ghost stories as anglo-saxon monopoly
Dec. 11th, 2005 10:53 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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darkling_talesLJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY dfordoom)
In Peter Ackroyd’s book Albion: The Origins of the English Imagination I came cross the following remarkable statement: “It has been calculated that ‘the vast majority of ghost stories (around 98 percent) are in English and roughly 70 percent are written by English men and women’.” He’s quoting the editor of the “Penguin Book of Horror Stories”.
Can this be right? Are ghost stories such an overwhelmingly Anglo-Saxon obsession? I mean, 98 per cent?
I’ve read French ghost stories and I’ve read German ghost stories and I’ve read Japanese ghost stories, and I’m sure I’ve read Russian ghost stories as well.
dfordoom)In Peter Ackroyd’s book Albion: The Origins of the English Imagination I came cross the following remarkable statement: “It has been calculated that ‘the vast majority of ghost stories (around 98 percent) are in English and roughly 70 percent are written by English men and women’.” He’s quoting the editor of the “Penguin Book of Horror Stories”.
Can this be right? Are ghost stories such an overwhelmingly Anglo-Saxon obsession? I mean, 98 per cent?
I’ve read French ghost stories and I’ve read German ghost stories and I’ve read Japanese ghost stories, and I’m sure I’ve read Russian ghost stories as well.
