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A review by ameliareadsstuff
Horror: A Literary History by Xavier Aldana Reyes
dark
informative
slow-paced
4.0
A strong introduction to the history of Horror literature, at least in the UK and the US. Each chapter is written by a different writer and covers a different period in the development of the genre, starting in the 18th century. The editor's intention was for the book to be informative without being too academically opaque to the average reader, and I'd say it succeeds at that.
I had to read the first chapter on the Gothic for, what else, my university Gothic course, and enjoyed it enough to read through the entire volume. It continued to be a good, informative read, though, due to space constraints and its limited scope, it perhaps was not as comprehensive as it could have been.
It was interesting reading the last chapter, 2000-2016, to see how things have already changed so much in less than a decade—zombies are a big topic that rapidly fell off in popularity after the book was published, for example. But maybe that 2016 cut off was accidentally apt, given the cultural changes that followed the disruptive events of late 2016 through the pandemic. I suppose only time will tell.
I had to read the first chapter on the Gothic for, what else, my university Gothic course, and enjoyed it enough to read through the entire volume. It continued to be a good, informative read, though, due to space constraints and its limited scope, it perhaps was not as comprehensive as it could have been.
It was interesting reading the last chapter, 2000-2016, to see how things have already changed so much in less than a decade—zombies are a big topic that rapidly fell off in popularity after the book was published, for example. But maybe that 2016 cut off was accidentally apt, given the cultural changes that followed the disruptive events of late 2016 through the pandemic. I suppose only time will tell.