Quote:
Originally Posted by scalem X  Why does 'terror' seem to have the whole 17th, 18th century thing around it? |
Bluntly: because the readers and writers who made the distinction tended, on the whole, to be more aware of the subtle gradations of emotion and thought on the written page than we are today, after the entire "kill your darlings" ideas of Hemingway et al. combined with pulps, which often went for the lowest, least literate reader's reaction (and attention span), and then the blunting of our sensibilities by the increasingly graphic nature of film and television and the dumbing-down of the audience (automatically going for the "gross-out" rather than expecting the audience to be able to catch on to subtler points... which eventually becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy).
The writers of that period, especially, were much more given to examining subtleties of thought and emotion, delving into the fine shadings and associations; now, most writers (and readers) go for the simplest, coarsest grade of communication -- it's easier, it's simpler, and it doesn't take much thought, insight, or ability to discriminate. (This is by no means true of all writers or readers; the fact that we have such as Ligotti, Campbell, etc., who have rising or established reputations, proves there's still room for the subtler approach. But it is less prevalent in accepted literary norms than it used to be, where before it was relegated to the literary underbrush such as the penny dreadfuls, shilling shockers, tabloids, pulps, and comic books.)
I'd argue, too (just to be pedantic
) that it's more the late 18th and early 19th centuries, as the 17th didn't see much fiction as such..... But there have been 20th century writers who kept to the older standards and dealt with the subtler, more finely-grained distinctions: Lovecraft, Tryon, Styron, Cabell, Dunsany, to name only a very few. Part of the problem is that, while we have more people reading, the level of literacy (in the sense of being well-informed, educated, having a broader and deeper appreciation of) has fallen. Too often, it's the "make it march" idea, rather than an attempt to truly understand the implications of a thing, what it means or is saying, that predominates... resulting in a much shallower, less emotionally satisfying experience, something lacking the genuine resonance of deep human emotions or experience in favor of shallower entertainment -- fun, but no more emotionally nourishing than a ghost train. As Robert Aickman (himself one of the best modern examples of subtlety in "strange stories" as he described them -- whether ghost stories or otherwise) put it: "Not to be able to phrase things finely, is, in general, not to be able to feel them finely" (
The Attempted Rescue, p. 133).
I'm afraid that far too many on both ends of the creative liaison of writing/reading have become unable to do either.....