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    Folk horror: revival or survival? The genealogy of a sub-genre

    Luckhurst, Roger (2025) Folk horror: revival or survival? The genealogy of a sub-genre. Horror Studies 16 (1), pp. 43-60. ISSN 2040-3275.

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    Abstract

    This article explores one of the roots of the recent folk horror revival in the work of the Victorian anthropologist, Edward Tylor. Tylor’s ‘doctrine of survivals’ was about elements of pre-modern culture and belief persisting out of time into the modern world. It has been argued that this is one of the key sources for the folk horror narrative of modern outsiders venturing into pockets of pre-modern belief. The article excavates the insistent racialization of the ‘survival’ in Tylor’s work and explores whether the folk horror revival in recent years has fully explored this ambiguous inheritance from the intrinsic racial biases of Victorian anthropology and folklore studies.

    Metadata

    Item Type: Article
    School: Birkbeck Faculties and Schools > Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences > School of Creative Arts, Culture and Communication
    Depositing User: Roger Luckhurst
    Date Deposited: 23 Apr 2025 13:28
    Last Modified: 23 Apr 2025 13:28
    URI: https://eprints.bbk.ac.uk/id/eprint/55424

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