The Tale of Terror - The Original Classic Edition

The aim of this book is to give a account of the growth of supernatural fiction in English literature, beginning with the vogue of the Gothic Romance and Tale of Terror towards the close of the eighteenth century. The origin and development of the Gothic Romance are set forth in detail from the appearance of Walpoles Castle of Otranto in 1764 to the publication of Maturins Melmoth the Wanderer in 1820; and the survey of this phase of the novel is continued, in the later chapters, to modern times.

One of these is devoted to the Tale of Terror in America, where in the hands of Hawthorne and Poe its treatment became a fine art. In the chapters dealing with the more recent forms of the tale of terror and wonder, the scope of the subject becomes wider.

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The antiquity of the tale of terror; the element of fear in myths, heroic legends, ballads and folk-tales; terror in the romances of the middle ages, in Elizabethan times and in the seventeenth century; the credulity of the age of reason; the renascence of terror and wonder in poetry; the attempt to blend the marvellous of old story with the natural of modern novels.

...Scotts review of fashionable fiction in the Preface to Waverley; his early attempts at Gothic story in Thomas the Rhymer and The Lord of Ennerdale; his enthusiasm for Burgers Lenore and for Lewiss ballads; his interest in demonology and witchcraft; his attitude to the supernatural; his hints to the writers of ghost-stories; his own experiments; Wandering Willies Tale, a masterpiece of supernatural horror; the use of the supernatural in the Waverley Novels; Scott, the supplanter of the novel of terror.

...Shelleys short tales; Polidoris Ernestus Berchtold, a domestic story with supernatural agency; The FACES Vampyre; later vampires; De Quinceys contributions to the tale of terror; Harrison Ainsworths attempt to revive romance; his early Gothic stories; Rookwood, an attempt to bring the Radcliffe romance up to date; terror in Ainsworths other novels; Marryats Phantom Ship; Bulwer Lyttons interest in the occult; Zanoni, and Lyttons theory of the Intelligences; The Haunted and the Haunters; A Strange Story and Lyttons preoccupation with mesmerism.

...The chapbook versions of the Gothic romance; the popularity of sensational story illustrated in Leigh Hunts Indicator; collections of short stories; various types of short story in periodicals; stories based on oral tradition; the humourists turn for the terrible; natural terror in tales from Blackwood and in Conrad; use of terror in Stevenson and Kipling; future possibilities of fear as a motive in short stories.

...The vogue of Gothic story in America; the novels of Charles Brockden Brown; his use of the explained supernatural; his Godwinian theory; his construction and style; Washington Irvings genial tales of terror; Hawthornes reticence and melancholy; suggestions for eery stories in his notebooks; Twice-Told Tales; Mosses from an Old Manse; The Scarlet Letter; Hawthornes sympathetic insight into character; The House of the Seven Gables, and the ancestral curse; his half-credulous treatment of the supernatural; unfinished stories; a contrast of Hawthornes methods with those of Edgar Allan Poe; A Manuscript found in a Bottle, the first of Poes tales of terror; the skill of Poe illustrated in Ligeia, The Fall of the House of Usher, The Masque of the Red Death, and The Cash of Amontillado; Poes psychology; his technique in The Pit and the Pendulum and in his detective stories; his influence; the art of Poe; his ideal in writing a short story.

Dettagli