Title: Horror Fiction History
Contributed by: nogaraleugim
Hi there! Guys and gals, it's November and it's still a season for scary pastas and frightening stories. The SW Beagle is going to give you some of them including the most scariest and frightening trivias and articles and its innovation that we have gathered around the internet. But, before everything else, here's the origin of the genre that makes us eerie and frigthened during the night. There are also some stories that you have read or might have heard.
Horror literature or horror stories is a type or genre of literature which intends to intensify the emotions and feelings of the reader or listener creating an eerie, scary and frightening atmosphere. Horror fiction focuses subsequently on death, afterlife, and supernatural entities like ghosts and poltergeists and witchcraft. Its roots are mostly taken from folklores and religious rites. Horror stories dates back at the ancient times especially the reign of the Sumer Civilization, they believed to the existence of the vampire-like entity Emikku who inhabits the bodies of the dead who died violently or those deceased who aren’t buried properly.
Religion makes an extravagant way to the horror genre through Dante’s Divine Comedy, Inferno (1307), wherein he travel around hell and its six chambers. This compilation or cantos greatly influence on how people depicts hell, though it has been covered by another story presented by John Milton entitled Paradise Lost (1667). The following century the literary genre has been still influenced by religion. Henry Kramer and Jakob Sprenger published a book with the title of Malleus Maleficarum (The Hammer of Witches) in 1486 which focuses the beliefs on witchcraft. The story was reprinted 14 times throughout Europe. Also the story greatly contributed at the witch craze that occurred for two centuries.
A century later after the publishing of Malleus Maleficarum a new kind of horror emerged. From the Spanish Tragedy of Thomas Kyd to Victor Hugo’s Hernani came a series of gore and morbid stage plays.
The Birth of Gothic Novels
Oliver Goldsmith, William Cowper, James MacPherson, Robert Blair and Thomas Chatterson are among of the graveyard poets who greatly contributed for the birth of the gothic literature which greatly dominates the horror genre.
In 1765 Horace Walpole was the first author who had published a book in the gothic novel entitled The Castle of Otranto which is claimed to be the first gothic novel. The novel created an impact in the new style of horror genre. Another influential author that cultivated the horror genre was Anne Radcliffe who published The Mysteries of Udolpho. In June 1816 the gothic horror genre had a great turn, four authors took a great step in the horror genre. Lord Byron, Percy Shelley, Mary Shelley and Dr. John Polidori held a ghost story writing contest which gives birth to Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein on 1818 which became a critically acclaimed novel about a life devoid parts of the human body which has been brought to life by a lightning. Mary Shelley fused this novel with the science fiction genre. On the other hand, Dr. Polidori gave birth to the vampire sub-genre, the story entitled The Vampyr.
Edgar Allan Poe, the first ever writer who made writing to be a living brought the gothic genre to America in 1833; his first story, MS found in a bottle was published on Baltimore Saturday Visitor. He is one of the authors who produced some of the world’s most remarkable macabre tales. He is also the father of detective novels.
Children Horror Tales
Who would have thought that our most beloved and favourite fairy tales has a way way way much different version than the ones we had usually known. Modern readers are being disturbed by the works of Jakob and Wilhelm Grimm or most commonly known as the Grimm Brothers for their gruesome stories like the Kinder und Hausmarchen (1832) and Hans Christian Andersen’s Tales Told for Children (1835) which has gore in the context. Today all of the stories have been sanitized to become child-friendly yet, lessons and details were not heard at all in this times.
The Horror Genre During The Industrial Revolution
The Industrial Revolution improved the literacy rate and it affected the horror literature in 1840s. cities become even more crowded and people wanted distractions away from a hard labor stress and less than idle lifestyle of industrialized cities. During this time the genre become more grisly and gory. Penny Blood, a publication which release a part of lurid serial stories every week became a popular cheap form of entertainment for the mass audience. Thomas Prest, the writer of Sweeney Todd, The Demon Barber became popular.
Transition To Modern Horror
In 1893 Ambrose Bierce published a collection of stories with the title of Can Such Things Be? The context is all about ghosts stories of war, bringing ghost to the modern era. In 1819 horror once again stepped at the sci-fi genre with HG Wells War of the Worlds. Now, modern horror includes the works of Stephen King’s The Shining. The modern world today greatly affects the horror genre of literature and turns to evolve from ghost stories to a violent and gory scenarios.
Other Popular Horror Literary Pieces
Dracula by Bram Stoker (1897)
Calendar of Horrors by Thomas Prest (1830s)
Varney The Vampire by James Malcolm Rymer (1845)
Wagner The Werewolf by George Reynold (1846)
Through a Glass Darkly by Sheridan Le Fanu (1872)
The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson (1885)
The Lodger by Belloc Lowndes (1913)
Goosebumps by RL Stine
References:
Bookstellyouwhy.com
Wikipedia.org
