xiv Introduction Fantasy, however, is not detectible by such tools as theme, character, style, or structure. As E.M. Forster cogently points out, fantasy is “like a bar of light, that is intimately connected with them [time, character, logic, or their derivatives in the novel] at one place and patiently illumes all the problems, and at another place shoots over and through them as if they did not exist.” 1 So too with horror fi ction. Perhaps the most famous dismissal of horror literature, or at least the most scornful wave of the hand by the most famous critic, was that of Edmund Wilson. First, he was surprised that horror tales were still written: “One had supposed that the ghost story itself was already an obsolete form that it had been killed by the electric light. It was only during the ages of candlelight that the race of ghosts really fl ourished, though they survived though the era of gas.” 2 Then he reduced the appeal of horror literature to a simple longing for a mystical experience and a “homeopathic horror” that will “inoculate ourselves against panic before the real terrors loose in the world.” 3 Finally, he cast doubt on the project of horror literature itself: “whether the rapt admira- tion for [horror] in our time . . . represent(s) a retrogression or a progress in the development of modern literature in general, I shall not attempt to say.” 4 While critics and academics may continue to agree with Wilson, his posi- tion becomes less defensible every year. Twenty-fi rst-century critics increas- ingly see mainstream fi ction not as the default standard for literature—the centuries-old critical and academic position—but as simply another genre, no better or worse than the other genres. These contemporary critics see the work that astute literary critics have done on detective fi ction, and see the publication of works of science fi ction in the canonizing Library of America, and ask the very reasonable question, “What is it, precisely, that sets horror apart from these other genres and renders it inherently lesser to those genres?”—a question to which the old guard of reactionary critics and aca- demics increasingly have few reasonable and informed answers. What Is Horror Fiction? One diffi culty that the horror genre has always posed scholars and critics lies in its defi nition. The commonly accepted defi nition of the horror genre is that, unlike other genres, the core trait of horror lies not in its content but in its effect on the reader—something which is not the case with most other genres. Westerns must have a certain setting romances must have a certain emotional content mysteries must have certain crimes science fi ction must have a set of assumptions about technology and society. But horror, because of its mutability, and its ability to nest, cuckoo-like, in any other genre, does not have content limitations or requirements. Works of horror can be
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