Maps of Heaven, Maps of Hell: Religious Terror as Memory from the Puritans to Stephen KingM.E. Sharpe, 1996 M05 6 - 239 pages Puritan theology maintained the "men need to be terrified, so that they may be converted." Yet the fear of self-loss at the heart of religious conversion was, oddly enough, similar to the fear provoked by witchery and demonic possession. Thus terror entered American culture partly by way of religious sanction, and it continues to be an important social tool for the shaping of hearts and minds. This book defines the use of terror in the American popular imagination from its beginnings in Puritan sermonizing to its prominent place in contemporary genre film and fiction |
Contents
Nostalgia and Terror Holy Ghosts | 1 |
Entertaining Satan The American Rite or Deviancy | 39 |
Writing the Unholy Chanting the God Demonic | 77 |
The Shape or the Dark Robert Frost and H P Lovecrart | 117 |
It Came from Beyond The Sacred and the Scary | 154 |
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Common terms and phrases
allegory American Gothic American Horror American Literature Anne Hutchinson anxiety apocalypse argues Armitage awe-ful becomes Blatty's body politic Calvin captivity narrative Christian cited civic colonial Cotton Mather course culture dark death demonic discourse dispossession Divine Dunwich Horror early Edwards's Emerson England Essays example Exorcist expiation fantasy fear genre God's Gothic Fiction H. P. Lovecraft Hawthorne Heimert Hell Holy horrific Horror Fiction Horror Film human images imagination Jonathan Edwards King's language literary metaphor metaphysical moral Mountains of Madness myth narrator nightmare nonetheless novel perhaps Poe's poem Puritan reflects religion religious repudiated revelation rhetoric ritual Robert Frost S. T. Joshi Salem Salem's Lot secret sense sermon sexual Sinners society soul speak spiritual Stephen King story Supernatural symbolic tale terror texts theological things tion tradition transcendent transgression Twain University Press unspeakable vampire Winthrop witch witch-hunts witchcraft Wonders words writes York