Chapter 1 horror novel and stories as a literary genre

3. Genre origin and development

The horror fiction – is one of the most inconsistent phenomena of literature in the world, as this genre tends to arouse readers’ sense of fear. Fear – is the most ancient and the strongest among the human feelings. The oldest and strongest fear – is the fear of unknown. Going through its own way the mysterious story survived, developed and reached certain results. It has been based on a wise and simple principle, which is probably not universal, but lively and eternal for everyone who is sensitive and susceptible.

It’s obvious that something that is so closely tied with the human primary feeling i.e. horror literature can be considered as old as human thought or language. As noted by H. Lovecraft: “Cosmic horror appears as a main element in the earliest folklore of all peoples, it is easy to see in the ancient ballads, chronicles, and sacred writings. Signs of abstract horror are evident in classical literature, but there are evidences of its powerful influence on the ballad literature that existed at the same time but disappeared due to lack of its written versions”[23].

Later, in the Middle Ages, the demonology sphere was stratified by Christianity – partly its characters were moved to hell or purgatory. But in general it has created a sphere of miraculous that existed alongside with the material world, with the inferior popular culture, on margins of medieval manuscripts and on medieval cathedrals crypts – in the places where orderliness ends and ambiguity starts. The evil spirits were the personification of terrifying beyond as well as carnival-comic dimension of life, and the last one did not perform any negative or destructive function. Both images originally got along with each other which affected the literary monuments of the Middle Ages and the further approbations of these topics in world literature e.g. evil spirits in Mykola Gogol’s stories.

The horror literature gets new features with Matthew Lewis’s works after his novel “Monk” which became extremely popular.

« It took quite a lot of time for stories about supernatural to form as a fully determined and academically acknowledged literary form, as a typical story about supernatural, which is now acknowledged in literature, dates back to the eighteenth century. The horror novel was preceded by the Gothic novel», - marks E.Grygorieva [5, p.24].

Horace Walpole is considered to be a founder of a Gothic novel. In 1764 he writes “The Castle of Otranto” and defines it as a Gothic novel. It’s also worth to mention works of Matthew Gregory Lewis, Ann Radcliffe and of course Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein”. In Germany Romantic authors and story tellers applied to a sphere of mystical, horror and fantasy. Among them are well-known authors Ernst Theodor Amadeus Hoffmann and Wilhelm Hauff.

During the period from 1765 to 1850 Gothic novel was the most popular published product in England and throughout Europe. Finally the genre of horror literature has formed in England in the 1860s. As the classic examples of the genre it’s worth to mention “Dracula” by Abraham Bram Stoker and “Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” by Robert Louis Stevenson.

According to H. Lovecraft, “At the end of the 18^th century – in the beginning of the 19^th century Gothic literature reaches its peak of popularity among all social strata of English society. Amount of Gothic novels begins to grow exponentially, but they don’t vary greatly with the plot”[23]. Many plagiarists just copy books of popular authors, shorten them to the story volume and give them new horrific titles and subheadings. Among these so-called “penny dreadful”, the most popular were the 1000-page series of “Varney the Vampire or The Feast of Blood” by James Malcolm Rymer (or Thomas Peckett Prest) published in London since 1847.

Gothic literature becomes mainstream which leads to its quality deterioration and as a consequence – to the decline of interest to this genre. The last outstanding novel of this period was C.R. Maturin’s work “Melmoth the Wanderer” (1820), which combines both Gothic novel schools and at the same time marks the transition from pre- romanticism to romanticism.

Gothic novels later influenced the works of famous artists such as George Byron, Ernst Theodor Amadeus Hoffmann, The Brothers Grimm, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Fridrich von Schiller, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Victor Hugo, Prosper Merimee, Oscar Wilde, Charles Dickens, Mrs Elizabeth Gaskell, William Collins, Sharlotte and Emily Bronte, Robert Louis Stevenson, Henry James.

In the nineteenth century Gothic literature develops in the genre of “Pulp” which includes short stories: novella, short tales, narrative tales. At the same time ballads and poems with a “horror” plot, which were used in Gothic novels later, exist. Short horror stories genre and especially the so-called “ghost novel” that becomes wide-spread in Britain, flourishes in the works of E. Bulwer-Lytton, R. James, G.W.M. Reynolds, A. Blackwood (who published the magazine with his name) S. Le Fanu. But the most famous novel about vampires was and is today the “Dracula” by Bram Stoker (1897). The image of Count Dracula is a classic image of a vampire which has also become one of the most popular images in mass culture in the twentieth century.

In 20^th century horror novels were considered from an aesthetic point of view, not only as means of fright. Nowadays Stephen King is conceived to be a master of horror. Dean Koontz is second popular horror writer, as his popularity is slightly smaller. Also among other modern and world-wide famous writers are William Blatty, Ira Levin , Clive Barker, Robert McCammon, Anne Rice, Laurel Hamilton, Peter Straub and many others.