Horror in Literature & Film

Catalog description

"Horror is like a serpent: always shedding its skin, always changing. And it will always come back. Like the guilty secrets we try to keep in our subconscious, it can’t be hidden away." —Dario Argento. Have you ever asked yourself: “Why do I like to be scared?” When the novel came into being in the middle of the eighteenth century, its most popular genre was the Gothic—the novel of horror. In fact, the modern era—the era of science, reason, and democracy—has been obsessed with terror, fear, and the unknown since its very inception. So, why do we like to be terrified? What is it about horror that so appeals to modern culture? We often avoid delving into such questions because they reveal to us that our pleasures often seem woefully uncivilized and unseemly. Beginning with early horror writings, the course will trace out a literary, philosophical, and filmic history by exploring how different psychological/cultural concepts of terror play out in a variety of aesthetic contexts.