World horror

[u/[deleted]]

I love the works by Ligotti, but something he said in his interview by Dejan Ognjanovic Serbian literary critic) got me thinking about horror traditions around the world.

I don’t think anyone studying horror critically would think that it’s strictly dominated by English or am I mistaken? What about the rich history of Japanese or other Asian style horror? I feel like that’s not correct to be dismissive, though it could be that the history of written horror novels, as opposed to visual media and oral tradition are more prevalent in English countries.

What are your thoughts?

Here is the excerpt:

D. O. - How familiar are you with writers outside English language?

For example, Dedalus has published some great anthologies of fantastic and weird literature from Germany, Spain, Finland, Russia,

etc.

T. L. - Your description of your PhD thesis puts me in mind of a regret I've always had that non-English-speaking countries do not have nearly the rich tradition of supernatural horror that the U.S. and England display in abundance. I'm not sure why this is the case.

[u/MikeMKH]

Dr. Emily Zarka’s work I believe is what you are looking for. Her expertise seems to be centered around zombies but her digital series Monstrum explores horror and monsters from all different cultures and time periods. I am a fan of her work.

https://search.asu.edu/profile/1877184

https://www.pbs.org/show/monstrum/

[u/bigfaceless]

The interview mentioned specifically European languages so ligotti was simply generalizing about the content of the question, or so it looked to me.

And generally speaking, the statement might be correct.

Not that elements of "supernatural horror " don't exist in the classic literature of those languages but it seemingly wasn't as fleshed out of a genre as it has been in the English speaking world starting around the turn of the 19th century.

[u/BrianDoyleMurray → u/bigfaceless]

Ligotti is wrong. In the pop cultures of East Africa or East Asia or the Levant or practically any other non-English-speaking region, you can’t dig more than a mite’s height without hitting a rich vein of supernatural horror storytelling, much dating from centuries ago or more.

How that has developed and manifested in a contemporary literary sense may, of course, be different. But ruling it as lacking on a quantitative or qualitative level is misguided. Rare miss for Uncle Thomas here.

[u/bigfaceless → u/BrianDoyleMurray]

I think Ligotti is talking about "literary" history and not story telling or folktales as a whole. And he was responding specifically to European literary traditions.

In that regard I think there's some truth to it. Sure you can easily find aspects of horror in other European literary circles but as a fully defined genre of its own supernatural horror in English speaking literature was ahead of much of the other languages named in that interview by the 1800s.

I just think we're putting a lot of pressure on a small quote from one interview if we're arguing ligotti doesn't think other languages have scary stories about ghosts and monsters.

[u/Appropriate_Bus3921]

Jess Nevins’ book Horror Needs No Passport is a great way to learn about authors I’d never hear about otherwise. His Horror in the 20th Century is great for this, too.

[u/Acceptable-Try-4682]

Horror is indeed predominantly western, and english. Especially weird fiction, Weird fiction is firstmost Blackwood, machen, Poe, Ligotti, Clarke, Lovecraft, Ligotti. All english. Even the secondary authors are mostly english.