The Shape of Fear

Anyone interested in horror fiction, and the relation between late-Victorian literature and science will find much of interest in The Shape of Fear.

~Canadian Literature

Engaging and provocative.

~Henry James Review

Uncommonly learned. Navarette contextualizes nineteenth-century horror in relation to the degenerative prophecies of Victorian science, showing that horror literature does not exist in a vacuum, but conforms to the most sophisticated tendencies of nineteenth-century thought.

~Nina Auerbach

Drawing upon a broad range of literary and scientific texts, Susan Navarette's The Shape of Fear seeks to show how fin-de-siecle horror fiction responds to and expresses anxieties about scientific theories of cultural decline and degeneration.

~Nineteenth-Century Literature

Navarette's book is superb. Readable, intelligent, erudite, and original, The Shape of Fear combines close textual analysis with a larger historical and cultural perspective.

~Regina Barreca

An innovative and engaging work that explores the fascination with both language and the body in Decadent literature and, specifically, in 'fin de siecle' horror stories.

~Rocky Mountain Review

The author provides excellent supporting arguments for her contentions.

~Science Fiction Chronicle

Brings an impressive understanding of the ideas generated by nineteenth-century European biology, geology, anthropology, philology, psychology, and criminology to bear upon the 'literature of horror' by short-story writers in English at the turn of the century.

~South Atlantic Review

Unlike writers of fin de siecle horror, Navarette locates and fills in gaps and silences by offering alternative critical perspectives on known works and by recuperating critically ignored texts.

~Victorian Review

Navarette's book is an informed and informative contribution to the recent surge of critical studies on the myriad ways in which late-Victorian discourses of cultural decay are mirrored in the realm of popular fiction.

~Virginia Quarterly Review