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Supernatural Fiction
Supernatural fiction or supernaturalist fiction is a genre of speculative fiction that exploits or is centered on supernatural themes, often contradicting naturalist assumptions of the real world. Description In its broadest definition, supernatural fiction overlaps with examples of weird fiction, horror fiction, vampire literature, ghost story, and fantasy. Elements of supernatural fiction can be found in writing from the genre of science fiction. Amongst academics, readers and collectors, however, supernatural fiction is often classed as a discrete genre defined by the elimination of "horror", "fantasy", and elements important to other genres. The one genre supernatural fiction appears to embrace in its entirety is the traditional ghost story. The fantasy and supernatural fiction genres would often overlap and may be confused each for each other, though there exist some crucial differences between the two genres. Fantasy usually takes place in another world, where fantastic ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Genre
Genre () is any form or type of communication in any mode (written, spoken, digital, artistic, etc.) with socially-agreed-upon conventions developed over time. In popular usage, it normally describes a category of literature, music, or other forms of art or entertainment, whether written or spoken, audio or visual, based on some set of stylistic criteria, yet genres can be aesthetic, rhetorical, communicative, or functional. Genres form by conventions that change over time as cultures invent new genres and discontinue the use of old ones. Often, works fit into multiple genres by way of borrowing and recombining these conventions. Stand-alone texts, works, or pieces of communication may have individual styles, but genres are amalgams of these texts based on agreed-upon or socially inferred conventions. Some genres may have rigid, strictly adhered-to guidelines, while others may show great flexibility. Genre began as an absolute classification system for ancient Greek literature, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Detective Fiction
Detective fiction is a subgenre of crime fiction and mystery fiction in which an investigator or a detective—whether professional, amateur or retired—investigates a crime, often murder. The detective genre began around the same time as speculative fiction and other genre fiction in the mid-nineteenth century and has remained extremely popular, particularly in novels. Some of the most famous heroes of detective fiction include C. Auguste Dupin, Sherlock Holmes, and Hercule Poirot. Juvenile stories featuring The Hardy Boys, Nancy Drew, and The Boxcar Children have also remained in print for several decades. History Ancient Some scholars, such as R. H. Pfeiffer, have suggested that certain ancient and religious texts bear similarities to what would later be called detective fiction. In the Old Testament story of Susanna and the Elders (the Protestant Bible locates this story within the apocrypha), the account told by two witnesses broke down when Daniel cross-examines t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Charlotte Perkins Gilman
Charlotte Perkins Gilman (; née Perkins; July 3, 1860 – August 17, 1935), also known by her first married name Charlotte Perkins Stetson, was an American humanist, novelist, writer, lecturer, advocate for social reform, and eugenicist. She was a utopian feminist and served as a role model for future generations of feminists because of her unorthodox concepts and lifestyle. She has been inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame. Her best remembered work today is her semi-autobiographical short story "The Yellow Wallpaper", which she wrote after a severe bout of postpartum psychosis. Early life Gilman was born on July 3, 1860, in Hartford, Connecticut, to Mary Perkins (formerly Mary Fitch Westcott) and Frederic Beecher Perkins. She had only one brother, Thomas Adie, who was fourteen months older, because a physician advised Mary Perkins that she might die if she bore other children. During Charlotte's infancy, her father moved out and abandoned his wife and children, an ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Henry James
Henry James ( – ) was an American-British author. He is regarded as a key transitional figure between literary realism and literary modernism, and is considered by many to be among the greatest novelists in the English language. He was the son of Henry James Sr. and the brother of philosopher and psychologist William James and diarist Alice James. He is best known for his novels dealing with the social and marital interplay between ''émigré ''Americans, English people, and continental Europeans. Examples of such novels include '' The Portrait of a Lady'', '' The Ambassadors'', and '' The Wings of the Dove''. His later works were increasingly experimental. In describing the internal states of mind and social dynamics of his characters, James often wrote in a style in which ambiguous or contradictory motives and impressions were overlaid or juxtaposed in the discussion of a character's psyche. For their unique ambiguity, as well as for other aspects of their composition, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Turn Of The Screw
''The Turn of the Screw'' is an 1898 horror novella by Henry James which first appeared in serial format in '' Collier's Weekly'' (January 27 – April 16, 1898). In October 1898, it was collected in ''The Two Magics'', published by Macmillan in New York City and Heinemann in London. The novella follows a governess who, caring for two children at a remote estate, becomes convinced that the grounds are haunted. ''The Turn of the Screw'' is considered a work of both Gothic and horror fiction. In the century following its publication, critical analysis of the novella has undergone several major transformations. Initial reviews regarded it only as a frightening ghost story, but, in the 1930s, some critics suggested that the supernatural elements were figments of the governess' imagination. In the early 1970s, the influence of structuralism resulted in an acknowledgement that the text's ambiguity was its key feature. Later approaches incorporated Marxist and feminist thinking. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Psychological Fiction
In literature, psychological fiction (also psychological realism) is a narrative genre that emphasizes interior characterization and motivation to explore the spiritual, emotional, and mental lives of the characters. The mode of narration examines the reasons for the behaviors of the character, which propel the plot and explain the story. Psychological realism is achieved with deep explorations and explanations of the mental states of the character's inner person, usually through narrative modes such as stream of consciousness and flashbacks. Early examples '' The Tale of Genji'' by Lady Murasaki, written in 11th-century Japan, was considered by Jorge Luis Borges to be a psychological novel. French theorists Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, in ''A Thousand Plateaus'', evaluated the 12th-century Arthurian author Chrétien de Troyes' '' Lancelot, the Knight of the Cart'' and ''Perceval, the Story of the Grail'' as early examples of the style of the psychological novel. S ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Wuthering Heights
''Wuthering Heights'' is an 1847 novel by Emily Brontë, initially published under her pen name Ellis Bell. It concerns two families of the landed gentry living on the West Yorkshire moors, the Earnshaws and the Lintons, and their turbulent relationships with the Earnshaws' foster son, Heathcliff. The novel was influenced by Romanticism and Gothic fiction. ''Wuthering Heights'' is now widely considered to be one of the greatest novels ever written in English, but contemporaneous reviews were polarised. It was controversial for its depictions of mental and physical cruelty, including domestic abuse, and for its challenges to Victorian morality and religious and societal values. ''Wuthering Heights'' was accepted by publisher Thomas Newby along with Anne Brontë's ''Agnes Grey'' before the success of their sister Charlotte's novel ''Jane Eyre'', but they were published later. After Emily's death, Charlotte edited a second edition of ''Wuthering Heights'', which was published in ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Supernatural Horror In Literature
"Supernatural Horror in Literature" is a 28,000 word essay by American writer H. P. Lovecraft, surveying the development and achievements of horror fiction as the field stood in the 1920s and 30s. The essay was researched and written between November 1925 and May 1927, first published in August 1927, and then revised and expanded during 1933–1934. The essay Lovecraft's essay ranges widely, but he first examines the beginnings of weird fiction in the early gothic novel. As a guide for what to read in the early gothic he relied partly on Edith Birkhead's 1921 historical survey ''The Tale of Terror'', and he was also able to draw on the expertise of the great many experts and collectors in his circle. The bulk of the essay was written in New York City giving Lovecraft easy access to the resources of the city's great public libraries and also to the collections of his friends, and thus he was able to read widely and obtain obscure and rare works. His survey then proceeds to outline ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Fear Of The Unknown
Fear is an intensely unpleasant emotion in response to perceiving or recognizing a danger or threat. Fear causes physiological changes that may produce behavioral reactions such as mounting an aggressive response or fleeing the threat. Fear in human beings may occur in response to a certain stimulus occurring in the present, or in anticipation or expectation of a future threat perceived as a risk to oneself. The fear response arises from the perception of danger leading to confrontation with or escape from/avoiding the threat (also known as the fight-or-flight response), which in extreme cases of fear ( horror and terror) can be a freeze response or paralysis. In humans and other animals, fear is modulated by the process of cognition and learning. Thus, fear is judged as rational or appropriate and irrational or inappropriate. An irrational fear is called a phobia. Fear is closely related to the emotion anxiety, which occurs as the result of threats that are perceived t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gothic Literature
Gothic fiction, sometimes called Gothic horror in the 20th century, is a loose literary aesthetic of fear and haunting. The name is a reference to Gothic architecture of the European Middle Ages, which was characteristic of the settings of early Gothic novels. The first work to call itself Gothic was Horace Walpole's 1764 novel ''The Castle of Otranto'', later subtitled "A Gothic Story". Subsequent 18th century contributors included Clara Reeve, Ann Radcliffe, William Thomas Beckford, and Matthew Lewis. The Gothic influence continued into the early 19th century, works by the Romantic poets, and novelists such as Mary Shelley, Charles Maturin, Walter Scott and E. T. A. Hoffmann frequently drew upon gothic motifs in their works. The early Victorian period continued the use of gothic, in novels by Charles Dickens and the Brontë sisters, as well as works by the American writers Edgar Allan Poe and Nathaniel Hawthorne. Later prominent works were ''Dracula'' by Bram Stoker, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
King Arthur
King Arthur ( cy, Brenin Arthur, kw, Arthur Gernow, br, Roue Arzhur) is a legendary king of Britain, and a central figure in the medieval literary tradition known as the Matter of Britain. In the earliest traditions, Arthur appears as a leader of the post-Roman Britons in battles against Saxon invaders of Britain in the late 5th and early 6th centuries. He appears in two early medieval historical sources, the ''Annales Cambriae'' and the '' Historia Brittonum'', but these date to 300 years after he is supposed to have lived, and most historians who study the period do not consider him a historical figure.Tom Shippey, "So Much Smoke", ''review'' of , ''London Review of Books'', 40:24:23 (20 December 2018) His name also occurs in early Welsh poetic sources such as '' Y Gododdin''. The character developed through Welsh mythology, appearing either as a great warrior defending Britain from human and supernatural enemies or as a magical figure of folklore, sometimes associa ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Divine
Divinity or the divine are things that are either related to, devoted to, or proceeding from a deity.divine – Dictionary.com. What is or is not divine may be loosely defined, as it is used by different s. Etymology The root of the word ''divine'' is literally "godly", but the use varies significantly depending on which deity is being discussed.Usages Divinity as a quality has two distinct usages: *Divine force or power - Powers or forces that are universal, or transcend human capacities *Divinity applied to mortals - Qualities of individuals who are considered to have some special access or relationship to the divine. Overlap occurs between these usages ...[...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
