Abstract
Evolutionary horror study is an emerging research field that uses as its theoretical foundation the sciences of human nature. Evolutionary horror scholars claim that we can understand horror fiction as a cultural technology that works by tapping into ancient, defensive psychological mechanisms to satisfy an adaptive appetite for vicarious experience with threat scenarios. The genre elicits negative emotions ranging from disgust to terror, usually via the representation of fictional monsters that engage the evolved fear system by mimicking cues of threat. Immersion in a fictional world of horror is rewarding because it serves the adaptive functions of emotional, moral, and cognitive calibration. Although evolutionary horror study is growing in visibility and productivity, it is an emerging enterprise in need of much theoretical and interpretative work.
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Notes
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Brian Boyd, On the Origin of Stories: Evolution, Cognition, and Fiction (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2009); Joseph Carroll, Literary Darwinism: Evolution, Human Nature, and Literature (New York: Routledge, 2004); Joseph Carroll et al., Graphing Jane Austen: The Evolutionary Basis of Literary Meaning, Cognitive Studies in Literature and Performance (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), elektronisk materiale; Jonathan Gottschall, The Rape of Troy: Evolution, Violence, and the World of Homer (Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008).
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Torben Kragh Grodal, Embodied Visions: Evolution, Emotion, Culture, and Film (Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2009); Benson Saler and Charles A. Ziegler, “Dracula and Carmilla: Monsters and the Mind,” Philosophy and Literature 29, no. 1 (2005); David Swanger, “Shock and Awe: The Emotional Roots of Compound Genres.,” New York Review of Science Fiction 20, no. 5 (2008); Robert King, “A Regiment of Monstrous Women: Female Horror Archetypes and Life History Theory,” Evolutionary Behavioral Sciences 9, no. 3 (2015); Stephen T. Asma, “Monsters on the Brain: An Evolutionary Epistemology of Horror,” Social Research: An International Quarterly 81, no. 4 (2015); Mathias Clasen, “Monsters Evolve: A Biocultural Approach to Horror Stories,” Review of General Psychology 16, no. 2 (2012); “Terrifying Monsters, Malevolent Ghosts, and Evolved Danger-Management Architecture: A Consilient Approach to Horror Fiction,” in Darwin’s Bridge: Uniting the Humanities and Sciences, ed. Joseph Carroll, Dan P. McAdams, and E. O. Wilson (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016); Why Horror Seduces.
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Douglas E. Winter, “Introduction,” in Prime Evil: New Stories by the Masters of Modern Horror, ed. Douglas E. Winter (New York: New American Library, 1988); Xavier Aldana Reyes, “Introduction: What, Why, and When Is Horror Fiction?,” in Horror: A Literary History, ed. Xavier Aldana Reyes (London: The British Library, 2016), 16.
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Clasen, M. (2018). Evolutionary Study of Horror Literature. 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_27
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