Mazes of the Serpent: An Anatomy of Horror Narrative

196 Pages·2002·13.82 MB·English

by  Roger B. Salomon

Mazes of the Serpent

Mazes of
the Serpent
of
An Anatomy Horror Narrative
B.
RoGER SALOMON
Cornell University Press
Ithaca and London
Copyright© 2002 by Cornell University
All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review, this
book, or parts thereof, must not be reproduced in any form without
permission in writing from the publisher. For information, address
Cornell University Press, Sage House, 512 East State Street, Ithaca,
NewYork 14850.
First published 2002 by Cornell University Press
Printed in the United States ofA merica
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Salomon, Roger B.
Mazes of the serpent : an anatomy of horror narrative I by Roger B.
Salomon.
p. em.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN o-8014-404I-6 (cloth: alk. paper)
I. Horror tales, American-History and criticism. 2. Horror tales,
English-History and criticism. J. Narration (Rhetoric) I. Title.
PS374.H67 S36 2002
813' .087J8o<r-dc2r 200200]064
Cornell University Press strives to use environmentally responsible
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and acid-free papers that are recycled, totally chlorine-free, or partly
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Cloth printing IO 9 7 6 4 2
For Betty
In off the moors, down through the mist bands,
God-cursed Grendel came greedily loping.
The bane of the race of men roamed forth,
hunting for prey in the high hall.
-Beowulf (trans. Seamus Heaney)

Contents
Acknowledgments lX
Introduction: Horror Explained (Away) I
I. Alternate Worlds 7
Thresholds 9
Atavism 14
Mazes of the Serpent 20
2. Ghosts and Other Monsters 28
Ghosts and Death 28
Some Ghost Stories: The Spectre Revealed 36
More Substantial Monsters 53
3. Conventions of Absence: The Style of Literary Horror 7I
Witnessing: Narratives of the Reporter 75
Hieroglyphio~ or T11e Langua,ge C!f Horror Narrative 84
"Beads Strung orz the Same Strir~(': The Absence of Plot g6
Desolate Spaces 101
Vll
vm Contents
4· Beyond Realism: Horror Narrative as Parody 112
The Limits of Realism 112
Dark Parody 124
5. Horror and the Absence of Redemption 145
Works Cited
Index 171
Acknowledgments
This book probably has some relevance to the terrorist acts of Sep
tember II, 2001, in New York City and Washington, but in fact it was
written well before those events. In the 1970s at Case Western Reserve
I began teaching a course called by the not-so-original name of
American Gothic; I knew something about American literature, and I
remembered that critics talked about its so-called Gothic tendencies.
At least two curious problems very soon emerged: most students tried
to avoid taking seriously what seemed to me (and, I assume, to the au
thors in question) very serious issues; and most mature literary critics
were content simply to classify the genre by literary devices and cul
tural backgrounds. My own interests, however, got diverted; I wrote a
book on the power of Quixotic illusion, before I began to think again
of the nature of life without illusion. Out of such musings books
sometirnes corne.
In any case, I am deeply grateful to the students, graduate and un
dergraduate, with whom I have shared ideas over the years. Special
thanks go to three graduate students who helped me with research
and with transcribing the text into computerized form: Ruth
Rhodes, Rick Van Noy, and Kristin Bryant. My thanks go also to
Suzanne Ferguson, then English Department chair, for warmly ap
proving such an arrangement, and to John Bassett, at that time Dean of
IX