Forbidden texts: The ambivalence of knowledge and writing in horror fiction from Mary Shelley to Stephen King

My dissertation examines the ways certain works of horror fiction employ a device that I call the Forbidden Text to explore the conflicting attitudes we hold toward the pursuit of knowledge and the act of writing. A Forbidden Text is any piece of writing whose perusal is subject to prohibitions. These prohibitions may range from cursory dismissal to active banning. Forbidden Texts demonstrate that both knowledge and writing may be as dangerous as they are promising.; My work centers on close readings of three texts: Shelley's Frankenstein, H. P. Lovecraft's "The Call of Cthulhu" and Stephen King's It. In Frankenstein, the Forbidden Text with which I am most concerned is Victor's diary, which is briefly referred to twice, but which ultimately disappears from the novel. I interpret this diary as an emblem for forbidden knowledge about the monstrous aspects of self. In Lovecraft's story the Forbidden Text is a queer bas-relief that is related to forces and entities which exist beyond the realm of human understanding. Lovecraft's work thus figures the external universe as a space of impinging horror. In King's novel, the Forbidden Text is an unfinished, unpublished, unauthorized history of the fictional town of Derry, Maine, written by the town's head librarian. This Forbidden Text stands as a figure for the actual past that lurks beneath the pleasant veneer constructed by the official mind-set.; My theoretical framework is primarily based on Sigmund Freud's Totem Taboo, Bruce Kawin's The Mind of the Novel, and Mikhail Bakhtin's Rabelais and his World. Freud's theory of emotional ambivalence allows me to explore how horror fiction's treatment of Forbidden Texts dramatizes the tendency of prohibitions to inflame the very desires they seek to exterminate. Kawin's work on the ways language wrestles with the ineffable supports in my argument that Forbidden Texts are used to suggest insights that cannot actually be put into words. And Bakhtin's emphasis on the conflict between official truths, which seek to establish permanence, and unofficial truths, which celebrate life's fluidity, is particularly helpful in exploring the dual worlds of Lovecraft's and King's fiction.