Customer Reviews

The Shape of Fear : Horror and the Fin De Siecle Culture of Decadence

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

An insightful and extremely helpful analysis of mostly British, and some American, horror literature from the late nineteenth-century. Navarette's knowledge of the field is impressive, all the more so considering that this is an area often overlooked by academics. Most professors in her field have read works like The Great God Pan only once in their lives, crammed in between cartloads of other works read in a feverish white heat during doctoral studies. Other writers, such as Robert W. Chambers, lapse in obscurity even among the professors of that era. What Navarette does is to examine works ranging from The Great God Pan to The King in Yellow, from the fin-de-siecle exoticism of M.P. Shiel to the psychological horror of a canonical writer like Conrad, and to establish a network of degeneration and decadence among these books. In the process, she reveals that the concerns of the horror literature of this period are not self-enclosed, but rather are inseparable from the relevant thought and discourse that characterized the non-horror literature of that era. As a horror afficianado and literature student, I found this book to be exactly what I've been seeking for years. Wholeheartedly recommended.