Mostly however he is intent to give an erudite, if simplistic, overview of horrific themes in literature from Classical times to the twentieth century. Cuddon later mentions King and other novelists who have written horror, but he sees the main impetus of horror literature residing in the short form.Ĭuddon begins his introduction (much of which one suspects was lifted from his post-graduate thesis on evil and the devil in mediaeval and Renaissance literature) by indicating the range of stories subsumed under the horror label, and does indicate an understanding of what could have been included of recent vintage, of all lengths, mentioning among other writers Anthony Burgess and J. It is a surprising assertion, given that this collection post-dates the beginnings of the careers of such horror novelists as Stephen King, Dean Koontz and Peter Straub. That editor J A Cuddon’s view of the form was somewhat dated even as he drew up his list is suggested by his observation that while it also applies to novellas and novels, the horror story is usually regarded as a subset of the short story. This is because the definition of horror has evolved over the last thirty years, largely under the influence of increasingly-explicit filmic depictions. Despite the title, nowadays most of the stories included in this mammoth compilation would I suspect be classified as uncanny rather than horror.
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