Table of Contents

Introduction The frame of reference: theoretical debates on horror, terror and fear Part I: Darkness Introduction - Dark places - Dark times - Dark psyches Part II: Haunting Introduction - The rhetoric of haunting - Spectral forms - Haunting settings Part III: Narrative and the self Introduction - Words and visions - Textual identities - Storytelling as therapy Part IV: Child and adult Introduction - Families - The abandoned child - Childhood and otherness Part V: Monstrosity Introduction - Vampires - Hybrid and grotesque bodies - The abject Epilogue

About the Author

Dani Cavallaro is a freelance writer specializing in literary studies, critical and cultural theory and the visual arts.

Reviews

."..a readable, intriguing narrative... Cavallaro deploys a variety of critical theories, on the whole judiciously selecting the approach that seems well suited to the work under discussion."- Robert F. Geary, "International Association for the Fantastic in the Arts, "Summer 2006, 17.2--Sanford Lakoff

"A thorough, well-written overview of Gothic literature from the publication of Horace Walpole's The Castle of Otranto (1764) to the present (Stephen King, Anne Rice, Patrick McGrath)....I would use it as a compulsory text for undergraduates." Anne Williams, Professor of English, University of Georgia