Horror Literature through History

by Matt Cardin

  Like Byron himself, the poem’s eponymous protagonist leaves home to wander the Alps, after summoning seven spirits in a Faustian fashion. They cannot provide him any immediate solution to his predicament, which stems from the death of his beloved Astarte, in regard to which he feels a mysterious but intense guilt. In the course of his quest, Manfred also confronts the Witch of the Alps; Arimanes; an abbot; and various allegorical figures, but the various kinds of bargain that they can offer him—including the abbot’s offer of forgiveness and redemption from his sin—are not acceptable to him as exits from his predicament, and he insists on dying on his own defiant terms.

  Manfred proved the most fascinating of the various alter egos Byron adopted in his long philosophical poems. Although haunted by guilt, Manfred refuses any of the conventional solutions to his plight that are offered to him, manifesting an assertive individualism that seemed to many of Byron’s admirers to be a perfect encapsulation of the Romantic spirit and the very essence of the imitative Byronism that became a popular lifestyle fantasy.

  Manfred was musically adapted for the stage by Robert Schumann as Manfred: Dramatic Poem with Music in Three Parts, first performed in 1852. It was also adapted as a symphony, simply titled Manfred, by Tchaikovsky in 1885.

  Brian Stableford

  Apart from the phantasmagorical Manfred, there is little of the horrific in Byron’s own work, save for a few elements in the Oriental fantasy “The Giaour” (1813) and the enigmatic poem “Darkness” (1816). The latter is sometimes interpreted as a vision of the end of the world, but probably adapts a description of the aftereffects of the eruption of the volcano Mount Tambora the previous year—whose ash blotted out the sun temporarily in many parts of the world—to the same feelings of guilt occasioned by the failure of his marriage that produced Manfred.

  Byron’s death in April 1824 added further to the romanticism of his legend. Having taken an active role in the Greek War of Independence, perhaps in a spirit of expiation, he died of an infection probably caused by his physician, employing an unsterilized lancet in his worse-than-futile bloodletting.

  Brian Stableford

  See also: Byronic Hero; Gothic Hero/Villain; Romanticism and Dark Romanticism; Shelley, Mary; “The Vampyre.”

  Further Reading

  Bloom, Harold. 2004. Lord Byron. Philadelphia: Chelsea House.

  Cochran, Peter, ed. 2009. The Gothic Byron. Newcastle upon Tyne, UK: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.

  MacCarthy, Fiona. 2002. Byron: Life and Legend. London: John Murray.

  BYRONIC HERO

  The term “Byronic hero” describes a recurring character type often found in horror literature that is identified by his role as a social rebel. Not virtuous in the traditional sense, the Byronic hero is a larger than life figure that is characterized by arrogance, charisma, confidence, moodiness, and mysteriousness. Flawed and at war with society, the Byronic hero is often a handsome character who has dark overtones that are overwhelming to those around him. Named after the early nineteenth-century British poet Lord Byron, whose lover Lady Caroline Lamb once supposedly described as “mad, bad, and dangerous to know,” the Byronic hero has featured in many notable works from the horror genre and continues to appear in modern fiction and film.

  The Byronic hero has its literary origins in pre-nineteenth-century literature, such as the plays of William Shakespeare and the early works of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. The advent of Gothic fiction in 1764 with Horace Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto, itself a work inspired by Shakespearean drama, established the Gothic hero-villain, in the form of the usurper Manfred, as the central character of this new literary genre. Manfred dominates Walpole’s narrative with his villainy and commands the reader’s unwavering attention in every scene in which he is present. This character type would be combined with the emotional excesses of the “man of feeling,” another literary archetype popular in sentimental fiction, by Byron in his own works with strong traces of his own imposing personality to create the Byronic hero, first appearing in his Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage (1812). Byron would revisit the Byronic hero in numerous later works, most notably Manfred (1817), a supernatural play about a sorcerer whose name is an homage to Walpole’s Manfred but remade in Byron’s image.

  Partly because of the engrossing nature of the character type, and partly because of the then celebrity-like infamy surrounding Byron personally, the Byronic hero became an instant success with nineteenth-century horror writers. Byron’s personal physician, Dr. John Polidori, used the Byronic hero to criticize his employer in an unflattering short story entitled “The Vampyre” (1819), which is considered the progenitor of vampiric fiction. Byron’s lover, the aforementioned Lady Caroline Lamb, wrote Glenarvon (1816), a novel that also features this character trope. Years later, after Byron’s death, Charlotte and Emily Brontë wrote their Gothic novels, respectively Jane Eyre (1847) and Wuthering Heights (1847), with male figures that are clear expressions of the Byronic hero. Continuing to the present day, the Byronic hero is very much alive in horror fiction and film, with examples such as Anne Rice’s Lestat de Lioncourt from the Vampire Chronicles and Sir Thomas Sharpe in Guillermo del Toro’s Crimson Peak (2015) demonstrating the continued relevance of this fascinating archetype.

  Joel T. Terranova

  See also: The Brontë Sisters; Byron, Lord; The Castle of Otranto; Gothic Hero/Villain; Rice, Anne; “The Vampyre.”

  Further Reading

  Stein, Atara. 2009. The Byronic Hero in Film, Fiction, and Television. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press.

  Thorslev, Peter. 1962. The Byronic Hero: Types and Prototypes. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

  Wootton, Sarah. 2016. Byronic Heroes in Nineteenth-Century Women’s Writing and Screen Adaptation. London: Palgrave Macmillan.

  C

  “THE CALL OF CTHULHU”

  “The Call of Cthulhu” (1928) is a short story by H. P. Lovecraft. It marks the advent of his most effective and characteristic work, and is a bellwether of cosmic horror. In this tale, worn-out supernatural themes (e. g., the vampire) are boldly replaced by philosophical concerns (e.g., humanity’s place in the cosmos and the mind’s tenuous grip on reality) as the sources of horror.

  Francis Thurston pieces together information from disparate sources around the world, and realizes an alien called Cthulhu came to Earth eons ago in the company of beings called the Great Old Ones. The latter used magic to suspend Cthulhu in the sunken city of R’lyeh, from which he will reemerge when the “stars are ready” to rule the planet.

  Lovecraft was inspired in part by Arthur Machen’s The Three Impostors (1895), which also employs the collation of unrelated documents and subnarratives. Another key source is Guy de Maupassant’s “The Horla” (1887), about an invisible being that sways men’s minds. Other influences include A. Merritt’s The Moon Pool (1918–1919) and W. Scott-Elliot’s theosophist treatise Atlantis and the Lost Lemuria (1925).

  The opening paragraph of “The Call of Cthulhu” has justly become one of the most famous passages in all of Lovecraft’s fiction, and in weird and cosmic horror fiction as a whole, for it brilliantly encapsulates not only the guiding philosophical ethos of this particular story, but that of the entire cosmic-horrific substream of weird fiction that Lovecraft pioneered. The basic thrust is that an accurate “big picture” understanding of humankind’s cosmic circumstance would reveal horrors so vast and profound that they would annihilate the race:

  The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day, the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the deadly light into the peace and safety of
a new dark age. (Lovecraft 2016, 139)

  Matt Cardin

  Source: Lovecraft, H. P. 2016. The Call of Cthulhu and Other Weird Stories. New York: Penguin.

  The story is characterized by Lovecraft’s unique blend of scientific realism and weird atmosphere. Humans and the world, in contrast to traditional religion, have no special place in the cosmos but are merely “recent and transient.” Cthulhu is master of time, space, and even mind (he communicates with human beings in dreams); the geometry of his city is non-Euclidean; and even the phonetics of his name are absolutely nonhuman. The narrator realizes that an alien intrusion undermines human science, belief, art, morals, law, and custom—“the liberated Old Ones would teach [men] new ways to shout and kill and revel and enjoy themselves, and all the earth would flame with a holocaust of ecstasy and freedom” (Lovecraft 2002, 155)—and portends complete oblivion for the race.

  The work shows a high degree of artistic finish. Its structure, with narrative time folding back on itself, reflects its themes. The prose is carefully modulated, and deft touches of surrealism and dada (the early twentieth-century artistic and literary movement driven by disillusionment with conventional values) appear in the apparently random juxtaposition of events, the use of dreams, and the encounter with Cthulhu. The latter, with its octopus-like head, scaly body, clawed feet, and wings, is the most vivid creation in modern weird fiction. “The Call of Cthulhu” consolidates elements of what would later be called the “Cthulhu Mythos.” It has inspired a vast number of imitations and sequels in various media, as well as a 2005 independent film adaptation that was created as a silent black-and-white production, thus mimicking the look and feel of a movie that would have been produced in 1926 when the story was first published.

  Steven J. Mariconda

  See also: Cthulhu Mythos; Frame Story; Lovecraft, H. P.; Lovecraftian Horror; Machen, Arthur; Maupassant, Guy de.

  Further Reading

  Cannon, Peter. 2016. H. P. Lovecraft. New York: Hippocampus Press. Kindle edition.

  Joshi, S. T. 1996. A Subtler Magick: The Writings and Philosophy of H. P. Lovecraft. 1996. Gillette, NJ: Wildside Press.

  Joshi, S. T., and David E. Schultz. 2004. An H. P. Lovecraft Encyclopedia, 27–30. New York: Hippocampus Press.

  Lovecraft, H. P. 2002. The Call of Cthulhu and Other Weird Stories. S. T. Joshi, ed. London: Penguin.

  CAMPBELL, RAMSEY (1946–)

  Born in Liverpool, England, Ramsey Campbell has been described as “Britain’s most respected living writer” of horror fiction by the Oxford Companion to English Literature (Birch 2009, 499). A highly prolific and versatile author, editor, anthologist, and critic, Campbell’s literary output to date includes more than three dozen novels and around three hundred short stories. His early work was lauded by Stephen King and T. E. D. Klein as making a significant and original contribution to the genre. During his long career, Campbell has won recognition from the British Fantasy Society, the Horror Writers’ Association, and the International Horror Guild, among many others. In 2015 he was given the World Fantasy Award for Lifetime Achievement.

  Campbell’s fiction has dealt with both supernatural and nonsupernatural themes, especially psychological horror, in a contemporary setting. However, his knowledge of the history of horror literature and the Anglo-American tradition are comprehensive, and his work is, as a consequence, highly allusive. Robert Aickman, Algernon Blackwood, M. R. James, Fritz Leiber, and Arthur Machen have all been cited as influences by Campbell. The primal role of H. P. Lovecraft, in particular, in the writer’s development has been acknowledged, then disavowed in the late 1960s and 1970s, before being reembraced in the following decade in the short story collection Cold Print (1985).

  Campbell is still perhaps best known for his short stories, and he has continued to use this form. He began writing horror at eleven years of age. What was to become his first published story, “The Church in High Street,” was accepted by August Derleth at Arkham House in 1962, appearing in the anthology Dark Mind, Dark Heart. Arkham House also published Campbell’s first collection, The Inhabitant of the Lake and Less Welcome Tenants (1964), when the author was eighteen. An anthology of rewritten Lovecraftian tales, it is notable for Campbell’s creation, under the advice of Derleth, of a distinctively British setting for his narratives. The fictional “Brichester” of many of Campbell’s stories is a thinly disguised stand-in for his native Liverpool. Campbell was to return consistently to a Merseyside and Severn Valley locale throughout his career, for example in Creatures of the Pool (2009), thematically in part a novel-length expansion of Lovecraft’s fable of miscegenation, “The Shadow over Innsmouth.”

  However, it was the appearance of his second collection of short stories, Demons by Daylight (1973), which really heralded the arrival of Campbell as an original voice within the genre. Stories like “Concussion” and “The Guy” mark a departure from the influence of Lovecraft, marrying modern urban settings and social critique with a subtle and precise prose style. Technique was, and has remained, a central concern for Campbell. Although defining horror as “the branch of literature most often concerned with going too far,” Campbell has consistently rejected what he sees as the “disgustingness” of much modern writing in the genre (Campbell 2002, 49; Joshi 2001, 4). As with M. R. James, the horror in Campbell’s work evokes shudders but is glimpsed briefly rather than explicitly dwelt upon. For example, the story “Chucky Comes to Liverpool” in the late collection Holes for Faces (2013) combines wry social comment with oblique horror. With the media’s attribution of horror videos as a cause behind the real-life 1993 murder of a British toddler by two older boys serving as a backdrop, “Chucky” portrays the ironic transformation of an antiviolence campaigner’s teenage son into a murderous arsonist. A cinema projectionist becomes a vividly dehumanized “figure covered with flames and partly composed of them” (Campbell 2010, 167). Like the unfortunate projectionist, Campbell’s prose is crisp and pared down. These characteristics have led to Campbell being described as “the poet of urban squalor and decay” (Joshi 2001, 97).

  A third collection of short stories, The Height of the Scream, followed Demons by Daylight in 1976. Campbell’s important anthology of pieces written during the first thirty years of his career, Alone with the Horrors, appeared in 1993. But although his short stories have attracted great acclaim, his output of longer fictions has been prodigious. These novels, and the occasional novella, have become Campbell’s most frequently used form of publication and are gaining increasing attention.

  Campbell’s first novel, The Doll Who Ate His Mother (1976), and in particular its successor, The Face That Must Die (1979, revised 1983), established him as a specialist in depicting social alienation and madness. The author was drawing from personal experience. His vivid autobiographical preface to The Face That Must Die recounts a Catholic childhood and adolescence marked by parental estrangement, in which Campbell’s father continued to share the family house as an unseen but frequently heard presence, and his mother descended into paranoid schizophrenia. Perhaps informed by this Gothic-sounding upbringing, Campbell’s fiction prominently features abnormal psychology. Diseased minds and mental illness are rendered horrific through probing with “uncomfortable intensity” (Joshi 2001, 12), often from the antagonist’s point of view. Characters fantasize about killing their elderly relatives (Obsession, 1985), or, as with the malignant great-aunt Queenie in The Influence (1988), are possessed or displaced by them. The plot of Incarnate (1983), a long novel written during the last year of Campbell’s mother’s illness, draws on a schizophrenia-like collapse between dream and reality.

  Beginning with Horridge in The Face That Must Die, the deranged serial murderer as main character is a recurrent theme of Campbell’s. Significantly, Campbell began this focus prior to the popularization of the serial killer by thriller writers like Thomas Harris. Campbell’s writing has a consistent strain of black humor, though. He even produces a further innovative riff, the comic serial
killer, in The Count of Eleven (1991) with its sympathetic antihero, Jack Orchard, and his pathetic refrain: “Got to laugh, haven’t you?” (Campbell 1991, 29). Like The Count of Eleven, many of Campbell’s novels, particularly his crime fictions of the 1990s and 2000s, have no supernatural content. However the violent subject matter of murder, child abuse, and the vulnerability of children and women are still, in Campbell’s broad imaginative definition, viable sources of horror. Even the suspense thriller, The One Safe Place (1995), “becomes” a horror story through its grim conclusions regarding the contagion of violence (Campbell 2002, 43). Throughout Campbell’s fiction, those who struggle against the experience of evil tend to do so unaided. Professional support services such as the church, senior educational figures, police, and social workers are depicted negatively, as variously insensitive, buffoonish, or sinister.

  Concern with the vulnerability of the nuclear family unites Campbell’s nonsupernatural and his supernatural work, particularly the novels. Villains like Peter Grace (The Parasite, also known as To Wake the Dead, 1980) or Kasper Ganz (The Nameless, 1981), who seek to exploit children, exemplify a threat to the family unit, with the satanic cult acting as a metaphor for invasive evil. Yet often with Campbell the threat is much closer to home: “in coming face to face with the monsters we may find ourselves looking not at a mask but a mirror” (Campbell 2002, 53). Even in the Lovecraftian novel The Darkest Part of the Woods (2002), inspired by Lovecraft’s The Case of Charles Dexter Ward, the evil represented by the villainous Nathaniel Selcouth thrives by exploiting family dysfunction. Repeatedly with Campbell’s fictions, the central figure is a father. For example, Midnight Sun (1990), a novel in the cosmic horror tradition of Lovecraft, Blackwood, and Machen, features a protagonist who, in becoming possessed by an alien intelligence, gradually becomes an emotionally detached and unfeeling monster. In a dramatic climax, Ben Sterling undergoes a last-minute recovery and finally sacrifices himself out of love for, and to save, his own family. The House on Nazareth Hill (1996), Campbell’s novel-length contribution to the haunted house subgenre, narrows its cast of characters to become a claustrophobic two-hander between an increasingly psychotic, possessed father and his abused teenage daughter.