Horror Fiction in the Protestant Tradition

An attempt to analyze in detail the cultural determinants of a literary form, relocating them for a modern reader in certain preoccupations common to theology and law throughout the period from the Glorious Revolution to the First World War and beyond. The ultimate subject of this study is the deposit of cultural expectations available, often unconsciously, to readers and writers of horror fiction. It is also aimed for use in departments of film studies as well as literature. The author attempts to isolate the means by which the English Protestant tradition preserves and transmits horror. Treating the process as a recurrent feature of the politics of belief, he unearths evidence concerning the historical nature of "authority", "truth" and "objectivity" in Anglo-Saxon culture.