Encountering Horror and the Holy

KIRK SCHNEIDER IS an existentialist- psychologist interested in the transformative effect of horror literature on readers. He advocates a form of bibliotherapy using horror literature and cinema as a means of exploring our human condition, its limitations and its responsibilities. His book Horror and the Holy: Wisdom-Teachings of the Monster Tale separates horror into two categories: those tales like Dracula that constrict and imprison the consciousness, reducing it to a microcosm, and tales like Frankenstein that expand the consciousness, mirroring the macrocosmic dimension. In many horror stories there are elements of both tendencies but usually one or the other predominate.

Read This Archive

Themes in the House of Usher

What is the significance of the close resemblance of Roderick Usher and his sister? Are the two the product of, and guilty of, incest? Did Roderick Usher intentionally try to murder Madeline, and did Madeline actually return from her tomb vampire-like, to claim her brother's life? Is the physical house actually "alive" and by some preternatural force of will controlling the destinies of the Ushers? Or is the story not a tale of the supernatural at all, but rather, a work of psychological realism? What then is the precise role of the narrator? And can the work

Read This Archive