Graeco-Roman Horror and its Modern Reception

Unleashing Classical Dread

Isidro Molina Zorrilla, Nuno Simões Rodrigues, Vasileios Balaskas

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2025
• Topic: History
• eBook ISBN:
  9781040615898
• Subtopic: Roman Ancient History
• Index: History

This volume introduces a fresh exploration of Classical literature, examining its engagement with personal or collective tragedy, horrific events, and fear-inflicting episodes. It explores the different ways fear, terror, and horror have been manifested in Graeco-Roman culture and their reception.

While previous studies often examine physiological and psychological reactions to horror, fear and dread in classical literature and its reception (in fiction and the performing arts) separately, this volume connects these concepts into a broader, unified framework, exploring their presence in both classical antiquity and modern fiction. The individual chapters introduce a new theoretical and conceptual framework for the growing field of Horror Studies as applied to the classical world, and cover its application in a broad range of ancient interpretations and modern media, from Greek tragedy, Roman drama and poetry, myth and Etrurian daemons, to modern Spanish theatrical receptions, animation, Lovecraft and The Haunting of Bly Manor. It examines themes such as body horror, haunted spaces, and suspense in the Graeco-Roman tradition and its modern reinterpretation, expanding the scope of traditional scholarship and providing fresh insight into the genre in classical literature and culture.

The book serves as a valuable resource for students and scholars interested in the emotions and Horror Studies in classical antiquity, and in classical reception. It will also be of interest to those working in the fields of Literary Criticism, Comparative Literature, Cultural Studies, and Classical Archaeology, who will encounter a novel exploration of classical themes and their reconceptualization in pop culture as well as in the visual and performing arts.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Contributors
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction: Unleashing Classical Dread
• Part I Violence and the Appeal of Horror
• Part II Daemons, Monsters, and Other Fantastic Creatures
• Part III Altering Human Condition: Death and Necromancy
• Part IV Body Horror and Spectatorship
• Part V Fear and Suspense
• Index