A Book of Monsters - Promethean Horror in Modern Literature and Culture

This books traces the rise to prominence in the twentieth-century of a sub-genre of gothic fiction that is, emphatically, a horror of enlightenment rationality rather than gothic darkness, examining post-modern revisions of Modernist "Promethean" tropes in an eclectic range of gothic, fantasy and SF writing. Whether the subject be terror of London's churches in the psychogeographical fiction of Iain Sinclair and Alan Moore, the Orcs in the linguistic fantasies of J.R.R. Tolkien, King Kong, killer-computers, or demon-children in post-war British science-fiction, A Book of Monsters offers illuminating perspectives on the darker recesses of the post-modern imagination, setting out a compelling, and comprehensive, overview on our contemporary unconscious.

About the author

David Ashford is an Assistant Professor of English Literature at the University of Groningen

Product details

• Authors: David Ashford, Ashford David
• Publisher: Manchester University Press
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Release: 20.01.2026
• EAN: 9781526195456
• ISBN: 978-1-5261-9545-6
• No. of pages: 248
• Subjects: Fiction > Narrative literature; Humanities, art, music > Linguistics and literary studies > General and comparative literary studies; Cultural Studies, Gothic, FICTION / Fairy Tales, Folk Tales, Legends & Mythology, FICTION / Occult & Supernatural, PHILOSOPHY / Aesthetics, ARCHITECTURE / Criticism, SOCIAL SCIENCE / Anthropology / Cultural & Social, Horror & ghost stories, Modernism, Philosophy: aesthetics, Myth & legend told as fiction, Art & design styles: Modernist design & Bauhaus, Horror and supernatural fiction, Literary studies: fiction, novelists & prose writers, Literary studies: fiction, novelists and prose writers, Theory of architecture, Fiction: Traditional stories, myths and fairy tales, LITERARY CRITICISM / Novel as Form, FICTION / Horror / General