The Literature Of Terror

Those caveats aside, however, The Literature of Terror is mostly successful as a comprehensive study. And it's an enormously useful reference for anyone with a more than passing interest in horror literature. Plus, it benefits from being the work of a single author: Punter is an extremely well-read scholar who perceives fascinating connections between a wide variety of books and films, and he explains his ideas lucidly enough that you can judge for yourself how far you agree with them.

Some of the high points are Punter's overview of what the word gothic means in other fields (such as architecture); his summaries of the roles of graveyard poetry, the sentimental novel, and the theory of the sublime in the development of the gothic concept; and his inclusion (as gothic and even horror writers) of such notables as Isak Dinesen, William S. Burroughs, Thomas Pynchon, J.G. Ballard, Angela Carter, Thomas Hawkes, and Robert Coover. If that's not enough to tempt you, the footnotes and bibliography alone offer ample yet well-chosen pointers to authors whose entertaining fiction you may not have discovered yet.

Best of all, The Literature of Terror is written in English--that is, not loaded down with annoying words such as transgressive and trope that mar so much of postmodern criticism. You can browse for information about specific authors or dip into it at your leisure without losing the thread. And for an academic work, it's darn fun to read. (Be sure to get both Volume 1 and Volume 2.) --Fiona Webster