Screams Among the Trees: the Creation of a Modern Gothic Horror Through Satanism, Black Metal and Norse Mythology in Adam Nevill’s The Ritual

Abstract

The present thesis aims to study how Adam Nevill’s The Ritual fits the Gothic genre by distinguishing the main themes and its constituent elements of terror and placing them within the context of Fred Botting’s Gothic. The main purpose of this thesis is to study how Adam Nevill has created his atmosphere of terror and therefore an original version of Gothic horror by combining elements not found traditionally in the Gothic genre. The main body of this thesis is divided into an introduction, a literature review, an analysis of Gothic elements in Nevill’s novel and a conclusion. The introduction gives a short overview of the author and what has influenced his writing, the general reception of the novel, a brief description of the structure of the thesis at hand, and finally a summary of the novel. The literature review provides the reader with a theoretical background and is divided into five subsections. The first subsection focuses on providing a theoretical overview of the Gothic genre and its many elements through Fred Botting’s Gothic. The second subsection gives a general overview of the sublime and the methods of its creation in literature based on Edmund Burke’s studies on the sublime. The third subsection provides the reader with a brief history and symbolism of Satanism. The fourth subsection gives an overview of popular bands, figures and activities associated with Black Metal. The fifth subsection provides information on the legends and traditions of Norse mythology. The second section analyses Adam Nevill’s The Ritual in light of the theoretical information provided in the literature review and its subsections correspond to the ones in the literature review. The main body of the thesis ends with a conclusion, condensing the main findings from the whole thesis into a summary. The abstract in Estonian will be provided at the end of the thesis in the résumé