian and Russian vampires in popular culture, and the vampire in contemporary novels, film and television. The essays in this collection continue that multi-cultural and multigeneric discussion by tracing the development of the post-modern vampire, in films ranging from Shadow of a Doubt to Blade, The Wisdom of Crocodiles and Interview with the Vampire; the male and female vampires in the Twilight films, Sookie Stackhouse novels and TrueBlood television series; the vampire in African American women’s fiction, Anne Rice’s novels and in the post-apocalyptic I Am Legend; vampires in Japanese anime; and finally, to bring the volumes full circle, the presentation of a new Irish Dracula play, adapted from the novel and set in 1888.
Download or read book Haunted Landscapes written by Ruth Heholt and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2016-11-17 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Haunted Landscapes offers a fresh and innovative approach to contemporary debates about landscape and the supernatural. Landscapes are often uncanny spaces embroiled in the past; associated with absence, memory and nostalgia. Yet experiences of haunting must in some way always belong to the present: they must be felt. This collection of essays opens up new and compelling areas of debate around the concepts of haunting, affect and landscape. Landscape studies, supernatural studies, haunting and memory are all rapidly growing fields of enquiry and this book synthesises ideas from several critical approaches – spectral, affective and spatial – to provide a new route into these subjects. Examining urban and rural landscapes, haunted domestic spaces, landscapes of trauma, and borderlands, this collection of essays is designed to cross disciplines and combine seemingly disparate academic approaches under the coherent locus of landscape and haunting. Presenting a timely intervention in some of the most pressing scholarly debates of our time, Haunted Landscapes offers an attractive array of essays that cover topics from Victorian times to the present.
Download or read book A Catholic Modernity written by Charles Taylor and published by New York : Oxford University Press. This book was released on 1999 with total page 141 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Dimensions of his intellectual commitment - dimensions left implicit in his philosophical writing.
Download or read book Stephen King s Contemporary Classics written by Philip L. Simpson and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2014-11-13 with total page 243 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Many readers know Stephen King for his early works of horror, from his fiction debut Carrie to his blockbuster novels The Shining, The Stand, and Misery, among others. While he continues to be a best-selling author, King’s more recent fiction has not received the kind of critical attention that his books from the 1970s and 1980s enjoyed. Recent novels like Duma Key and 1/22/63 have been marginalized and, arguably, cast aside as anomalies within the author’s extensive canon. In Stephen King’s Contemporary Classics: Reflections on the Modern Master of Horror, Philip L. Simpson and Patrick McAleer present a collection of essays that analyze, assess, and critique King’s post-1995 compositions. Purposefully side-stepping studies of earlier work, these essays are arranged into three main parts: the first section examines five King novels published between 2009 and 2013, offering genuinely fresh scholarship on King; the second part looks at the development of King’s distinct brand of horror; the third section departs from probing the content of King’s writing and instead focuses on King’s process. By concentrating on King’s most recent writings, this collection offers provocative insights into the author’s work, featuring essays on Dr. Sleep, Duma Key, The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon, Joyland, Under the Dome, and others. As such, Stephen King’s Contemporary Classics will appeal to general fans of the author’s work as well as scholars of Stephen King and modern literature.
Download or read book Conscience and Calling written by Anne E. Patrick and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2013-07-18 with total page 215 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume probes the meaning and ethical implications of the powerful symbol of vocation from the vantage of contemporary Catholic women, with particular attention to the experiences of women religious. Intended as a follow-up to Liberating Conscience: Feminist Explorations in Catholic Moral Theology, the new book will benefit many readers, including Catholic leaders, laity, and religious, as well as persons interested in Christian ethics and American religious history more generally. The work treats twentieth-century history and more recent developments, including tensions between the Vatican and progressive Catholics, the development of lay ministries, and the movement to ordain women deacons, priests, and bishops.
Download or read book Richard Matheson s Monsters written by June M. Pulliam and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2016-02-02 with total page 269 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Richard Matheson was one of the leading writers of science fiction, fantasy, and horror in the twentieth century. Matheson’s most famous early works, the novels I Am Legend (1954) and The Shrinking Man (1956), both depict traditionally masculine figures thrust into extraordinary situations. Other thought-provoking novels, including Hell House (1971), Bid Time Return (1975), and What Dreams May Come (1978)—as well as short stories and screenplays—convey the ambiguous status of masculinity: how men should behave vis-à-vis women and what role they should occupy in the family dynamic and in society at large. In Richard Matheson’s Monsters: Gender in the Stories, Scripts, Novels and Twilight Zone Episodes, June M. Pulliam and Anthony J. Fonseca examine how this groundbreaking author’s writings shed light on society’s ever-shifting attitudes on masculinity and domesticity. In this first full-length critical study of Matheson’s entire literary output, the authors discuss how I Am Legend, The Shrinking Man, and other works question traditional male roles. The authors examine how Matheson’s scripts for The Twilight Zone represented changing expectations in male behavior with the onset of the sexual and feminist revolutions, industrialization and globalization, and other issues. In a society where gender roles are questioned every day, Matheson’s work is more relevant than ever. Richard Matheson’s Monsters will be of interest to scholars of literature, film, and television, as well those interested in gender and masculinity studies.
Download or read book The Functions of Unnatural Death in Stephen King written by Rebecca Frost and published by . This book was released on 2024-03-15 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Functions of Unnatural Death in Stephen King: Murder, Sickness, and Plots examines the function of death in over thirty of King's works to parse out the ways the Master of Horror plays with the idea of death and approaches it from multiple angles.
Download or read book Weird Mysticism written by Brad Baumgartner and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2020-11-17 with total page 171 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Weird Mysticism identifies and evaluates a new category of theoretical inquiry by showing the influence of speculative writing on three intersecting critical categories: horror fiction, apophatic mysticism, and philosophical pessimism. Exploring the work of Thomas Ligotti, Georges Bataille, and E. M. Cioran, Baumgartner argues that these “weird mystics” employ an innovative mode of negative writing that seeks to merge new conceptions of reality. While exploring perennial questions about “the absolute,” the Outside, and other philosophical concepts, these authors push the limits of representation, experimenting with literary form, genre-bending, and aphoristic discourse. As their works reveal, the category of weird mysticism both conjoins and obscures the link between traditional mysticism and philosophical horror fiction, with weirdness itself being the central magnet that draws the seemingly disparate realms of horror fiction, philosophy, and mysticism together. Highlighting the theoretical stakes of the horror genre, Baumgartner’s study reveals how the mystical potentially recuperates the limits of philosophical thinking, enabling reflection on—and possibly challenging—the limits of human understanding.
Download or read book Critical Essays on Lord Dunsany written by S. T. Joshi and published by Studies in Supernatural Literature. This book was released on 2013 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection of new essays and reprints of significant articles provides a comprehensive picture of Lord Dunsany's contribution to fantasy fiction and world literature. These essays make a case for the continued study of this neglected but hugely influential writer.
Download or read book Journeys Into Darkness written by James Goho and published by Studies in Supernatural Literature. This book was released on 2014 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This single author collection of essays tackles the usual subjects in horror literature--particularly Edgar Allan Poe, Nathaniel Hawthorne, H. P. Lovecraft and Ramsey Campbell--but also examines some of the less well-known names of the genre, including Charles Brockden Brown and Algernon Blackwood.
Download or read book Sacred Rhetoric written by Robert Lewis Dabney and published by . This book was released on 1870 with total page 372 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Stations of the Cross written by Paul Apostolidis and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 2000-06-02 with total page 287 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Since the 1970s, American society has provided especially fertile ground for the growth of the Christian right and its influence on both political and cultural discourse. In Stations of the Cross political theorist Paul Apostolidis shows how a critical component of this movement’s popular culture—evangelical conservative radio—interacts with the current U.S. political economy. By examining in particular James Dobson’s enormously influential program, Focus on the Family—its messages, politics, and effects—Apostolidis reveals the complex nature of contemporary conservative religious culture. Public ideology and institutional tendencies clash, the author argues, in the restructuring of the welfare state, the financing of the electoral system, and the backlash against women and minorities. These frictions are nowhere more apparent than on Christian right radio. Reinvigorating the intellectual tradition of the Frankfurt School, Apostolidis shows how ideas derived from early critical theory—in particular that of Theodor W. Adorno—can illuminate the political and social dynamics of this aspect of contemporary American culture. He uses and reworks Adorno’s theories to interpret the nationally broadcast Focus on the Family, revealing how the cultural discourse of the Christian right resonates with recent structural transformations in the American political economy. Apostolidis shows that the antidote to the Christian right’s marriage of religious and market fundamentalism lies not in a reinvocation of liberal fundamentals, but rather depends on a patient cultivation of the affinities between religion’s utopian impulses and radical, democratic challenges to the present political-economic order. Mixing critical theory with detailed analysis, Stations of the Cross provides a needed contribution to sociopolitical studies of mass movements and will attract readers in sociology, political science, philosophy, and history.
