The Christian Humanist Podcast, Episode #16.1

Another Gilmour-less episode. It may be until tomorrow before it gets added to iTunes, etc. I’m sure you’ll recognize the theme music.

General Introduction
– No Nathan
– What’s on the blog?

Our Emotionally Scarring Experiences
– The Shining haunts Michial’s dreams
– Slasher movies
– Beetlejuice and a man in a yellow wolf suit
– Toy monkeys
– Why dolls are so scary
– FREDDY KREUGER!!!!

Ancient Horror
– What Nathan was going to talk about
– Monsters vs. monster-slayers
– Were these supposed to be scary?
– Lilith
– Scandinavian sagas
– Skipping Renaissance drama

English Gothic
– Horace Walpole
– A list of gothic conventions

American Gothic
– Charles Brockden Brown
– Ditching the castle
– Why Wieland is a failure
– Pseudo-science in Poe and Hawthorne
– The difference between Hawthorne and Poe
– “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” and the folk legend

Frankenstein and Dracula
– David clarifies
– Scientific anxiety
– Does Frankenstein still resonate with us?
– Dracula and the Victorian nightmare of devolution
– Why Dracula is cooler than Edward Cullen
– Vampiric sexuality

20^th-Century Horror and “Weird Fiction”
– Kafka as pseudo-horror
– Crazy worlds and paranoia
– H.P. Lovecraft
– Existential horror
– “Dover Beach” as horror poem

Movies and Television
– What film does that literature can’t do
– The amorphous and the concrete
– The Twilight Zone
– The X-Files and its real-world grounding
– Jaws as Enuma Elish
– Michial gets very graphic

Why Do We Love Horror?
– Katharsis
– Making anxiety into fear
– Facing your fear
– Corruption of childhood

The Christian Response
– A spirit of fear?
– Didactic purposes
– The Christian and torture porn
– Analyzing the Pig People

BIBLIOGRAPHY
Aristotle. Poetics. Trans. Malcolm Heath. New York: Penguin, 1997.

Arnold, Matthew. “Dover Beach.” The Poems of Matthew Arnold. Boston: Adamant Media, 2005.

Beowulf: A New Verse Translation. Trans. Seamus Heaney. New York: Norton, 2001.

Brown, Charles Brockden. Edgar Huntly; or, Memoirs of a Sleep-Walker. Kent, Oh.: Kent State UP, 1987.

—. Wieland; or, the Transformation, Together with Memoirs of Carwin the Biloquist. San Diego: Harcourt Brace, 1926.

Eirik the Red and Other Icelandic Sagas. Trans. Gwyn Jones. New York: Oxford UP, 2009.

The Epic of Gilgamesh: A New Translation. Trans. Andrew George. New York: Penguin, 1999.

Enuma Elish: The Seven Tablets of the History of Creation. Trans. L.W. King. New York: FQ Classics, 2007.

Hawthorne, Nathaniel. “The Birthmark.” Hawthorne’s Short Stories. Ed. Newton Arvin. New York: Knopf, 1946. 147-164.

—. The Blithedale Romance. New York: Norton, 1978.

—. “Rappacini’s Daughter.” Hawthorne’s Short Stories. Ed. Newton Arvin. New York: Knopf, 1946. 179-209.

Irving, Washington. “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.” New York: Signet, 1981. 329-360.

Kafka, Franz. The Castle. Trans. Anthea Bell. New York: Oxford UP, 2009.

—. “In the Penal Colony.” Trans. Willa and Edwin Muir. The Complete Stories. Ed. Nahum N. Glazer. New York: Schocken, 1971. 140-167.

—. “The Metamorphosis.” Trans. Willa and Edwin Muir. The Complete Stories. Ed. Nahum N. Glazer. New York: Schocken, 1971. 89-139.

King, Stephen. The Shining. New York: Pocket, 2002.

Lovecraft, H.P. Tales. New York: Library of America, 2005.

Meyer, Stephanie. Twilight. New York: Little, Brown, 2006.

Poe, Edgar Allan. “The Black Cat.” Poetry, Tales, and Selected Essays. Ed. Patrick F. Quinn. New York: Library of America, 1996. 597-606.

—. “The Imp of the Perverse.” Poetry, Tales, and Selected Essays. Ed. Patrick F. Quinn. New York: Library of America, 1996. 826-832.

—. “The Tell-Tale Heart.” Poetry, Tales, and Selected Essays. Ed. Patrick F. Quinn. New York: Library of America, 1996. 555-559.

Shelley, Mary. Frankenstein. New York: Penguin, 2003.

Walpole, Horace. The Castle of Otranto: A Gothic Story. New York: Oxford UP, 2009.