While the undisputed heyday of folk horror was Britain in the 1960s and 1970s, the genre has not only a rich cinematic and literary prehistory, but directors and novelists around the world have also been reinventing folk horror for the contemporary moment. This study sets out to rethink the assumptions that have guided critical writing on the genre in the face of such expansions, with chapters exploring a range of subjects from the fiction of E. F. Benson to Scooby-Doo, video games, and community engagement with the Lancashire witches. In looking beyond Britain, the essays collected here extend folk horror’s geographic terrain to map new conceptualisations of the genre now seen emerging from Italy, Ukraine, Thailand, Mexico and the Appalachian region of the US.
Innehållsförteckning
Introduction: Dawn Keetley and Ruth Heholt
Part One: Folk Horror’s Folklore
Chapter One: The Frightening Folk: An Introduction to the Folkloresque in Horror
Jeffrey A. Tolbert
Chapter Two: Whose Folk? Community, Folklore, Landscape and the Case of the Lancashire Witches
Catherine Spooner
Chapter Three: Folkloric Origins of the Ukrainian Gothic
Svitlana (Lana) Krys
Chapter Four: ‘Wow, this place is spooky at night!’ Suburban Ennui, Legend Quests and What Folk Horror Shares with Scooby-Doo
Ian Brodie
Part Two: Re-Visioning Canonical Folk Horror
Chapter Five: The Curse of the Cursive: The Horror of the Hand in Folk Horror Film Typography
David Devanny
Chapter Six: The Devil His Due: Folk Horror, Occulture and the Black Magic Story
Timothy Jones
Chapter Seven: Black Boxes: Tradition and Human Sacrifice in American Folk Horror
Bernice M. Murphy
Part Three: Folk Horror in New Places
Chapter Eight: Sunny Landscapes, Dark Visions: E. F. Benson’s Weird Domestic Folk Horror
Ruth Heholt
Chapter Nine: Monsters in the Making: Phi Pop and Thai Folk Horror
Katarzyna Ancuta
Chaper Ten: Curses, Rites and Questionable Offerings: Ludic Folk Horror in Video Games
Tanya Krzywinska
Part Four: Folk Horror’s Politics
Chapter Eleven: Catholicism, Unification and Liminal Landscape in Italian Folk Horror Cinema
Marco Malvestio
Chapter Twelve: ‘Me quitarán de quererte, Llorona, pero de olividarte nunca’: La Llorona, Colonial Trauma and Mexicanness
Valeria Villegas Lindvall
Chapter Thirteen: Sacrifice Zones in Appalachian Folk Horror
Dawn Keetley