Mazes of the Serpent: An Anatomy of Horror Narrative

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Cornell University Press, 2002 - Language Arts & Disciplines - 182 pages

In a compact, readable, and accessible book, Roger B. Salomon explores the nature of horror in literature and in life. Rather than minimizing horror by narrowly associating it with psychological drives, persecution, or extremism, he approaches horror through the medium of narrative as a significant and enduring physical and metaphysical reality. Salomon focuses on fictions of horror, including eighteenth-century Gothic and nineteenth-century ghost stories. He does not, however, isolate literary examples from more general human issues, including religious belief. Mazes of the Serpent takes up examples of horror from historical and personal narratives--including battle memoirs and Holocaust testimonies--as Salomon identifies certain common themes and qualities that cross the boundary between fiction and actual human experience.

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Contents

Ghosts and Other Monsters
28
The Style of Literary Horror
71
Horror Narrative as Parody
112
28
127
Horror and the Absence of Redemption
145
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References to this book

The Pleasures of Horror
Matt Hills
Limited preview - 2005
The Pleasures of Horror
Matt Hills
No preview available - 2005

About the author (2002)

Roger B. Salomon is Oviatt Professor of English, Emeritus, at Case Western Reserve University. He is the author of Twain and the Image of History and Desperate Storytelling: Post-Romantic Elaborations of the Mock-Heroic Mode.

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