Gavin F. Hurley
How do we evaluate diverse approaches to horror fiction: both old and new, canonical and non-canonical? How do we assess the artistry? Naturally, when assessing horror literature, “literary merit” is often evoked. We can question whether works of fiction have literary merit—and how much literary merit. But what about rhetorical merit? The two do not have to be mutually exclusive. The rhetorical tradition—specifically, rhetorical stylistics—serves as one way to understand the effectiveness of horror literature. It helps us assess how a story’s content cooperates with sentence types and tones. It helps us appreciate various versions of horror narratives—both literary and pulp—that have persisted throughout the centuries.
Three styles
Throughout the classical tradition, rhetoricians have often agreed on three styles within discourse: grand, middle, and plain. Although the classical styles guide spoken discourse, they also translate into writing and storytelling. Various rhetoricians from ancient Greece and Rome—and thereafter—have traced these styles in handbooks. For example, in ancient Greece, Demetrius wrote an entire handbook on style. In it, he traces the strategies and tactics of plain and grand styles—and he expands the two traditional styles by offering two additional styles: elegant and forceful styles. In ancient Rome, grand, middle, and plain styles are famously outlined in the work of statesman/philosopher/rhetorician Marcus Tullius Cicero—specifically, in the Rhetorica ad Herrenium—a work of unknown origin attributed to Cicero. Centuries later in the fourth century CE, Augustine of Hippo—quite familiar with the work of Cicero—also gestures to the styles in On Christian Doctrine, an influential handbook on effective preaching.
Cicero speaking to the senate.
Photo: Cicerone Denuncia Catilina by Cesare Maccari (1888) | Wikimedia Commons
First, let’s consider grand style. In grand style, according to Cicero, every idea is styled in “the most ornate words that can be found for it, whether literal or figurative” (Rhetorica IV.VIII); it implements “smooth and ornate arrangement of impressive words” (IV.VIII). Demetrius additionally notes that grand style uses impressive connectives, word-arrangement, figures of speech, and creative diction to illustrate the subject-matter itself (Sec. 38-113). One might say that, in contrast to minimalism, grand style leans toward maximalism. However, it should not be overdone. Cicero cautions against “swollen style” which tries to be too flowery and uses lofty language that is too ornate for the occasion (IV.X). Similar to Cicero, Demetrius notes that grand style must be tempered. He suggests that it must not become “frigid” or too “weighty” (Sec. 114). After all, over-sophistication can damage a writer’s natural connection with his or her audience.
The second style—middle or mixed style—has been celebrated as an ideal style by several rhetoricians, including Aristotle and Augustine. For instance, in Book I of On Christian Doctrine (De Doctrina Christiana), Augustine appreciated how it can “satisfy hunger by means of its plainer passages and remove boredom by means of its obscurer ones” (2.15). As Augustine endorses, middle style strikes a balance between grand and simple styles. Cicero explains, it is a “somewhat relaxed” style that has “not descended into the most ordinary prose” (IV.IX). Movement is crucial to middle style. It must gracefully flow between alternating plain and grand styles. To this point, Cicero cautions against “slack style.” Slack style neglects the connective tissue when oscillating between plain and grand styles: it “drifts to and fro”—“without joints” (IV.XI).
The third variation—plain or simple style—sits on an opposing end of the spectrum from grand style. Its name can be deceiving. It does not neglect eloquence; rather, its eloquence is found in simplicity. According to Cicero, plain style is “brought down to the most ordinary speech of every day” (IV.X); therefore, its language and sentence structures are straight forward. Yet, it must be careful not to adhere to “meagre style” which ignores the “elegant simplicity of diction” and thus becomes “dry and bloodless” (Cicero IV.XI). Plain style works best with basic content. According to Demetrius, plain style properly conveys “simple subjects which are appropriate to it”; as such, it “must consist of current and usual words throughout” (Sec. 190). What is a primary benefit of simple style? According to Augustine, simple style’s advantage is found in its clarity. It conveys information quickly and satisfies audiences’ “hunger” for meaning (2.14-15).
In respect to simple eloquence, Demetrius adds an additional style, “forceful style,” which can overlap plain style in some ways. And this overlap is important to note. It can drive suspenseful eloquence in horror fiction. His emphasis on force commands sentence brevity and “periodic structure[s]” which are “securely knotted at the end” (Sec. 244) to make sentences “come to a definite stop” (Sec. 245). According to Demetrius, these short sentences facilitate a beautiful kind of force (Sec. 252). To this end, brevity becomes forceful in what is not being said as well as what is being said (Sec. 253). Therefore, in forceful simple style, the negative space between ideas and sentences works rhetorically. The flow between the brief sentences is crucial. Naturally, communicators of forceful style must avoid being “jerky” or “coarse” with their short periodic sentences; after all, they don’t want their writing to sound abrasive (Sec. 302-303).
Rhetorical styles in horror literature
The three, primary style-types are not merely reserved for ancient times. The styles can be found throughout horror literature across the twentieth century. Examples can be found in three horror novels: (1) Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House (1959); (2) Clive Barker’s The Damnation Game (1985); and (3) William Peter Blatty’s The Exorcist (1971).
Grand style: The Haunting of Hill House (1959)
Let’s first analyze grand style in Shirley Jackson’s 1959 neo-Gothic novel The Haunting of Hill House. Jackson speaks to the heart through visceral descriptions and elaborate philosophical content. Her content is matched by her grand style. The novel’s famous first lines unfold as follows:
No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream. Hill House, not sane, stood by itself against its hills, holding darkness within; it had stood so for eighty years and might stand for eighty more. Within, walls continued upright, bricks met neatly, floors were firm, and doors were sensibly shut; silence lay steadily against the wood and stone of Hill House, and whatever walked there, walked alone. (1)
Jackson describes the dreamy house and the possibility of the supernatural. Her style matches the cerebral and affective content. The lofty style helps spark the intellectual imagination about the possible dreams of birds and insects. Moreover, the passage’s weighty descriptions foster dread (“holding darkness”) and isolation (“stood by itself,” “walked alone”). Jackson evokes these feelings through complex sentence structures and connected clauses but also through musical language—specifically, alliterations (“s,” “h,” and “w”) and personifications (“not sane”). Ultimately, her style moves readers toward transcendent perspectives through a lofty style. In other words, the tone feels less materialistic than dreamy, less gritty than imaginative. This tone cooperates with the overall substance of the novel in a way that resembles pioneering Gothic novels such as Ann Radcliffe’s The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794). As in Radcliffe’s Mysteries, characters’ dreamy imaginations guide their impressions of the world around them—including possible supernatural occurrences that characters eventually discover are caused by mundane events or material conditions. The grand style places readers in that fantastical mindset where they both fear and intellectually speculate about supernatural explanations.
Middle style: The Damnation Game (1985)
British horror writer Clive Barker provides an example of middle style at the beginning of his 1985 novel The Damnation Game. Indeed, the novel provides an even split between grand and plain styles:
The air was electric the day the thief crossed the city, certain that tonight, after so many weeks of frustration, he would finally locate the card-player. It was not an easy journey. Eighty-five percent of Warsaw had been leveled, either by the months of mortar bombardment that had preceded the Russian liberation of the city, or by the program of demolition the Nazis had undertaken before their retreat. Several sectors were virtually impassable by vehicle. Mountains of rubble—still nurturing the dead like bulbs ready to sprout as the spring weather warmed—clogged the streets. Even in the more accessible districts the once-elegant facades swooned dangerously, their foundations growling. (3)
This passage displays some informational sentences (sentence 2, 3, 4) written in a straightforward manner. Here, Barker does not choose particularly vivid verbs and instead chooses plainer verbs of “to be.” In the other sentences (sentences 1, 5, 6), he chooses figurative devices (metaphor, personification) and energized verb choices (“clogged,” “sprout,” “swooned”). The movements between the different styles unfold naturally. They read as balanced and not disjointed. Stylistically, this balance speaks to readers’ heads and hearts: it delivers information while also evoking feeling. And this cooperation operates with the content of Barker’s early horror stories. These stories often fuse everyday characters with supernatural/immortal/living dead dimensions. The fusion is shown by Damnation Game’s Joseph Whitehead, a human character who struck a Faustian bargain for success and immorality – a type of transcendence. It is also shown by Mamoulian, a supernatural devil who can transcend space and time, walks the Earth as a human being, and was originally a human being himself. In fact, as a Faustian novel, the entire plot collides the extraordinary metaphysical planes with the everyday physical planes. Through Barker’s substance and style, readers become suspended between fantastical references and everyday references.
Plain style: The Exorcist (1971)
Numerous popular horror writers such as Stephen King, Richard Laymon, and Ira Levin use plain style. William Peter Blatty’s bestselling 1971 novel The Exorcist provides a fitting example of plain style as well. Although Blatty occasionally features a middle style in The Exorcist—sometimes using more figurative language and elaborate structures—the novel adopts plain style throughout much of the narrative. For example, the second paragraph in the prologue begins:
The dig was over. The tell had been sifted, stratum by strum, its entrails examined, tagged and shipped: the beads and pendants; glyptics; phalli; ground-stone mortars stained with ocher; burnished pots. Nothing exceptional. An Assyrian toilet box. And man. The bones of man. (1)
And the second paragraph of chapter one begins:
The house was a rental. Brooding. Tight. A brick colonial gripped by ivy in the Georgetown section of Washington DC. Across the street was a fringe of campus belonging to Georgetown University; to the rear, a sheer embankment plummeting steep to a busy M Street, and just beyond it, the River Potomac. Early on the morning of April 1, the house was quiet. (9)
In both selections, the sentencing is simple and features sentence fragments. From these passages, it may become clear that Blatty began his writing career as a screenplay writer. The plain style with fragments resembles screenplay narration. And specific to these passages (following the advice of Demetrius), Blatty’s simple style cooperates with simple content. Here, Blatty informatively writes to the head, not so much to the heart. Blatty merely describes the findings of a dig in the Prologue and outlines city locations in chapter one. In the prologue selection, he even explicitly notes that the dig’s content involves “Nothing exceptional”—and, accordingly, he writes in a plain manner. Of course, it does not mean that Blatty is not eloquent in his own way. The cadence between fragments, variation between longer plain sentences, and the use of periods alongside commas and semicolons offer stylistic connectives. As such, the passages do not read as “jerky”—and through his specific diction, they do not read as “meagre.”
In addition, Blatty’s style wields narrative power through well-placed white space and dynamic pacing, which propels quicker narrative action and horror/suspense through everyday voice and content. For example, when Chris MacNeil suddenly discovers Regan crying on a shaking bed (83) or when Regan glides into a room “spiderlike” hissing “like a cobra” (126), the abrupt contrast can more aggressively shock readers when fueled by a quicker pace. This acts as another rhetorical advantage of plain/forceful styles.
Concluding remarks
These stylistic differences can clarify a common categorical misunderstanding. Often grand style appears more effective because it is more ornate, visibly complex, and “literary.” But, in fact, all three styles can be eloquent if they engage readers with the substance of the fiction. As the examples indicate, Jackson’s grand style—much like her Gothic literary influences—crafts a wonderful atmosphere of mystery, dread, and otherworldliness. However, plain and middle styles also provoke crucial reader responses.
It seems that a discerning critic of horror literature would celebrate all three styles. After all, the styles engage readers’ heads and hearts in different—but symbiotic—ways. On one hand, the complexities of grand style deeply engage the intellect or “head” which can eventually discomfort the “heart.” On the other hand, grand style’s figurative language and poetical sound can lead to more feeling or sentimentality; consequently, it can engage the head through the heart.
Like grand style, plain style can also offer a symbiotic relationship. Plain style can initially discomfort the heart by actively placing readers in present narrative moments (especially when cultivating suspense with a forceful plain style). These discomforting feelings can eventually push readers to think more deeply. And, as modeled by beginning selections from The Exorcist, plain style can journalistically convey information that may speak to readers’ hearts in later suspenseful scenes.
Overall, various rhetorical styles, their oscillating/overlapping functions, and their locations in the text can help readers evaluate the merits of both canonical and non-canonical horror literature. More popular contemporary fiction such as the work of Blatty and Barker can possess just as much eloquence as what can be consider more “literary” horror fiction; its appearance may be simple, but its functionality can be complex.
In short, the rhetorical perspective can help us to peer into the storytelling communication itself. After all, in effective horror literature, style and substance cooperate to escort audiences toward particular attitudes. To that end, the stylistic sentencing of horror literature—not only the content—can stimulate thinking and feeling in a variety of ways. By examining variations of rhetorical style within horror fiction, we may be able to celebrate pulp horror novels more thoughtfully—and even place them alongside more established horror masterpieces.
Works Cited
Augustine. On Christian Teaching. Translated by R. P. H. Green. Oxford University Press, 2008.
Barker, Clive. The Damnation Game. Berkeley, 1990 [1985].
Blatty, William Peter. The Exorcist. Harper, 2011 [1971].
Cicero, Marcus Tullius. Rhetorica ad Herennium. Translated by Harry Caplan. Harvard University Press, 1954.
Demetrius. On Style. A Greek Critic: Demetrius On Style. Translated and edited by G.M.A. Grube. University of Toronto Press, 1961, pp. 57-129.
Jackson, Shirley. The Haunting of Hill House. Penguin, 2016 [1959].
