Abstract
This chapter interrogates the links between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, exploring their relationship to the unknown and the horror thus associated. Using Modernism as a frame, the chapter focuses on descriptions of death and decay, encounters with ghostly figures of corpses, and the memories of those lost, showing how they haunt these texts. The chapter traces the tone of horror, differentiating the way the mood is captured symbolically and through poetic convention. Through authors from Conrad and Yeats, through the World War I poets, to T.S. Eliot, this chapter shows how Modernism is best expressed through such horrific imagery. The disillusionment and fragmentation characteristic of High Modernism combined with a focus on the imagery of loss, in often graphic detail, emphasizes the horror of the age.
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Stephan, M. (2018). “The Horror! The Horror!”: Tracing Horror in Modernism from Conrad to Eliot. In: Corstorphine, K., Kremmel, L. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook to Horror Literature. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-97406-4_14
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-97406-4_14
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