1st Edition
The Routledge Companion to Folk Horror
The Routledge Companion to Folk Horror offers a comprehensive guide to this popular genre. It explores its origins, canonical texts and thinkers, the crucial underlying themes of nostalgia and hauntology, and identifies new trends in the field.
Divided into five parts, the first focuses on the history of Folk Horror from medieval texts to the present day. It considers the first wave of contemporary Folk Horror through the films of the ‘unholy trinity’, as well as discussing the influence of ancient gods and early Folk Horror. Part 2 looks at the spaces, landscapes, and cultural relics, which form a central focus for Folk Horror. In Part 3, the contributors examine the rich history of the use of folklore in children’s fiction. The next part discusses recent examples of Folk Horror-infused music and image. Chapters consider the relationship between different genres of music to Folk Horror (such as folk music, black metal, and new wave), sound and performance, comic books, and the Dark Web. Often regarded as British in origin, the final part analyses texts which break this link, as the contributors reveal the larger realms of regional, national, international, and transnational Folk Horror.
Featuring 40 contributions, this authoritative collection brings together leading voices in the field. It is an invaluable resource for students and scholars interested in this vibrant genre and its enduring influence on literature, film, music, and culture.
List of Contributors
Acknowledgments
General Introduction – Robert Edgar and Wayne Johnson
Part I: Origins and Histories
- Christopher Flavin Fear of the World: Folk Horror in Early British Literature
- Brendan Walsh The Early Modern Popular Demonic and the Foundations of Twentieth Century British Folk Horror
- Katy Soar "Banished to woods and a sickly moon": The Old Gods in Folk Horror
- Craig Thomson "I am the writing on the wall, the whisper in the classroom": The Changing Conception of the ‘Folk’ in the Western Folk Horror Tradition
- Darryl Jones M. R. James and Folk Horror
- Miranda Corcoran "Leave Something Witchy": Evolving Representations of Cults and New Religious Movements in Folk Horror
- Alan Smith The spectacle of the uncanny revel: Thomas Hardy’s Mephistophelian Visitants and ‘Folk Provenance’.
- Charlotte Runcie ‘We’re not in the Middle Ages’: Alan Garner’s Folk Horror Medievalism
- Peter Bell Terror in the Landscape: Folk Horror in the Stories of M.R. James
- John Miller Folk Horror, HS2 and the Disenchanted Woods
- David Evans-Powell Mind the Doors! Characterising the London Underground on Screen as a Folk Horror Space
- Beth Kattelman Queer Folk: The Danger of Being Different
- David Sweeney "Out of the dust": Folk Horror and the Urban Wyrd in Too Old to Die Young and Other Works by Nicolas Winding Refn
- Catherine Spooner Meeting the Gorse Mother: Feminist Approaches to Folk Horror in Contemporary British Fiction
- Ruth Heholt Handicrafts of Evil: Nostalgia and the Make-Culture of Folk Horror
- Lauren Stephenson Restoring Relics – (Re)-releasing Antrum (2018) and film as Folk Horror
- Andy Paciorek Yesterday’s Memories of Tomorrow: Nostalgia, Hauntology & Folk Horror
- Diane A. Rodgers Ghosts in the Machine: Folklore and technology onscreen in Ghostwatch (1992) and Host (2020)
- Douglas McNaughton The Pattern Under the Plough: Folk Horror in 1970s British Children’s Television
- Jez Conolly ‘This calm, serene orb’: a personal recollection of the comforting strangeness found in the worlds of Smallfilms
- Jon Towlson ‘To Traumatise Kids for Life’: The Influence of Folk Horror on 1970s Children’s Television
- Bob Fischer That Haunted Feeling: Analogue Memories
- Stephen Brotherstone "Don’t Be Frightened. I Told You We Were Privileged": The British Class System in the Televised Folk Horror of the 1970s
- Dave Lawrence The 4:45 Club: Folk Horror Before Teatime in the 1970s and 1980s
- Julianne Regan The Idyllic Horrific– Field, Farm, Garden, Forest and Machine
- Richard D. Craig "And the devil he came to the farmer at plough" – November, Folk Horror and folk music
- Julian Holloway Sounding Folk Horror and the Strange Rural
- Jason D. Brawn Sounds of Our Past: The electronic music that links Folk Horror and Hauntology
- Joseph S. Norman Even in death: The ‘Folk Horror Chain’ in Black Metal
- Ben Halligan Towards ‘Squire Horror’: Genesis 1972-3
- Barbara Chamberlin Patterns beneath the grid: the haunted spaces of Folk Horror comics
- Max Jokschus From the Fibers, from the Forums, from the Fringe – Folk Horror from the Deep, Dark Web
- Dawn Keetley ‘The dark is here’: The Third Day and Folk Horror’s Anxiety about Birth-rates, Immigration, and Race
- Robert Edgar Hinterlands and SPAs: Folk Horror and Neoliberal Desolation
- Andrew M. Butler "Why Don’t You Go Home?": The Folk Horror Revival in Contemporary Cornish Gothic Films
- Adam Smith Satire and the British Folk Horror Revival
- Matthew Cheeseman English Nationalism, Folklore and Pagans
- Keith McDonald Bound by Elusiveness: Transnational Cinema and Folk Horror
- James Thurgill Strange Permutations, Eerie Dis/locations: On the cultural and geographic specificity of Japanese Folk Horror
- Adam Spellicy "All the little devils are proud of Hell": The First Wave of Australian Folk Horror
Part II: Folk Horror Landscapes and Relics
Part III: Hauntology, Childhood and Nostalgia
Part IV: Sound and Image in Folk Horror
Part V: Regionality, Nationality, Transnationality
Index
Biography
Robert Edgar is Professor of Writing and Popular Culture at York St John University, UK. His publications include The Language of Film, Second Edition (with John Marland and Steven Rawle 2015), Adaptation for Scriptwriters (with John Marland 2019), and Thomas Hardy and the Folk Horror Tradition (with Alan G. Smith and John Marland 2023).
Wayne Johnson is Senior Lecturer in Media and Film Studies at York St John University, UK. He is the co-author of Contemporary Gothic and Horror Film: Transnational Perspectives (with Keith McDonald 2021).
The Best Non-Fiction Book in 2023, RUE MORGUE
'[T]his is everything one could possibly want from a book on this subject. . . . [I]t could be summed up as your definitive academic guide to folk horror – extensive in scope, measured in selection of topics, profound in analysis, serious in approach but accessible to general readership' - Dejan Ognjanovic, Rue Morgue, #216, Jan/Feb 2024.
