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Wisker, Gina. Horror Fiction: An Introduction. New York and London: Continuum, 2005. 294 pp. Paper. ISBN 0-8264-1 561 -X. $21.95 (Cloth. ISBN 0-82641560-1. $80.00).
While it is titled "an introduction," the target authence for Gina Wisker's Horror Fiction: An Introduction is never stated. However, its value is in its discussions of women writers (often minor ones) and feminist and queer theory.
The book is divided into nine sections: "What is Horror Fiction?"; "Timeline"; "Reading Horror Writing"; "The Best and the Best Known"; "Major Themes, Movements, and Issues"; "Key Terms"; "Horror Criticism and the Ways In"; "Key Questions"; "Bibliography and Further Reading," and the index. The first section, "What is Horror Fiction?" offers an initial definition of horror that is not focused on what horror fiction (and film) is, but rather what it does. Here, reader response theory is the focus with the usual lack of identification of who the theoretical reader is. Unfortunately, Wisker indicates that horror is a genre (a form like the novel or sonnet) . Actually, it is a mode as indicated by Northrop Fry e in The Anatomy of Criticism. Thus, there are horror novels, films, poems, etc. As a result, she misses the universal nature of horror: helplessness and loss of will (which is a product of her incomplete research-see the discussion of the bibliography below) .
The "Timeline" that constitutes section 2 is confusing. It begins with Beowulf in 700 (ignoring Gilgamesh and the Norse sagas) and jumps to three Shakespeare plays and two John Webster plays. Not only is the gap frustrating but the plays are never discussed other than in passing. Certainly, the horrific nature of sermons is worthy of mention (e.g., John Donne) as well as some discussion of Webster and Shakespeare. The timeline does start to get serious with Horace Walpole's Castle of Otranto. An odd error is citing Charles G....