Horror on the Early Modern Stage
Nightmare on Thames Street
Horror on the Early Modern Stage
Nightmare on Thames Street
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Description
Early modern English theatre provides countless examples of the tropes and feelings we associate with the horror genre. Depictions of obscenity and violence designed to elicit a mixture of loathing, fear, repugnance, shock, awe, and desire in their audiences abound. From the bodily mutilations of Titus Andronicus, to the demonic, ghostly, and psychological terrors of Macbeth and Hamlet, to the sensory shocks of torture and imprisonment within The Duchess of Malfi. This collection of essays argues that the horror genre as we know it should be extended back to the 16th century to include classic early modern plays from A Midsummer Night's Dream to The Witch of Edmonton.
Contributors plot a new theory of horror through its roots as a conscious and complex generic mode in the late sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century. Drawing together essays on topics such as bodily torture and experimentation, necrophilia and decomposition, psychological and supernatural torment, scholars critically engage with categories such as tragedy, comedy, parody, and folk horror. The volume offers new interpretations of both famous and obscure early modern plays, and places them in conversation with contemporary horror films like Midsommar, The Wicker Man, The Substance, and the works of David Cronenberg, providing a new route into the burgeoning field of early modern horror for scholars and students.
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Table of Contents
Sheila Coursey (Saint Louis University, USA) & Hannah Korell (University of Wisconsin-Platteville, USA)
Part 1: Playing with Tragedy
1. Aesthetic and Affective Registers of Horror in Doctor Faustus and Macbeth
Ani Govjian (University of Pennsylvania, USA)
2. Insidious Sights: Jump Scares and Suburban Horror in Early Modern Domestic Tragedy
Sheila Coursey(Saint Louis University, USA)
3. So Bad They're Good: 1980s Teen Slasher Films and Early Modern Revenge Tragedies
M.G. Aune (Pennsylvania Western University, USA) & Shawn Reese
Part 2: Mind v. Body: Sites of Horror
4. Hamlet's “Eternal Blazon” as Contagious Horror
Khristian S. Smith (The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, USA)
5. Putting Lips on a Skull and Skin on a Ghost: The Problem with Re-fleshing Corpses in Hamlet
Chelsea Lee (University of California, Irvine, USA)
6. Boxes of Wormseed and Paper Prisons: Bodies, Horror, and Imprisonment in The Duchess of Malfi
Charlotte Thurston (CUNY Graduate Center, USA)
7. “Thou art a dead thing”: Disquieting the Jacobean Body with Pragmatic Aesthetics
James Rizzi (Canisius University, USA)
Part 3: Transtemporal Approaches
8. Blood Fe(a)sts-A Case Study in Body Horror: William Shakespeare's Titus Andronicus and The Vienna Action Group
Amanda Di Ponio (Huron University College, USA)
9. Midsummer/Midsommar Nightmares: Exploitation and Ecohorror in Shakespeare and Aster
Jessica Walker (University of North Georgia, USA)
10. New Flesh and Fairy Flesh: Body Horror in A Midsummer Night's Dream and the Early Films of David Cronenberg
Victoria McMahon (Independent Scholar)
Epilogue: “A Herd Confused:” Folk Horror and the Allegorical Functions of the Early Modern
Gregory Colón Semenza (University of Connecticut, USA)
Bibliography
Index
Product details
| Published | Jun 25 2026 |
|---|---|
| Format | Ebook (Epub & Mobi) |
| Edition | 1st |
| Pages | 264 |
| ISBN | 9781350553736 |
| Imprint | The Arden Shakespeare |
| Illustrations | 2 b/w |
| Publisher | Bloomsbury Publishing |
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