by Matt Cardin
Thanks to the kindness of John Pendleton Kennedy, an established Baltimore author who was a judge in the Visiter contest, Poe was hired by Thomas W. White, who established a new monthly magazine in Richmond, Virginia, the Southern Literary Messenger. Poe was managing editor for the magazine, though White had the final word on content. Although Poe published revised versions of some of his poems and tales, along with new pieces, in the Messenger during 1835–1836, he actually gained national fame for his reviews, which were accurate, if often stringent.
Poe rapidly perceived how much Gothic horror literature had become trite, featuring too many protagonists haunted by vague angst, in grim, often crumbling ancient castles as backdrops, and seemingly supernatural, too incredible horrors, multiplying to cause unease—all expressed in high-flown language. Alternatively, diabolic physical tortures and pain were inflicted on helpless victims of temperamental tyrants. Poe’s literary artistry repeatedly transformed such clichéd settings, characters, and language into artistic symbolic representations of troubled human psychology.
In the early 1830s Poe’s awareness of potential weaknesses in horror fiction also led him onto another path. Like many young people, he reacted against what he perceived as extremes and weaknesses—here, those in popular horror fiction—by confronting them with humor. He toyed with the idea of creating a book, “Tales of the Folio Club,” featuring a group of pretentious authors, all caricatures of well-known writers of the times, who would meet monthly, enjoy ample drink and food, then proceed to read to each other an original tale, which the group would then criticize. The tales debated and the critical methods, too, would be discussed within a comic framework. The person whose tale was designated the worst had to host the next gathering. After several successive such penalties occurred to the same club member, he would decide to expose the pretentiousness and weaknesses in the club members and their productions, fleeing to a publisher to make public such folderol.
Thus Poe composed tales that parodied and satirized the themes and techniques of some much admired contemporary authors. Unfortunately, since no publisher would accept Poe’s book because of financial uncertainties about its success with the reading public, Poe published the tales individually, thereby causing a confusion about his own aims and intentions that persists to the present.
Such tales as “Ligeia” (1838), “The Fall of the House of Usher” (1839), “The Masque of the Red Death” (1842), or “The Black Cat” (1843), to cite but a few, exemplify Poe’s artistic, convincing portrayals of disintegrating minds. Although the surfaces in such tales may be horrific, they are the more terrifying because they are plausible. The narrators in the first two named tales and Prospero and his followers in the third represent destructive emotional forces that wreak horrors on the minds and perhaps the bodies of such characters.
Although he learned much about what would constitute best-selling horror fiction from models in Blackwood’s and others of a similar nature, which were popular reading in his day and, in the case of Blackwood’s in particular, which published horror fiction as a staple, Poe collected his stories, revised, into two volumes dated 1840 (actually published in late 1839). The book’s title, Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque, has continued to create confusion among critics, and clear distinctions between “grotesque” and “arabesque” have never been established.
Poe twice ventured beyond the tale as his venue. First, heeding the advice of James Kirke Paulding, an older, established author, Poe turned to writing a novel, The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym, which appeared in book form in 1838, though early chapters appeared in the Messenger in early 1837, during which time Poe left the magazine. Poe’s second experiment in novel writing, The Journal of Julius Rodman, was serialized and left uncompleted in Burton’s Gentleman’s Magazine (January–June 1840). Poe had become editor of that magazine, though he also aspired to launch a literary magazine of his own, but those attempts failed. Poe and Burton ultimately clashed, so Poe accepted the offer of George R. Graham to edit Graham’s Magazine, there publishing some of his most notable work, which included “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” (1841).
After unsuccessfully enlisting Graham to join his magazine project, Poe in 1843 went to New York City, where he would eventually publish the extended version of Pym and where he engaged in journalistic work, ultimately to become editor, then editor and proprietor of the Broadway Journal, a weekly literary periodical, during 1845–1846. Again Poe published revised versions of his stories and poems, along with perceptive reviews.
After he abandoned the Broadway Journal, Poe no longer had means of responding to antagonists (such antipathies caused chiefly by his often caustic reviews of some publisher’s darling’s book), and he became targeted by those who disliked him. Virginia Poe, who had long been suffering from tuberculosis, died in January 1847. In the wake of his devastation, Poe apparently sought understanding and compassion from other women, which has also led to many prurient speculations about his nature. Homeward bound from a successful visit to his onetime home, Richmond, where he had gone to lecture on poetry and politics, Poe was discovered in very poor physical condition in Baltimore in early October 1849. He was hospitalized, remained incoherent, died on October 7, 1849, and was buried in Westminster Presbyterian graveyard. In 1876, a memorial service was held, during which Poe’s remains were moved to a new grave, replete with an imposing monument, in the front of the graveyard.
Because of a scurrilous, inaccurate biographical sketch of Poe by Rufus W. Griswold, then considered a prominent author and editor, Poe’s reputation has repeatedly been called into question. There are persisting notions that Poe was diabolic and that he modeled all his literary protagonists on his own emotionally disordered self. The real reason for Poe’s continuing fascination for readers is, however, that the weird, frightening characters and situations in his fiction and poems evince a “terror of the soul,” which, in the “Preface” to Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque, he himself called the mainstay of his creative endeavors.
Benjamin F. Fisher
See also: “The Fall of the House of Usher”; “Ligeia”; “The Masque of the Red Death”; Psychological Horror; Romanticism and Dark Romanticism; Unreliable Narrator.
Further Reading
Fisher, Benjamin F. 2008. The Cambridge Introduction to Edgar Allan Poe. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Poe, Edgar Allan. 1984. Edgar Allan Poe: Poetry and Tales. New York: Library of America.
Poe, Edgar Allan. 2008. The Collected Letters of Edgar Allan Poe. 2 vols. Edited by John Ward Ostrom. Revised, corrected, and expanded by Burton R. Pollin and Jeffrey A. Savoye. New York: Gordian Press.
Thomas, Dwight, and David K. Jackson. 1987. The Poe Log: A Documentary Life of Edgar Allan Poe 1809–1849. Boston: G. K. Hall.
Wagenknecht, Edward. 1963. Edgar Allan Poe: The Man behind the Legend. New York: Oxford University Press.
POSSESSION AND EXORCISM
Exorcism is the religious or spiritual practice of casting out demons from those who are under a state of possession from demonic or satanic spiritual forces. While possession and exorcism appear in many cultures and religious traditions, in the popular imagination they are most commonly part of Christian religious traditions. They are also extremely popular subjects for horror fiction and film, where they are commonly represented as being generally Catholic phenomena.
Within the Catholic Church, a distinction is drawn between “prayers of deliverance,” which can be offered by anyone, and formal exorcism, which can only be performed by a priest during baptism or with the permission of a bishop. The Catholic rite for a “Major Exorcism” is given in Section Eleven of the Rituale Romanum. The exorcism is performed through the recitation of prayers listed in the rite, invoking the name of Jesus, God the Father, and the Holy Spirit; and it may, though not necessarily, involve the use of religious symbols and sacraments such as communion wafers, relics, crucifixes, and holy water. The authority and power of the exorcism com
es from the invocation of the Trinity, and the efficacy of the exorcism is dependent upon the faith of the practitioner and the legitimacy of the authorizing body that allows it to take place.
The manifestation of demonic possession has been variable throughout history, but signs listed in the Roman Ritual include, but are not limited to, speaking foreign or ancient languages of which the possessed has no prior knowledge; supernatural strength; knowledge of hidden things that the possessed has no way of obtaining; an aversion to anything holy; and profuse blasphemous language. With clergy often criticized for mistaking undiagnosed mental illness for possession, recorded cases of episcopal approval for exorcism rites have become increasingly rare, although modern media attention (particularly in the aftermath of key horror texts such as Rosemary’s Baby and The Exorcist) has often led to spikes in requests for exorcisms among established churches. Those under possession are often not held accountable for their actions, and thus the exorcism rite is understood not as a punishment but as an act designed to restore their individual subjectivity.
Representations of possession and exorcism in Gothic and horror literature and film tend to focus upon the process by which an individual can fall under demonic influence, the manifestation of the various demonic powers, and, although not always, the final restoration of normality and the “saving” of the possessed individual. Beginning with the satanic encounters in early horror texts such as Matthew Lewis’s The Monk (1796), as well as Charlotte Dacre’s Zofloya the Moor: A Romance of the Fifteenth Century (1806), possession has been a regular occurring theme throughout horror history. By the late nineteenth century, concerns around evolution and degeneration led to possession being represented as a loss of humanity, frequently shown in animalistic terms. Notable examples include Richard Marsh’s The Beetle (1897) and Arthur Machen’s “The Great God Pan” (1890). The ambiguity of possession in the era of increasing secularity is another repeated concern, reaching its high point with Henry James’s novella The Turn of the Screw (1898). The early twentieth century saw a decline in the possession narrative, although the weird fiction of H. P. Lovecraft was often concerned with the annihilation of the subject after an encounter with a powerful spiritual reality. The possession narrative reemerged in the 1960s with Ray Russell’s The Case Against Satan (1962) and William Peter Blatty’s The Exorcist (1971), the latter of which became a critical and commercial success.
Film has also been an extremely fruitful area for possession and exorcism narratives, several of which have become well-regarded horror classics. Key texts from horror cinema in this area include Rosemary’s Baby (dir. Roman Polanski, 1968) and the highly influential The Exorcist (dir. William Friedkin 1973), as well as Sam Rami’s Evil Dead franchise (1981–2013). Postmillennial horror has featured a resurgence in possession and exorcism narratives—The Exorcism of Emily Rose (dir. Scott Derrickson, 2005) as well as The Last Exorcism (dir. Daniel Stamm, 2010) being high-profile examples. These films, which are relatively inexpensive to produce, generally generate high returns, despite an increasingly lukewarm critical response. This suggests that even in an era of ostensible secularity, the possession narrative and the fears that it taps into still continue to resonate with horror fans.
Jon Greenaway
See also: Devils and Demons; The Exorcist; “The Great God Pan”; The Monk; Rosemary’s Baby; Russell, Ray; “Thrawn Janet”; The Turn of the Screw; Witches and Witchcraft.
Further Reading
Cardin, Matt. 2007. “The Angel and the Demon.” In Icons of Horror and the Supernatural, edited by S. T. Joshi, 31–64. Westport, CT and London: Greenwood Press.
Mäyrä, Frans Ilkka. 1999. Demonic Texts and Textual Demons: The Demonic Tradition, the Self, and Popular Fiction. Tampere, Finland: Tampere University Press. http://people.uta.fi/~frans.mayra/Demon_2005/Demon.pdf.
Schober, Adrian. 2004. Possessed Child Narratives in Literature and Film. New York: Macmillan.
THE PRIVATE MEMOIRS AND CONFESSIONS OF
A JUSTIFIED SINNER
James Hogg’s 1824 novel The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner can validly be considered a work ahead of its time. It is arguably the first psychological horror novel in literature, and certainly its ambiguities, which allow for either psychological or supernatural readings or both, is more to the taste of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries than the nineteenth.
In the late seventeenth century, George Colwan, a Scottish laird, marries an appalling religious bigot. This new wife is so offended by the merrymaking at the wedding that she refuses to come to his bed, and, very likely, he rapes her. A son born of this union, also called George, grows up to be personable and fun-loving, like his father. A year later Mrs. Colwan gives birth to another son, Robert Wringhim, apparently fathered by her hypocritical religious mentor. Young Robert becomes a fanatical believer in extreme Calvinism, convinced that he is predestined to go to heaven, regardless of what acts he may perform on Earth. The logical extension of this is that anything he does is God’s work, including murder, starting with his half-brother, George. He attempts to push George to his death off Arthur’s Seat, a height above Edinburgh, but is deterred by an apparition, which can be explained as a mirage.
Later, George is murdered, but witnesses clearly see someone else leaving the scene of the crime. However, the novel is told as a frame narrative with different points of view, and the “Editor’s Narrative” now switches to Robert’s “Confession,” which presents the reader with a very different version of events. Robert has encountered a doppelgänger of himself called Gil-Martin, who urges him on to further crimes. While Robert believes that Gil-Martin is really the Russian czar Peter the Great traveling incognito, a better interpretation is that Gil-Martin is the Devil who leads him to destruction by telling him exactly what he wants to hear. It is clear that Robert’s mind is disintegrating, but the question remains as to whether he is truly in the company of the Devil. Gil-Martin can assume any identity, and it is possible, but not certain, that he killed George.
More crimes ensue. Robert has large gaps in his memory. Gil-Martin may be a projection of Robert’s, but this is never made clear, even after Robert comes to fear Gil-Martin, tries to flee, and ultimately commits suicide, at which point the “Editor’s Narrative” resumes. The text analyzes itself and fails to come to a conclusion. The editor even inquires of the novel’s author, Mr. Hogg, who, in an amusing in-joke, is too busy with a deal in sheep to show much interest.
The sheep joke fits because James Hogg was known as “The Ettrick Shepherd.” He really had been a shepherd before he became a poet, and as a rustic bard he was acceptable to the Scottish literary establishment. But when he moved on to books like Justified Sinner, he was rejected, and the work fell into obscurity before being rediscovered and appreciated in the twentieth century. Today it is recognized as a precursor of such classic double and doppelgänger tales as Edgar Allan Poe’s “William Wilson” and Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Like these and other such tales, Hogg’s novel explores the question of human identity and possible duality, and it offers acute insight into the fears and anxieties surrounding Calvinism and predestination.
Darrell Schweitzer
See also: Doubles, Doppelgängers, and Split Selves; Frame Story; Poe, Edgar Allan; The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.
Further Reading
Carey, John. 1959. Introduction to The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner, ix–xvi. New York: Grove Press.
Jackson, Richard D. 2001. “The Devil, the Doppelgänger, and the Confessions of James Hogg and Thomas De Quincey.” Studies in Hogg and His World 12: 90–103.
Smith, Nelson C. 1985. “James Hogg.” In Supernatural Fiction Writers: Fantasy and Horror, vol. 1, edited by E. F. Bleiler, 177–183. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons.
PSYCHOLOGICAL HORROR
Psychological horror is a subgenre of horror that focuses on the inner psychological states and exper
iences of characters to generate horror, fear, and dread. Horror in general, as an artistic genre or mode, consists of prose fiction (or poetry, drama, or film) that elicits emotions of intense fear, revulsion, and dread. Horror is a subgenre of the fantastic, and it may be almost infinitely subdivided, with the major subdivisions including what might be called killer horror (centering on violent and murderous people as villains), monster horror, paranormal/supernatural horror, extreme horror (emphasizing gore and bodily destruction), and psychological horror. Unlike killer and monster horror, psychological horror does not rely on a physical, external threat to produce fear. Unlike paranormal/supernatural horror, it does not posit, or at least does not focus solely upon, the existence of a paranormal or supernatural universe as the chief source of dread. Unlike extreme horror, psychological horror emphasizes inner rather than external conflicts and brutality to produce the central emotions of fear and dread. Significantly, the boundaries between such subgenres are fluid, and many horror narratives move between genres.
Although first recognized as a subgenre of horror in film studies in the mid-twentieth century, psychological horror has a long literary history. Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “Young Goodman Brown” (1835), with its depiction of a nightmarish walk through the forest outside colonial Salem Village, Massachusetts, can be read as an early example, since it winds up to an ambiguous conclusion in which the title character may have witnessed an actual satanic gathering in the woods or may have simply had a dream or vision that left him forever suspicious of and alienated from his family and fellow villagers. Likewise, many of Edgar Allan Poe’s stories, such as “Ligeia” (1838), “The Fall of the House of Usher” (1839), and “The Tell-Tale Heart” (1843), generate and rely on psychological horror. Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wall-Paper” (1892) and Henry James’s The Turn of the Screw (1898) are excellent examples of the genre with their depictions of progressive psychological deterioration narrated in the first person. More recent examples of psychological horror fiction include L. Ron Hubbard’s Fear (1940), Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House (1959), Robert Bloch’s Psycho (1959), and Stephen King’s Misery (1987) and The Shining (1977), all of which dramatize the terror of growing psychosis and attendant violence.
