Folk Gothic

Dawn Keetley

doi:10.1017/9781009160902

Series: Elements in the Gothic

Folk Gothic

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 14 December 2023

Dawn Keetley

Summary

Folk Gothic begins with the assertion that a significant part of what has been categorised as folk horror is more accurately and usefully labelled as Folk Gothic. Through the modifier 'folk', Folk Gothic obviously shares with folk horror its deployment (and frequent fabrication) of diegetic folklore. Folk Gothic does not share, however, folk horror's incarnate monsters, its forward impetus across spatial and ontological boundaries and the shock and repulsion elicited through its bodily violence. The author argues that the Folk Gothic as a literary, televisual and cinematic formation is defined by particular temporal and spatial structures that serve to forge distinctly nonhuman stories. In emphasising these temporal and spatial structures – not literal 'folk' and 'monsters' – the Folk Gothic tells stories that foreground land and 'things', consequently loosening the grip of anthropocentrism.

Element contents

Summary
References

Get access

Keywords

Gothic folk horror British literature film and television horror

Type: Element
Information: Series: Elements in the Gothic

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009160902 [Opens in a new window]

Online ISBN: 9781009160902

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Print publication: 01 February 2024

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Bibliography

Aaron, Jane, Welsh Gothic (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2013).Google Scholar

Abrahams, Roger D., ‘Phantoms of Romantic Nationalism in Folkloristics’, The Journal of American Folklore, 106:419 (Winter 1993): 3–37.Google Scholar

Aguirre, Manuel, ‘Gothic Fiction and Folk-Narrative Structure: The Case of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein’, Gothic Studies, 15:2 (November 2013): 1–18.Google Scholar

Aldana Reyes, Xavier, Gothic Cinema (New York: Routledge, 2020).Google Scholar

Altman, Rick, The American Musical Film (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1987).Google Scholar

Baldick, Chris, ‘Introduction’, in Baldick, Chris (ed.), The Oxford Book of Gothic Tales (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), pp. xi – xxiii.Google Scholar

Ben-Amos, Dan, ‘Toward a Definition of Folklore in Context’, in Paredes, Américo and Bauman, Richard (eds.), Toward New Perspectives in Folklore (1972; Bloomington, IN: Trickster Press, 2000), pp. 3–19.Google Scholar

Bennett, Jane, Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2010).Google Scholar

Benson, Edward Frederic, ‘The Flint Knife’, in Ashley, Mike (ed.), The Outcast and Other Dark Tales by E. F. Benson (London: The British Library, 2020), pp. 209–23.Google Scholar

Benson, Edward Frederic, ‘The Temple’, in Night Terrors: The Ghost Stories of E. F. Benson (Ware: Wordsworth Editions, 2012), pp. 517–31.Google Scholar

Blackwood, Algernon, ‘Ancient Sorceries’, in Joshi, S. T. (ed.), Ancient Sorceries and Other Weird Tales (New York: Penguin, 2002), pp. 87–130.Google Scholar

Botting, Fred, ‘Dark Materialism: Gothic Objects, Commodities and Things’, in Hogle, Jerrold E. and Miles, Robert (eds.), The Gothic and Theory: An Edinburgh Companion (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2019), pp. 240–59.Google Scholar

Botting, Fred, Gothic (New York: Routledge, 1996).Google Scholar

Bronner, Simon J., Folklore: The Basics (New York: Routledge, 2017).Google Scholar

Bronner, Simon J., (ed.), The Meaning of Folklore: The Analytical Essays of Alan Dundes (Logan, UT: Utah State University Press, 2007).Google Scholar

Brown, Bill, ‘The Tyranny of Things (Trivia in Karl Marx and Mark Twain)’, Critical Inquiry, 28:2 (Winter 2002): 442–69.Google Scholar

Brown, Bill, ‘Thing Theory’, Critical Inquiry, 28:1 (Autumn 2001): 1–22.Google Scholar

Budzinski, Nathaniel, ‘“It’s All an Indian Burial Ground”: Folk Horror Cinema’s Reckoning with Colonial Violence’, ArtReview, 10 December 2021, https://artreview.com/its-all-an-indian-burial-ground-folk-horror-cinema-reckoning-with-colonial-violence/.Google Scholar

Carroll, Noël, The Philosophy of Horror; or, Paradoxes of the Heart (New York: Routledge, 1990).Google Scholar

Chambers, Jamie, ‘Troubling Folk Horror: Exoticism, Metonymy, and Solipsism in the “Unholy Trinity” and Beyond’, JCMS: Journal of Cinema and Media Studies, 61:2 (Winter 2022): 9–34.Google Scholar

Clasen, Mathias, Why Horror Seduces (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017).Google Scholar

Cohen, Jeffrey Jerome, Stone: An Ecology of the Inhuman (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2015).Google Scholar

Cowdell, Paul, ‘“Practising Witchcraft Myself during the Filming”: Folk Horror, Folklore, and the Folkloresque’, Western Folklore, 78:4 (Fall 2019): 295–326.Google Scholar

The Descent, directed by Neil Marshall (Celador Films, 2005).Google Scholar

Dundes, Alan, Interpreting Folklore (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1980).Google Scholar

Estok, Simon C., ‘Theorising the EcoGothic’, Gothic Nature, 1 (2019): 34–53.Google Scholar

Estok, Simon C., The Ecophobia Hypothesis (New York: Routledge, 2018).Google Scholar

The Feast, directed by Lee Haven Jones (Sgrech, 2021).Google Scholar

Fisher, Mark, The Weird and the Eerie (London: Repeater Books, 2016).Google Scholar

Foster, Michael Dylan, and Tolbert, Jeffrey A. (eds.), The Folkloresque: Reframing Folklore in a Popular Culture World (Logan, UT: Utah State University Press, 2015).Google Scholar

Frampton, Kenneth, ‘Towards a Critical Regionalism: Six Points for an Architecture of Resistance’, in Foster, Hal (ed.), The Anti-Aesthetic: Essays on Postmodern Culture (Port Townsend, WA: Bay Press, 1983), pp. 16–30.Google Scholar

Freeland, Cynthia, ‘Horror and Art-Dread’, in Prince, Stephen (ed.), The Horror Film (New York: Routledge, 2004), pp. 189–205.Google Scholar

Garner, Alan, The Owl Service (1967; New York: HarperCollins, 2017).Google Scholar

Gelder, Ken, Reading the Vampire (New York: Routledge, 1994).Google Scholar

Goodhart, David, The Road to Somewhere: The Populist Revolt and the Future of Politics (London: Hurst, 2017).Google Scholar

The Green Inferno, directed by Eli Roth (Worldview Entertainment, 2013).Google Scholar

Hart, Carina, ‘Gothic Folklore and Fairy Tale: Negative Nostalgia’, Gothic Studies, 22:1 (2020): 1–13.Google Scholar

Heholt, Ruth, ‘Sunny Landscapes, Dark Visions: E. F. Benson’s Weird Domestic Folk Horror’, in Keetley, Dawn and Heholt, Ruth (eds.), Folk Horror: New Global Pathways (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2023), pp. 145–65.Google Scholar

In the Earth, directed by Ben Wheatley (Rook Films, 2021).Google Scholar

Joy, Eileen A., ‘Weird Reading’, Speculations: A Journal of Speculative Realism, 4 (2013): 28–34.Google Scholar

Keetley, Dawn, ‘Defining Folk Horror’, Revenant: Critical and Creative Studies of the Supernatural, 5 (March 2020): 1–32.Google Scholar

Keetley, Dawn, ‘Dislodged Anthropocentrism and Ecological Critique in Folk Horror: From “Children of the Corn” and The Wicker Man to “In the Tall Grass” and Children of the Stones’, Gothic Nature, 2 (Winter 2021): 13–36.Google Scholar

Keetley, Dawn, ‘Sacrifice Zones in Appalachian Folk Horror’, in Keetley, Dawn and Heholt, Ruth (eds.), Folk Horror: New Global Pathways (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2023), pp. 245–61.Google Scholar

Keetley, Dawn, ‘True Detective’s Folk Gothic’, in Edwards, Justin, Graulund, Rune and Höglund, Johan (eds.), Dark Scenes from Damaged Earth: The Gothic Anthropocene (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2022), pp. 130–50.Google Scholar

Keetley, Dawn, and Heholt, Ruth (eds.), Folk Horror: New Global Pathways (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2023).Google Scholar

Koven, Mikel J., Film, Folklore, and Urban Legends (Lanham, MD: The Scarecrow Press, 2008).Google Scholar

Malafouris, Lambros, How Things Shape the Mind: A Theory of Material Engagement (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2013).Google Scholar

McDonald, Keith, and Johnson, Wayne, Contemporary Gothic and Horror Film (London: Anthem Press, 2021).Google Scholar

McDowell, Stacey, ‘Folklore’, in Hughes, William, Punter, David and Smith, Andrew (eds.), The Encyclopedia of the Gothic (Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2016), pp. 252–4.Google Scholar

Midsommar, directed by Ari Aster (Square Peg, 2019).Google Scholar

Morton, Timothy, The Ecological Thought (Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press, 2010).Google Scholar

Morton, Timothy, ‘Waking up inside an Object: The Subject of Ecology’, English Language Notes, 49:2 (Fall / Winter 2011): 183–91.Google Scholar

Mullen, Lisa, Mid-Century Gothic: The Uncanny Objects of Modernity in British Literature and Culture after the Second World War (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2019).Google Scholar

Murphy, Bernice M., ‘Folk Horror’, in Shapiro, Stephen and Storey, Mark (eds.), The Cambridge Companion to American Horror (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2022), pp. 139–53.Google Scholar

Neale, Steve, Genre and Hollywood (New York: Routledge, 2000).Google Scholar

Newland, Paul, ‘Folk Horror and the Contemporary Cult of British Rural Landscape: The Case of Blood on Satan’s Claw’, in Newland, Paul (ed.), British Landscapes on Film (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2016), pp. 162–79.Google Scholar

Oring, Elliott, ‘On the Concepts of Folklore’, in Oring, Elliott (ed.), Folk Groups and Folklore Genres: An Introduction (Logan, UT: Utah State University Press, 1986), pp. 1–22.Google Scholar

The Owl Service, directed by Peter Plummer (ITV, 1969–70).Google Scholar

Parker, Elizabeth, The Forest and the EcoGothic: The Deep Dark Woods in the Popular Imagination (New York: Palgrave, 2020).Google Scholar

Pet Sematary, directed by Mary Lambert (Paramount, 1989).Google Scholar

The Ritual, directed by David Bruckner (The Imaginarium, 2017).Google Scholar

Scott, Eleanor, ‘Randalls Round’, in Worth, Aaron (ed.), Randalls Round: Nine Nightmares (London: The British Library, 2021), pp. 21–37.Google Scholar

Scovell, Adam, Folk Horror: Hours Dreadful and Things Strange (Leighton Buzzard: Auteur, 2017).Google Scholar

Stephenson, Barry, Ritual: A Very Short Introduction (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015).Google Scholar

Thurgill, James, ‘The Fear of the Folk: On Topophobia and the Horror of Rural Landscapes’, Revenant: Critical and Creative Studies of the Supernatural, 5 (2020): 33–56.Google Scholar

Toelken, Barre, The Dynamics of Folklore (Logan, UT: Utah State University Press, 1996).Google Scholar

Tolbert, Jeffrey A., ‘The Frightening Folk: An Introduction to the Folkloresque in Horror’, in Keetley, Dawn and Heholt, Ruth (eds.), Folk Horror: New Global Pathways (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2023), pp. 25–41.Google Scholar

Veracini, Lorenzo, Settler Colonialism: A Theoretical Overview (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010).Google Scholar

Vieira, Mark A., Hollywood Horror: From Gothic to Cosmic (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 2003).Google Scholar

Walsham, Alexandra, The Reformation of the Landscape: Religion, Identity, and Memory in Early Modern Britain and Ireland (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011).Google Scholar

Weinstock, Jeffrey Andrew, Gothic Things: Dark Enchantment and Anthropocene Anxiety (New York: Fordham University Press, 2023).Google Scholar

Wood, Robin, Hollywood from Vietnam to Reagan (New York: Columbia University Press, 1986).Google Scholar

Woodlands Dark and Days Bewitched: A History of Folk Horror, directed by Kier-La Janisse (Severin Films, 2021).Google Scholar

Element contents

Folk Gothic

Summary

Keywords

Access options

Bibliography

Save element to Kindle

Save element to Dropbox

Save element to Google Drive