The Literature of Terror: Volume 2

by David Punter

The Literature of Terror: the Modern Gothic is the second volume in David Punter's impressive survey of gothic writing covering over two centuries. This long awaited second edition has been expanded to take into account the latest critical research, and is now published in two volumes. "Volume One" covers the period from 1765 to the Edwardian age while "Volume Two" discusses modern gothic, starting with the 'decadent' gothic writing of Oscar Wilde and continuing through the twentieth century.

Genres: Nonfiction, Gothic

244 pages, Hardcover

First published January 14, 2014

Reviews

[xenia · Rating 2 out of 5]

It's a perfectly serviceable exploration of Gothic and weird fiction during the fin-de-siècle and beyond. I found most of its arguments a bit light. Nice through line articulating how later Gothic fiction is united in depicting anxieties over the fall of the British Empire. Shifts in the discourse from foreign threats and the safety of homeland/civilisation (Conan Doyle), to British colonialism itself as foreign, barbaric, and degenerate (H. G. Wells - love this sadboy), to the impossibility of home/meaning altogether in a world whose foreign threats cannot be resisted (Ambrose Bierce, H. P. Lovecraft). This is me summarising; the book is a bit more scattered. Haven't yet read the chapter on Mervyn Peake, William Burroughs, Thomas Pynchon, and Angela Carter.

For more in-depth analyses of Gothic and weird fiction, I'd recommend:

Limits of Horror: Technology, Bodies, Gothic
This book explores how the Gothic is informed by different modes of production, from feudalism to capitalism. Interesting take on how industrialisation and automation connect to the terror of the uncanny and repetition.

The Gothic Body: Sexuality, Materialism, and Degeneration at the Fin de Siècle
Explores the theoretical underpinnings of the Gothic in entropy, evolution, and criminality. Fantastic chapters on degeneration theory and cosmic pessimism. Articulates the concept of the abhuman through the disintegrating bodies of H. G. Wells, William Hope Hodgson, and Arthur Machen.

Weird Fiction in Britain 1880–1939
Probably the most historically rigorous of the books mentioned here. Explores the development of the term "weird" as well as the influence of the Decadent movement on weird fiction. Does some fun inversions of Edward Said's Orientalism, by positing that a number of the British authors Said names wrote stories that side with the Orient, not with empire. Yes it was a grotesque, racist caricature, but one yearned for as more lively than the lethargic (i.e. Decadent) centre.

Trillion Year Spree: The History of Science Fiction
There are some fantastic chapters near the start of this book that ground science fiction in the Gothic. Sublime encounters, social crises, voyages into chthonic depths. Sees science and Gothic fiction as reactions to "The evolutionary revolution and the Industrial Revolution." Chapters on Mary Shelley, Edgar Allan Poe, and H. G. Wells.

The Weird Tale: Arthur Machen, Lord Dunsany, Algernon Blackwood, M.R. James, Ambrose Bierce, H.P. Lovecraft
Develops and circles round Lovecraft's definition of the weird tale as epistemological dread, a kind of extreme sublime that encounters indifference at nonhuman scales of temporality and spatiality. Deep time and extra-dimensional space.

A Century of Weird Fiction, 1832–1937: Disgust, Metaphysics, and the Aesthetics of Cosmic Horror
Just some fun analyses of Poe, Machen, Hodgson, etc., as united in their depictions of disintegrating bodies. Less history, more philosophy, especially that of New Materialism. Draws on Carolyn Korsmeyer's sublate, Quentin Meillassoux's non-correlationism, Karen Barad's intra-action, Friedrich Schelling's Absolute, Arthur Schopenhauer's sublime, and more.