Horror Literature through History

by Matt Cardin

  Illuminated medieval apocalypse manuscripts, and the wealth of other visual and textual material that was produced at the same time, reveal some of the foundations on which the subgenre of apocalyptic horror is built. These manuscripts reveal an enthusiasm for vivid scenes of pain, suffering, and terror, but representations can vary dramatically. This, along with the inclusion of contemporary political and social issues, reveals a tradition of artists interpreting and redefining religious texts in individual ways. Moreover, the artistic focus on degeneration and destruction (rather than on spiritual transcendence) points to the didactic purpose of the eschatological texts. If illustrations and elaborations were to depict only the successful survival of the righteous, the warning message would be lost. Medieval apocalypses were not intended to present reassurances about the aftermath of Armageddon; they were intended to present a stark (if often entertaining) message about what would happen to the majority of humanity at the end of days.

  As well as illuminated manuscripts, the medieval (Christian) apocalypse was also known to wider audiences through the performance of mystery plays. These public performances told stories from the Bible, from the Creation to the Last Judgment, with musical accompaniment. These plays were often performed in “cycles,” which included the full spread of “pageants,” and performances would sometimes take place over several days. In some areas of England, the cycle would be performed during the Feast of Corpus Christi (the festival following Trinity Sunday, usually falling in late May or early June), and each pageant would be performed on a decorated wagon by a local trade or craft guild. One of the best-known cycles of English plays comes from York, and this is the only cycle that has completely survived. In the York cycle, the “Doomsday” play was performed by the guild of mercers (merchants of luxury cloth and textiles) and represented the spectacular climax of a long day of popular street entertainment. The mercers were wealthy and powerful citizens of York, and records show that their pageant was particularly lavish. As well as hiring professional actors and laborers to stage the play, the mercers decorated their pageant wagon with specially constructed artificial angels and banners decorated with gold and silver leaf. The players performed in costumes and masks as devils, sinners, and redeemed souls, and Christ’s costume included a diadem and gilded mask. Surviving records also show that later performances of the play included two additional carts that represented the mouth of Hell and a coffin from which the resurrected dead would emerge. The mercers’ Doomsday play depicts the glorious terror of the apocalypse, and, like all the mystery plays, its official purpose was a didactic one: the pageant cycle was intended to bring the (mostly) nonliterate audiences into close proximity to biblical teachings and to encourage personal reflection on the meaning of these teachings, particularly during a Eucharistic holiday. However, surviving civic records and criticisms of the Corpus Christi cycles reveal that concerns were raised over incidents of drunkenness, revelry, and “wantonness” during the performances, suggesting that the message of the Doomsday play (and others) may have been obscured at times by its entertainment.

  Performance of mystery plays was banned during the Reformation of the sixteenth century, but apocalyptic art did not go away. Early modern theater, literature, and visual art continued to develop the fascination with the end of days. While this was still conceived in terms of religious eschatological writings, there was an increasing focus on situating historical and contemporary events into the timeline of the apocalypse. For example, millenarianism, or the belief in an impending cataclysmic event that will effect a transformation of the world, flourished during the English Civil War (1642–1651) and its aftermath, which is reflected in literature such as John Milton’s Paradise Lost (1667). Additionally, in various parts of Protestant Europe, popular entertainment (particularly carnivals) raised the specter of the “Antichrist” of Christian eschatology, or the false prophet who will face Christ at Armageddon. Religious thinkers and writers of the time, such as Martin Luther and John Knox, identified this figure as the Roman Catholic papacy, and more popular responses followed in the form of vulgar broadsheets, effigy burning, and public celebrations such as Elizabeth Day and Guy Fawkes Day in England. As with the earlier Doomsday plays, it is clear (from the secular continuation of Guy Fawkes Night, for example) that the eschatological message was often concealed by the apocalyptic entertainment.

  Early modern European apocalyptic art and entertainment continued to draw directly on Christian eschatology. However, the advent of the Industrial Age saw the birth of a new vision of the end of days: the secular apocalypse. This new type of apocalypse would come to be represented in artistic works, but it would also become a focus of science and ethics. The secular apocalypse is the basis of much contemporary apocalyptic horror, though it can take many forms.

  One of the earliest examples of secular apocalypse fiction is Mary Shelley’s The Last Man (1826), in which humanity is destroyed by a plague. Shelley’s introduction to the book suggests it is a prophetic story, but notably the author claims she found the tale among writings of the Cumaean Sibyl, a legendary priestess of the Apollonian oracle whose messianic prophecies were of interest to both pre-Christian and Christian writers. By linking her fiction to this mythic figure, Shelley is able to both connect and disconnect from the traditions of presenting the apocalypse. Elements of Christian eschatology remain embedded in the apocalypse, but these are overwritten by broader (and older) concerns about how humanity will be destroyed. The mention of the Cumaean Sibyl is a literary conceit on Shelley’s part (The Last Man is her own work of fiction); however, it sets the stage for a new type of horror fiction, which foregrounds its prophetic nature over its biblical allusions (though these are still present). The Last Man also presents a number of narrative tropes that will recur throughout apocalyptic horror fiction. A specific date is given (the end of the twenty-first century); characters initially ignore warning signs, believing that the plague will not affect them; growing panic and chaos threaten to cause almost as much damage as the pandemic itself; society divides into violent factions; a group of survivors die as a result of the selfish actions of their leader.

  Types of Apocalypse in Horror Fiction

  •Alien Invasion and Animal Uprising. Human beings are annihilated or enslaved by extraterrestrials or the accelerated evolution of a terrestrial species.

  EXAMPLES: The Midwich Cuckoos by John Wyndham (1958), Zoo by James Patterson and Michael Ledwidge (2012)

  •Anthropogenic Environmental Disaster. Human activity disrupts the earth’s climate or ecosystem, destroying life as we know it.

  EXAMPLE: The Burning World by J. G. Ballard (1964)

  •Astronomical or Natural Disaster. The destruction of earth and/or humanity by a large-scale natural event, such as asteroid impact or volcanic eruption.

  EXAMPLES: Lucifer’s Hammer by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle (1978), Ashfall by Mike Mullin (2011)

  •Global Warfare and Genocide. Annihilation of the human race through military aggression, often involving nuclear or chemical weapons. Global warfare often acts as the catalyst for other apocalyptic horrors, such as postnuclear contagion, environmental disaster, and the rise of tyrannical regimes.

  EXAMPLE: Z for Zachariah by Robert C. O’Brien (1974)

  •Pandemic. An outbreak of a disease afflicts the world’s population, including engineered viruses, zombie contagion, and extraterrestrial contagion.

  EXAMPLES: The Stand by Stephen King (1978), World War Z by Max Brooks (2006)

  •Revelations and Rapture. The apocalypse as imagined in religious writings, usually Christian, reimagined from a contemporary perspective.

  EXAMPLE: Left Behind by Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins (1995)

  •Rise of the Machines. Artificial intelligence reaches the point of sentience and overthrows humanity.

  EXAMPLE: R.U.R. by Karel Čapek (1921)

  •Tyranny and Dystopia. Often facilitated by a previous apocalyptic event, a totalitarian regime dictates the l
imits of human existence and experience.

  EXAMPLE: The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood (1985)

  Shelley’s protagonist, Lionel Verney, is the only survivor of the plague and ends the novel as the last man on Earth. In this respect, the novel is both apocalyptic and postapocalyptic. This is also a feature that resonates with later apocalyptic horror. While the ultimate endpoint of eschatology is the transcendence or redundancy of human endeavor, the secular apocalypse has revealed an increasing interest in the possibility of survival and continuation. Other nineteenth-century forerunners of this type of fiction include Edgar Allan Poe’s short story “The Conversation of Eiros and Charmion” (1839), in which two spiritual beings discuss the annihilation of the Earth by a comet after the event; Richard Jefferies’s novel After London (1885), in which the apocalypse itself is never described and the narrative focuses on the postapocalyptic lifestyle of a small group of survivors; and H. G. Wells’s The War of the Worlds (1898), which features a successful alien invasion of Earth followed by humanity’s last-minute diversion of the apocalypse. Like medieval and early modern apocalypses, these nineteenth-century fictions draw on religious, historical, and political ideas to inform their vision of the end of days; however, these secular apocalypses also clearly and directly address contemporary scientific developments, including vaccinology, astronomy, Darwinism, and early environmentalism. These fictions also indicate an increasing interest in the anthropogenic apocalypse, in which the end of the world is brought about, not by the supernatural forces of evil, but by the hubristic endeavors of human development. Nevertheless, they also reveal a new strategy of decentering humanity, suggesting that the world—and, in some cases, the universe—will go on even after human life is destroyed.

  In the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, apocalyptic horror proliferated with potential ends of the human race. Alien invasion remains a popular trope, as does environmental disaster, including both anthropogenic climate change and astronomical catastrophe. The pandemic is also a common cause of apocalyptic horror, and since the mid-twentieth century this has also included the “zombie apocalypse” (a mixture of contagion narrative and supernatural terror). Advances in robotics and artificial intelligence are reflected in technological apocalypses, in which computerized or (bio-)robotic machines enslave, destroy, or mutate the human race. Christian eschatology is not absent entirely from these narratives—and some fictions continue to draw directly on (or retell) the biblical apocalypse—but, overwhelmingly, religious elements are reimagined and incorporated into a more secular end-of-world view. Thus, “Armageddon” can be used to refer to a number of violent scenarios, including global and extraterrestrial warfare, genocide, and cosmological collision. The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (Rev. 6:1–8), the biblical harbingers of Christ’s Last Judgment, are reimagined as avatars of human self-destruction, with “War,” “Pestilence,” “Famine,” and “Death” all being key themes in apocalyptic horror.

  Apocalyptic horror in the twenty-first century remains an important vehicle for exploring the nature of human existence and the nature of our relationship to other species, the planet, and the universe. Whether a narrative focuses on the period of degeneration and destruction or the postapocalyptic aftermath, whether the characters are overwhelmed by the cataclysm or survive to wander a depopulated wasteland, apocalyptic horror consistently addresses and exploits humanity’s existential fears. Nevertheless, the sheer number of popular and creative responses to these fears reveals humanity’s persistent ability to revel in the specter of its own demise.

  Hannah Priest

  See also: Horror Literature and Science Fiction; Religion, Horror, and the Supernatural; Weird and Cosmic Horror Fiction; Part One, Horror through History: Horror in the Twenty-First Century; Part Three, Reference Entries: Cthulhu Mythos; I Am Legend; The Night Land; Shelley, Mary; Zombies.

  Further Reading

  Cambridge, Trinity College MS R.16.2 (Trinity Apocalypse, digitized). ca. 1250. Accessed March 19, 2016. http://trin-sites-pub.trin.cam.ac.uk/james/viewpage.php?index=1199.

  Carey, Frances, ed. 1999. The Apocalypse and the Shape of Things to Come. Toronto and Buffalo: University of Toronto Press.

  Himmelfarb, Martha. 2010. The Apocalypse: A Brief History. Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell.

  Johnston, Alexandra F., and Margaret Dorrell. 1972. “The York Mercers and Their Pageant of Doomsday.” Leeds Studies in English 6: 11–35. http://digital.library.leeds.ac.uk/122/1/LSE1972_pp11-35_JohnstonDorrell_article.pdf.

  Rosen, Elizabeth K. 2008. Apocalyptic Transformation: Apocalypse and the Postmodern Imagination. Lanham, MD, and Plymouth, UK: Lexington Books.

  Wagar, W. Warren. 1982. Terminal Visions: The Literature of Last Things. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

  Williamson, Arthur H. 2008. Apocalypse Then: Prophecy and the Making of the Modern World. Westport, CT: Praeger.

  ECO-HORROR

  The idea that nature can be frightening is certainly not new. Yet “eco-horror,” the subgenre of horror that deals most explicitly with these fears, is comparatively modern. Eco-horror—also known as “natural horror,” “environmental horror,” or “green horror”—is now a widely known term. But despite this, there is still some uncertainty and inconsistency in its usage. Broadly understood, an eco-horror text is any text in which the natural environment is in some way horrific: it may exploit “obvious” fears of violent and repulsive nature, or it could more subtly address the gloomy and pervasive sense that now, in the age of modern sciences and technologies, humans have somehow severed themselves from the natural world. More specifically, there are two main elements that define eco-horror narratives. First, there is a central theme of nature’s revenge exacted on humankind. This “golden rule” of eco-horror is always as follows: humans harm nature, and nature, in turn, delivers its own bloody retribution. Second, the eco-horror text is always intended to encourage its audience toward a more ecocentric (naturecentric), rather than anthropocentric (humancentric), viewpoint. In other words, it is designed explicitly to increase environmental awareness.

  Though eco-horror has quite wide delineations—and so should, in theory, encompass a multitude of literary and cinematic texts—the term is used almost exclusively in relation to horror films, and usually in relation to a specific cluster of horror films from the 1970s. This subgenre, for whatever reason, has blossomed onscreen, and is, ordinarily, never discussed within the context of horror literature. This is surprising considering the fact that eco-horror finds its origins in horror literature and has continued its existence, alongside its filmic counterparts, in this literary form. Though seldom discussed, the subgenre of eco-horror holds a significant place and history inside the canon of horror literature. In order to examine this, however, it is first necessary to become aware of how exactly “eco-horror” has come to be understood in the history of horror cinema.

  The general consensus holds that the eco-horror film was not truly born until the 1970s. This is due to the fact that the eco-horror genre has been intimately tied to the environmental movement, which only fully surfaced in the 1960s. There was a widespread popularization of environmental issues in this decade. For example, 1962 saw the publication of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring, a work on conservation that focused on the indiscriminate and dangerous use of pesticides. Most importantly, the book brought environmental concerns to the American public and has been lauded as the very first example of ecocriticism. The 1960s also saw such seminal measures as the passing, in the United States, of the Wilderness Act in 1964 and the formation of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), which became operative in 1970. It makes sense, then, that while there were such seminal eco-horror texts as Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds (1963) in this decade, the true deluge of eco-horror titles came subsequently, in the 1970s, in reaction to this suddenly widespread eco-awareness.

  Indeed, natural horror—along with body horror and satanic horror—was one of the three main cinematic horror genres in
this period. There were countless nature nasties, such as Willard (1972), Frogs (1972), Night of the Lepus (1972), The Bug (1975), Killer Bees (1974), Jaws (1975), Grizzly (1976), Squirm (1976), Orca (1977), Day of the Animals (1977), Piranha (1978), and Nightwing (1979), to name just a few. In these stories, viewers were warned again and again that if they disturb, depredate, and destroy the natural world, this will have devastating results, and Mother Nature will turn darkly against them. For example, in Frogs (1972), various amphibians and reptiles (and even the occasional butterfly) turn violently on the humans who are releasing pesticides into the natural environment. In Orca (1977), the titular whales only become violent after they have been harpooned and harmed by human fishermen. Though the sheer volume of eco-horror films made in the 1970s has never been rivaled, there has been a steady production of such texts in subsequent years. Titles such as Cujo (1983), Little Shop of Horrors (1986), Arachnophobia (1990), Lake Placid (1999), and The Happening (2008) collectively confirm the tenacity of this onscreen subgenre.

  A Timeline of Eco-horror

  1800s

  Texts: The Castle of Otranto, The Monk, Frankenstein, “Young Goodman Brown,” Walden, “The Great God Pan,” Dracula

  Events:

  •1816: Mount Tambora global disaster

  •1854: Walden by Henry David Thoreau

  •1892: John Muir forms the Sierra Club