By L. Marie Wood

Bram Stoker Award-winning author, professor, and horror scholar Dr. Lisa Wood (also known by pen name L. Marie Wood) and founder of the Speculative Fiction Academy, invites us to broaden our approach to literary criticism with a new theoretical framework for examining horror.

Drawing on the deeper philosophical and structural dimensions of storytelling would encourage as readers, writers, and critics to engage with horror as literature worthy of rigorous analysis and thoughtful interpretation in meaningful academic discourse.

Because there’s considerably more to horror than whether it made you sleep with the lights on.

---

An Introduction by the Author

I never considered myself an academic.

I’ve been an author for a long time and made many mistakes along the way. I enjoy helping people avoid those pitfalls. I’ve learned a thing or two about voice, so I enjoy helping people find theirs. I like the creativity of unique expression and the freedom it brings, so I embody and encourage that. But an academic… one who pours over tomes to actively engage in comparison, in logical exchange, and then sit down to write about it in words that one may need a dictionary handy to understand? No. I never thought that was my bailiwick and still don’t.

But…

I readily acknowledge that words have something to say and that sometimes a listener coming from a different vantage point than the others can consume the message easier. I recognize the categorical differences between intention and deduction and enjoy the spaces in between because this is where the beauty of prose shines. Maybe that is due to my film background, screenwriter being one of the many hats I’ve worn since choosing Film Production as my undergraduate major. Or perhaps that perspective is because of the subgenre of horror that I write. Psychological horror entices readers to ask more questions than can be answered in the first reading of a text. It requires quiet consideration and analytical discourse, and even then there will be something that escapes definition, something that waits for you to sleep so it can come out to play. My mind has worked like this since I was a child; my very first writing was about a woman who endured terrible things only to wake up and find it was all a dream… or was it…?

Yes, I’ve always listened to what the words say, and what they don’t.

Literary theory and the frameworks that scholars use to analyze text gets at that very thing: listening to what the words are saying beneath it all. I thought, initially, that I would find a home in that space, would find the perfect match for the work I enjoyed reading and writing, the speculative and the psychological, the cross-genre and the slipstream. I thought I would gain insight into the author’s motivations, gain clarity on some of the more obscure texts, maybe even discover connections that others missed. Instead, I found myself uncovering contradictions relating the horror genre’s texts to conventional frameworks used on contemporary and canonical literary texts. Even gothic horror was treated with less depth when many modern frameworks were applied.

Existential Critical Theory was my ‘Aha!’ moment.

I’ve been in school for a long time and have an alphabet soup of acronyms behind my name, but during all the study that went into earning my MA in English and Creative Writing, my MFA in Creative Writing that has a focus in Speculative Fiction, my PhD in English, and my PhD in Creative Writing (yes… there are two PhDs, it’s a loooong story for another day), I did not find a theoretical framework that could adequately provide depth of purpose to an analysis of Quietus by Vivian Schilling and doing similar heavy lifting with We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson. I did not find a literary theory that could explain what was at play beneath the obvious motivations in “Berenice” by Edgar Allan Poe and not fall apart under scrutiny when applied to a modern text like Model Home by Rivers Solomon. Existing theoretical frameworks sought to answer questions that the texts were not asking, fashioning diagnoses to fit – the proverbial square peg in a round hole. This, coupled with the battle between literary fiction and genre fiction and the legitimacy questions that arise within it, made me sad for the genre I loved, the genre that brought classic tales that have not, heretofore, made it onto the list of universal literary canons to be taught in classes as standards of prose. It stung. Until I realized I had been thinking about it all wrong.

I came up with a framework that is both ontologically and epistemologically sound (here’s some of that academic-speak for you!) and I present it to you here. I am honored to debut this work here at NightTide Magazine, the premier venue for criticism and cultural discussion related to the horror genre. As an African American female creative, this is a poignant moment of breaking ground in a conversation that did not include all corners of speculative fiction before. That I am able to publish this critical theoretical framework for the first time in a space like this is important to the discussion around horror: past, present, and future.

I never considered myself an academic… until I did.

I present Existential Critical Theory (ECT).

Dr. Lisa Wood

(L. Marie Wood)

---

Thesis:

Existential Critical Theory (ECT) analyzes texts by determining what occurs when the systems that codify meaning are activated, constrained, or collapsed, rather than interpreting the meaning itself.

Initially created as a literary theory to analyze horror fiction, ECT can be applied to many works to provide an alternate criticism, specifically because it explores when reality and knowledge become structurally unsustainable as well as the characters’ response to it.

Definition:

Existential Critical Theory examines how texts construct, sustain, or destabilize the systems that produce reality, knowledge, and meaning. Systems within ECT are defined as structures of knowledge, existence, and causality, including rules, historical context, societal norms, and alternate realities. ECT explores the result when these systems become unstable, asking the question, ‘what happens if structure itself fails?’ The baseline posits that existence simply is, for no specific reason nor to achieve a specific outcome, as articulated through the six pillars. Centering the individual as the core around which purpose and result orbit allows for a view of literature that sits at the intersection of hedonism and absurdism. In so doing, ECT illuminates cosmic horror elements, particularly the fear of the unknown, as a complement to Cohen’s Seven Theses (Monster Theory).

The six pillars of ECT center around questions:

Isolation

• a. Are we alone in the world?
• b. Is there a governing authority or guiding force?

Freedom/Control

• a. Is there a guide for behavior or do we have the freedom of choice?
• b. Is there retribution for a perceived wrong choice?
• c. Does freedom loosen restraints – allowing them to act/not act on impulses?
• d. Is control false?
• e. Is the individual the one in control, or is that simply a mental construct?

Meaninglessness

• a. What purpose does one have in existence (what contribution to the world or accomplishments)?
• b. Is life purposefully an inherently meaningless (Nihilism)
• c. Death
• d. Is mortal death also spiritual or energy death?
• e. Can meaning be derived by death?
• f. Is death the cessation of existence, or is there additional enlightenment?
• g. What happens after mortal death? (Fear of the unknown)

Destination/Result

• a. Importance of the journey
• b. Does the progression of the journey stabilize meaning?

Psychic Awareness (percieve/interpret/misinterpret)

• a. Is there a psychic plane where truths are uncovered?
• b. Is awareness keener or is it psychosis? (reality misinterpreted)

^{*The distinctions (Death, Isolation, Freedom, Meaninglessness) are rooted specifically in the concepts of existentialism and absurdism. Applying them to text will provide a viewpoint previously untouched by traditional literary theories.}

Existential Critical Theory can be applied by utilizing four dynamic tenets:

• Structural Disintegration, indicating collapse
• Structural Separation, indicating isolation and operating independently
• Structural Oversaturation, indicating a construct where rules are so stringent and defined as to render themselves meaningless
• Structural Fluidity, whereby texts move between dynamic tenets, allowing for restructuring under rigor and pressure.

Position

Unlike modern theoretical frameworks like psychoanalytic theory, which focuses on the impact of unconscious thought, and post-structuralism theory, which challenges singular contexts, ECT diagnoses the conditions that make structure unsustainable, using the six pillars to examine the systems that produce instability and their effects.

Distinction

ECT examines the conditions under which the aforementioned systems (knowledge, existence, and causality) become unstable and analyzes the outcomes of failure, collapse, restructuring. In contrast, other theoretical frameworks analyze the meaning of the systems themselves.

ECT is most effective in its approach to analyzing speculative texts where the supernatural and realistic converge. This includes:

• Psychological horror
• Slipstream
• Quiet Horror
• Cosmic Horror
• Bizarro
• Gothic Horror
• Alternate Reality

ECT examines what happens when structure itself is unsustainable.