Unearthing the fearful flesh and sinful skins at the heart of
gothic horror, Jack Morgan rends the genre's biological core from
its oft-discussed psychological elements and argues for a more
transhistorical conception of the gothic, one negatively related to
comedy. "The Biology of Horror: Gothic Literature and Film
"dissects popular examples from the gothic literary and cinematic
canon, exposing the inverted comic paradigm within each text.
Morgan's study begins with an extensive treatment of comedy as
theoretically conceived by Suzanne Langer, C. L. Barber, and
Mikhail Bakhtin. Then, Morgan analyzes the physical and
mythological nature of horror in inverted comic terms, identifying
a biologically grounded mythos of horror. Motifs such as sinister
loci, languishment, masquerade, and subversion of sensual
perception are contextualized here as embedded in an organic
reality, resonating with biological motives and consequences.
Morgan also devotes a chapter to the migration of the gothic
tradition into American horror, emphasizing the body as horror's
essential "place "in American gothic.
The bulk of Morgan's study is applied to popular gothic literature
and films ranging from high gothic classics like Matthew Lewis's
"The Monk," Ann Radcliffe's "The Mysteries of Udolpho," Charles
Maturin's "Melmoth the Wanderer," and Mary Shelley's
"Frankenstein," to later literary works such as Poe's macabre
tales, Melville's "Benito Cereno," J.S. Le Fanu's "Uncle Silas,"
H.P. Lovecraft's "The Shadow over Innsmouth," Shirley Jackson's
"The Haunting of Hillhouse," Stephen King's "Salem's Lot," and
Clive Barker's "The Damnation Game. "Considered films include
"Nosferatu, Invasionof the Body Snatchers, Friday the 13th,
Halloween, Night of the Living Dead, Angel Heart, The Stand," and
"The Shining."
Morgan" "concludes his physical examination of the Gothic reality
with a consideration born of Julia Kristeva's theoretical rubric
which addresses horror's existential and cultural significance, its
lasting fascination, and its uncanny positive--and often
therapeutic--direction in literature and film.
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