History of american horror literature essay.
The horror genre has ancient origins with roots in folklore and religious traditions, focusing on death, the afterlife, evil, the demonic and the principle of the thing embodied in the person. These were manifested in stories of beings such as demons, witches, vampires, werewolves and ghosts.

The Study of American Literature: A View from the Hill. WILLIAM C. SPENGEMANN. My topic this afternoon is the history of American Literature. By that, I don't mean the literature that Americans have written since Americans first existed-whether that is understood to be 1776, or 1607, or 1492, or the dawn of the Cenozoic era.

Edgar Allan Poe, born in Boston, Massachusetts in 1809, lived a life filled with tragedy. Poe was an American writer, considered part of the Romantic Movement, in the sub-genre of Dark Romanticism.He became an accomplished poet, short story writer, editor, and literary critic, and gained worldwide fame for his dark, macabre tales of horror, practically inventing the genre of Gothic Literature.

However, besides providing entertainment, American horror movies reflect societal fears during the time of its creation. From the moral horrors of the 1920s, to the alien invader ’50s and paranormal ’80s, each decade has a defining horror sub genre that shows the evolution of fear through the 20th century.

American literature as a whole is the written literary work, and the new England colonies were the center of early American literature. American drama attained international status only in the 1920s and 1930s, with the works of Eugene O’Neil, who won four Pulitzer prizes and the Noble prize.

In studying for a degree in History and American Studies, you will gain an understanding of the factors that have shaped and changed the modern world. The programme is global in its nature, but you will acquire a particularly deep understanding of US history, politics, culture and society.

Although anyone who has watched the Freak Show season of American Horror Story can attest that the American Horror Story universe takes place within a different timeline than the one its viewers occupy, this does not prevent the show from using what literary critic William T. Andrews refers to in his essay “The Novelization of Voice in Early African American Narrative” as “fictive voice.