A noted British cultural critic takes on some of the strangest works of art from the 20th century and dissects our fascination with the unsettling in popular music, film, and writing
 
What exactly are the Weird and the Eerie? Two closely related but distinct modes, and each possesses its own distinct properties. Both have often been associated with Horror, but this genre alone does not fully encapsulate the pull of the outside and the unknown.

In several essays, Mark Fisher argues that a proper understanding of the human condition requires examination of transitory concepts such as the Weird and the Eerie.

Featuring discussion of the works of: H. P. Lovecraft, H. G. Wells, M.R. James, Christopher Priest, Joan Lindsay, Nigel Kneale, Daphne Du Maurier, Alan Garner and Margaret Atwood, and films by Stanley Kubrick, Jonathan Glazer and Christopher Nolan.

This classic study by the eminent scholar Wilhelm Worringer connects the Gothic style with the civilization that produced the art that defined that period in Western European cultural history.

An examination of the influence of the Bible on Western art and literature and on the Western creative imagination in general. Frye persuasively presents the Bible as a unique text distinct from all other epics and sacred writings. “No one has set forth so clearly, so subtly, or with such cogent energy as Frye the literary aspect of our biblical heritage” (New York Times Book Review). Indices.

Striking out at the conception of criticism as restricted to mere opinion or ritual gesture, Northrop Frye wrote this magisterial work proceeding on the assumption that criticism is a structure of thought and knowledge in its own right. Employing examples of world literature from ancient times to the present, he provides a conceptual framework for the examination of literature. In four brilliant essays on historical, ethical, archetypical, and rhetorical criticism, he applies "scientific" method in an effort to change the character of criticism from the casual to the causal, from the random and intuitive to the systematic.
Harold Bloom contributes a fascinating and highly personal preface that examines Frye's mode of criticism and thought (as opposed to Frye's criticism itself) as being indispensable in the modern literary world.

The essays gathered together in this volume constitute one of the major classics in the study of the literature of the Middle Ages. Specifically, the book deals with the four major schools of Medieval narrative: the Teutonic Epic, the Icelandic Saga, the Chanson de Geste, and the Romance. But Ker's vast background in the field and his analytical and critical skills allow him to range over the whole of Medieval epic and romance with great intelligence.
The introduction quickly and vividly fills in the necessary background on the heroic age, the nature of epic and of romance, romantic mythology, and the three types of epic. The Teutonic Epic, the Icelandic Sagas, the Old French Epic, and Romance and the Old French Romantic Schools are the subjects of the chapters that follow. Within these, Ker discusses the tragic conception, resemblances of themes within each group, epic vs. ballad, fantasy and comedy in the sagas, competition of epic and romance in the 12th century, the contribution of Chrestien of Troyes, the blending of classical with Celtic influences, and dozens of other topics.