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Abstract:

The article explores the evolution of literary horror, and, more precisely, the onto- logy and epistemology of the Gothic in literature up to its neo-Gothic phase. An attempt is made to consider the stages of the transformation of literary horror as a consistent development of the practices of the pre-Gothic (mytho-ritual) and the Gothic to their neo-Gothic implementation in the form of Weird fiction, which has appeared in a variety of genres, hauntological mytho- poetic and the typology of Unheimlich, or uncanny; the last is considered to be one of the main neo-Gothic accomplishments in the works of M.R. James. We are arguing that the entire history of horror (and supernatural horror as its later manifestation) arrived at the era of Modernism, including the previous iterations of the Gothic (horror, terror, the Supernatural, visionary), but also has developed a relatively new phenomenon, which combines Modernist mysticism and phantasmagoria, the ghost story. Its features have been extensively and thoroughly analysed in a short novella by M.R. James, “Oh, Whistle, and I’ll Come to You, My Lad.”

Keywords: the Gothic, the neo-Gothic, horror, hauntology, Unheimlich, Weird fiction, Jamesian ghost story.