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Joshi, S. T., and Stefan Dziemianowicz, eds. Supernatural Literature of the World: An Encyclopedia. 3 vols. Westport: Greenwood, 2005. Hardcover. ISBN 0-313-32774-2. 3 volume set: $315.
In 2005, S. T. Joshi and Stefan Dziemianowicz accepted the difficult task of editing a three volume encyclopedia of supernatural literature that not only describes the literature itself but also those authors who create within its narrative penumbra. By assuming this challenge, Joshi, an independent scholar and writer who focuses on horror literature, and Dziemianowicz, an authority on supernatural and sf literature, provide scholars, writers, and anyone else interested in the topic with an invaluable research instrument.
In the preface to the Encyclopedia, the editors anticipate the problem of defining the supernatural as a literary genre, stating quite accurately that "no precise or rigid answer can be made" (xi). Moreover, they add, the supernatural is not really a single genre but rather a compilation of various sub-genres that the editors identify as: "science fiction, fantasy, psychological suspense" (xi). Indeed, this literature and the creatures upon which it often focuses emanate from a variety of sources, including folklore, religious practices, and many different mythologies. However, the witches and sorcerers, vampires, werewolves and other shape -shifters, demons, and ghosts that paradoxically enliven supernatural literature can also be found in interstitial spaces, which, as the editors affirm, renders the term "supernatural" rather "nebulous" (xi).
The problem facing the authors is both synchronic and diachronic, historical and taxonomic. After all, the historical nature of what can be called the supernatural means that much early material was not viewed as "above nature" until the advent of sixteenth-century skeptical philosophy and seventeenth-century science. Prior to this epistemological shift, the assumed origin of unexplained phenomena sprang from many different religious explanations of the cosmos. What we now call the supernatural emerged from religious ideation connected to both a monotheist god and the multiple gods of many cultures. In fact, the OED tells us that the word, supernatural, doesn't appear in written English until 1526 and that its original use was inextricably connected to the awesome nature of the Christian god. What was supernatural in the past is now science.
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