Why Horror Seduces

Why Horror Seduces PDF Author: Mathias F. Clasen
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 019066651X
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 201

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Book Description
Why do humans feel the need to scream at horror films? In Why Horror Seduces, author Matthias Clasen looks to evolutionary social science to show how the horror genre is a product of human nature.

Why Horror Seduces

Why Horror Seduces PDF Author: Mathias F. Clasen
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 019066651X
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 201

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Book Description
Why do humans feel the need to scream at horror films? In Why Horror Seduces, author Matthias Clasen looks to evolutionary social science to show how the horror genre is a product of human nature.

A Very Nervous Person's Guide to Horror Movies

A Very Nervous Person's Guide to Horror Movies PDF Author: Mathias Clasen
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0197535925
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 209

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Book Description
Why your worst nightmares about watching horror movies are unfounded Films about chainsaw killers, demonic possession, and ghostly intruders make some of us scream with joy. But while horror fans are attracted to movies designed to scare us, others shudder already at the thought of the sweat-drenched nightmares that terrifying movies often trigger. The fear of sleepless nights and the widespread beliefs that horror movies can have negative psychological effects and display immorality make some of us very, very nervous about them. But should we be concerned? In this book, horror-expert Mathias Clasen delves into the psychological science of horror cinema to bust some of the worst myths and correct the biggest misunderstandings surrounding the genre. In short and highly readable chapters peppered with vivid anecdotes and examples, he addresses the nervous person's most pressing questions: What are the effects of horror films on our mental and physical health? Why do they often cause nightmares? Aren't horror movies immoral and a bad influence on children and adolescents? Shouldn't we be concerned about what the current popularity of horror movies says about society and its values? While media psychologists have demonstrated that horror films indeed have the potential to harm us, Clasen reveals that the scientific evidence also contains a second story that is often overlooked: horror movies can also help us confront and manage fear and often foster prosocial values.

Horror Fiction in the 20th Century

Horror Fiction in the 20th Century PDF Author: Jess Nevins
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 1440862060
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 297

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Book Description
Providing an indispensable resource for academics as well as readers interested in the evolution of horror fiction in the 20th century, this book provides a readable yet critical guide to global horror fiction and authors. Horror Fiction in the 20th Century encompasses the world of 20th-century horror literature and explores it in a critical but balanced fashion. Readers will be exposed to the world of horror literature, a truly global phenomenon during the 20th century. Beginning with the modern genre's roots in the 19th century, the book proceeds to cover 20th-century horror literature in all of its manifestations, whether in comics, pulps, paperbacks, hardcover novels, or mainstream magazines, and from every country that produced it. The major horror authors of the century receive their due, but the works of many authors who are less well-known or who have been forgotten are also described and analyzed. In addition to providing critical assessments and judgments of individual authors and works, the book describes the evolution of the genre and the major movements within it. Horror Fiction in the 20th Century stands out from its competitors and will be of interest to its readers because of its informed critical analysis, its unprecedented coverage of female authors and writers of color, and its concise historical overview.

Fear and Nature

Fear and Nature PDF Author: Christy Tidwell
Publisher: Penn State Press
ISBN: 027109043X
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 301

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Book Description
Ecohorror represents human fears about the natural world—killer plants and animals, catastrophic weather events, and disquieting encounters with the nonhuman. Its portrayals of animals, the environment, and even scientists build on popular conceptions of zoology, ecology, and the scientific process. As such, ecohorror is a genre uniquely situated to address life, art, and the dangers of scientific knowledge in the Anthropocene. Featuring new readings of the genre, Fear and Nature brings ecohorror texts and theories into conversation with other critical discourses. The chapters cover a variety of media forms, from literature and short fiction to manga, poetry, television, and film. The chronological range is equally varied, beginning in the nineteenth century with the work of Edgar Allan Poe and finishing in the twenty-first with Stephen King and Guillermo del Toro. This range highlights the significance of ecohorror as a mode. In their analyses, the contributors make explicit connections across chapters, question the limits of the genre, and address the ways in which our fears about nature intersect with those we hold about the racial, animal, and bodily “other.” A foundational text, this volume will appeal to specialists in horror studies, Gothic studies, the environmental humanities, and ecocriticism. In addition to the editors, the contributors include Kristen Angierski, Bridgitte Barclay, Marisol Cortez, Chelsea Davis, Joseph K. Heumann, Dawn Keetley, Ashley Kniss, Robin L. Murray, Brittany R. Roberts, Sharon Sharp, and Keri Stevenson.

Shadows in Summerland

Shadows in Summerland PDF Author: Adrian Van Young
Publisher: Open Road Media
ISBN: 1504063112
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 406

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Book Description
“An extraordinary novel sure to enchant readers of Sarah Waters as well as those looking for a thrilling and transporting gothic tale.” —Julia Fierro, author of The Gypsy Moth Summer The author of The Man Who Noticed Everything, an award-winning collection of short stories, presents his debut work of full-length fiction, “a witty and disturbing horror novel . . . as if Henry James had written an issue of Tales from the Crypt” (Bennett Sims, author of A Questionable Shape). Loosely based on the lives of spirit photographer William H. Mumler and his wife, Shadows in Summerland transports readers to 1859 Boston, where those who promise access to the otherworldly—mediums, spiritualists, and psychics—are celebrated. This embrace of illusion and intrigue provides the perfect hunting ground for con artists and charlatans—men like William Mumler. When William teams up with Hannah, a shy young girl who sees and manifests the dead, they are welcomed into the drawing rooms of the city’s elite. But the couple’s newfound fame and fortune draw grifters and rogues into their circle, including someone who will bring the afterlife closer to them than they could ever imagine. Spanning three decades, Shadows in Summerland “recalls an era no less gullible than the present one . . . Van Young’s prose skillfully illuminates his gothic tale of greed, obsession, and murder” (Publishers Weekly). “A fabulous and weird addition to the contemporary fantastic.” —Laird Barron, author of Black Mountain

Between Two Fires

Between Two Fires PDF Author: Christopher Buehlman
Publisher: Ace
ISBN: 0425256901
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 466

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Book Description
"Buehlman...slips effortlessly into a different kind of literary sensibility, one that doesn't scrimp on earthy humor and lyrical writing in the face of unspeakable horrors."* The year is 1348. Thomas, a disgraced knight, has found an orphan of the Black Death in a Norman village. An almost unnerving picture of innocence, she tells Thomas that the plague is only part of a larger cataclysm--that the fallen angels under Lucifer are rising in a second war on Heaven. But is it delirium or is it faith? She believes she has seen the angels of God. She believes the dead speak to her in dreams. And now she has convinced the faithless Thomas to shepherd her across an apocalyptic landscape to Avignon. There, she tells Thomas, she will fulfill her mission. There her true nature will be revealed. And there Thomas will confront an evil wrestling for the throne of Heaven, and which has poisoned his own soul. *Kirkus Reviews

Jawbone

Jawbone PDF Author: Mónica Ojeda
Publisher: Coffee House Press
ISBN: 1566896304
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 220

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Book Description
Finalist for the 2022 National Book Award in Translated Literature! “Was desire something like being possessed by a nightmare?” Fernanda and Annelise are so close they are practically sisters: a double image, inseparable. So how does Fernanda end up bound on the floor of a deserted cabin, held hostage by one of her teachers and estranged from Annelise? When Fernanda, Annelise, and their friends from the Delta Bilingual Academy convene after school, Annelise leads them in thrilling but increasingly dangerous rituals to a rhinestoned, Dior-scented, drag-queen god of her own invention. Even more perilous is the secret Annelise and Fernanda share, rooted in a dare in which violence meets love. Meanwhile, their literature teacher Miss Clara, who is obsessed with imitating her dead mother, struggles to preserve her deteriorating sanity. Each day she edges nearer to a total break with reality. Interweaving pop culture references and horror concepts drawn from from Herman Melville, H. P. Lovecraft, and anonymous “creepypastas,” Jawbone is an ominous, multivocal novel that explores the terror inherent in the pure potentiality of adolescence and the fine line between desire and fear.

Those Across the River

Those Across the River PDF Author: Christopher Buehlman
Publisher: Berkley
ISBN: 0593198050
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 354

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Book Description
A man must confront a terrifying evil in this captivating horror novel that's "as much F. Scott Fitzgerald as Dean Koontz."* Haunted by memories of the Great War, failed academic Frank Nichols and his wife have arrived in the sleepy Georgia town of Whitbrow, where Frank hopes to write a history of his family's old estate--the Savoyard Plantation--and the horrors that occurred there. At first their new life seems to be everything they wanted. But under the facade of summer socials and small-town charm, there is an unspoken dread that the townsfolk have lived with for generations. A presence that demands sacrifice. It comes from the shadowy woods across the river, where the ruins of the Savoyard Plantation still stand. Where a long-smoldering debt of blood has never been forgotten. Where it has been waiting for Frank Nichols....

Mastering Fear

Mastering Fear PDF Author: Rikke Schubart
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 1501336738
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 382

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Book Description
Mastering Fear analyzes horror as play and examines what functions horror has and why it is adaptive and beneficial for audiences. It takes a biocultural approach, and focusing on emotions, gender, and play, it argues we play with fiction horror. In horror we engage not only with the negative emotions of fear and disgust, but with a wide range of emotions, both positive and negative. The book lays out a new theory of horror and analyzes female protagonists in contemporary horror from child to teen, adult, middle age, and old age. Since the turn of the millennium, we have seen a new generation of female protagonists in horror. There are feisty teens in The Vampire Diaries (2009–2017), troubled mothers in The Babadook (2014), and struggling women in the New French extremity with Martyrs (2008) and Inside (2007). At the fuzzy edges of the genre are dramas like Pan's Labyrinth (2006) and Black Swan (2010), and middle-age women are now protagonists with Carol in The Walking Dead (2010–) and Jessica Lange's characters in American Horror Story (2011–). Horror is not just for men, but also for women, and not just for the young, but for audiences of all ages.

Passionate Thirst

Passionate Thirst PDF Author: Cameron Dean
Publisher: Ballantine Books
ISBN: 0345492536
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 338

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Book Description
In the first of a trilogy of supernatural romance novels featuring vampire killer Candace Steele, Candace is working undercover in a Las Vegas casino as she stalks Sin City's undead, when she assigned to a security detail for popular singer Temptation McCoy, a job that is complicated by the return of her former lover, seductive vampire Ash. Original.