TROPP, Martin. Images of Fear, how horror histories helped
shape modern culture (1818 – 1918). London: McFarland, 1999. [PR 830 TRO]
Tropp examines how a series of images of “horror” in
fiction interacted with an emerging modern culture over a century, shaping
attitudes towards such aspects of life as new technology, urban crime and
gender relationship – culminating in the recasting of life and death on the
Western Front of WWI in the mold of horror story.
The term horror denotes both fantasy and reality. In
fiction, it designates are kind of vicarious experience, existing in another realm,
dealing with supernatural events and unbelievable characters, that readers
approach with the expectation of an escape from the realities of daily
experience. At the same time, the darkest of inescapable truths-natural,
disasters, human suffering-bears the same label, linked by language.
Gothic fiction contained contradiction, while the
means to an innocent escape, it aroused in its Victorian audience fears that
lurked beneath the surface, fears connected with the ongoing upheaval of
culture discarding a way of life that had been unchanged for centuries and,
amid the social, industrial and
scientific revolutions of the 19th century, making a modern world.
(From Walpole to Radcliffe)
The unprecedented success of the gothic novel means
that for a vast majority of newly literate, horror tales were the first
imaginative fiction read, shaping attitudes not only to literature, but to the
act of reading as well.
Unable to afford books like those of Mrs. Radcliffe,
theses millions of new readers had to get their thrills, though cheaper sources
in ways that blurred the traditional identification of a specific story with a
particular book. A whole new industry aroused to serve them by mass marketing
the gothic pattern. As a result, the major novels themselves reached their
widest circulation only indirectly, filtered through new forms of fiction that
preserved the skeleton of the plot while eviscerating the contents.
Sir Walter Scott pointed out that the characters in
gothic fiction take on the features of their class and in fact, become more
representative of their class than individuals.[On novelists and Fiction, ed Ioan Williams . London: Routledge
Ekegan Paul, 1968.]. Class was no longer defined as a synonym of wealth.
Sublime: 18thcentury aesthetics that
underlay Gothicism. Scenes that evoke awe, astonishment, terror; sights such as
vast landscapes and ruins sounds like, vast cataracts, raging storms, thunder
or artillery (Burke, 194) Strong Smells(B.198). Sublime as idea of
self-preservation (Burke, 174)
Sublime was an aesthetics construct, a theory of
taste, where terror had to be distanced form real experience, proximity
destroyed feeling of sublime (Burke,134)
Minerva Press (William Lane)
“Full of typographical errors, printed on coarse
yellowish or gray paper in minuscule type, they were constantly condemned in
reviews for their overall shoddiness, their wretched paper and imperfect letter
carelessly written and printed.” Lane, of course, couldn’t care less since the
economies of his method made his books affordable to a less affluent audience,
who didn’t seem to mind the condition of the vehicle as long as horror emerged
unscathed.
Although his books were cheaper than novels had been,
they were still out of reach for many readers.” (p.16)
Before Lane, libraries were for favored few, he solved
the problem by organizing and supporting lending libraries; the subscriber for
a small periodic sum, could borrow one book to read, the exchange it for
another.
