Horror and Religion

• Horror and Religion provides new readings of contemporary horror fiction in conjuncture with debates in religious studies and theology. • It gives a broad analysis of a wide range of contemporary and historical horror texts in a new interdisciplinary way. • This study establishes the importance of discussing theology and contemporary horror fiction in present scholarship.

Horror and Religion is an edited collection of essays offering structured discussions of spiritual and theological conflicts in Horror, from the late-sixteenth to the twenty-first century.Horror and Religion is an edited collection of essays offering structured discussions of spiritual and theological conflicts in Horror fiction from the late-sixteenth to the twenty-first century. Contributors explore the various ways that horror and religion have interacted over themes of race and sexuality; the texts under discussion chart the way in which the religious imagination has been deployed over the course of Horror fiction’s development, from a Gothic mode based in theological polemics to a more distinct genre in the twenty-first century that explores the afterlife of religion. Horror and Religion focuses on the Horror genre and its characteristics of the body, sexuality, trauma and race, and the essays explore how Horror fiction has shifted emphasis from anti-Catholicism and anti-Semitism to incorporate less understood historical and theological issues, such as the ‘Death of God’ and the spiritual destabilisation of the secular. By confronting spiritual conflicts in Horror fiction, this volume offers new perspectives on what we traditionally perceive as horrifying.