Maps of Heaven Maps of Hell

From its beginnings in Puritan sermonising to its prominent place in contemporary genre film and fiction, this book traces the use of terror in the American popular imagination. Entering American culture partly by way of religious sanction, it remains an important heart and mind shaping tool. Chapter One Nostalgia and Terror: Holy Ghosts; Chapter Two “Entertaining Satan”: The American Rite or Deviancy; Chapter Three Writing the Unholy: Chanting the God Demonic; Chapter Four The Shape of the Dark: Robert Frost and H. P. Lovecraft; Chapter Five “It Came from Beyond”: The Sacred and the Scary; postscript End Runs: Toward the American Gothic;