Following his now clich矇 of "...the only thing we have to fear is fear itself," President Franklin D. Roosevelt defined fear as "nameless, unreasoning unjustified terror which paralyzes needed
efforts to convert retreat into advance." Hessel (Spanish graduate instructor, U. at Buffalo) and Huppert (behavioral studies, Monash U., Australia) introduce ten Oxford conference-based
papers. Multidisciplinary contributors examine facets of fear in studies of literature (e.g., Don Quixote's Spanish Baroque era link between horror and laughter); feminized fear (e.g., in the
film Pan's Labyrinth, Edgar Allan Poe's doppleg瓣nger narrative Ligeia); horror films (including Corpse Bride, 2005, and the Ringu film adaptation of Japanese Koji Suzuki's fantasy novels); and
politics and power (as in fundamentalism and terrorism). Annotation 穢2010 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)
