Review: The Forbidden Body: Sex, Horror, and the Religious Imagination, by Douglas E. Cowan

Abstract

Book Review| May 01 2023 Review: The Forbidden Body: Sex, Horror, and the Religious Imagination, by Douglas E. Cowan The Forbidden Body: Sex, Horror, and the Religious Imagination. By Douglas E. Cowan. New York University Press, 2022. 315 pages. $89.00 hardcover; $30.00 softcover; ebook available. Joseph P. Laycock Joseph P. Laycock Texas State University Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Nova Religio (2023) 26 (4): 118–120. https://doi.org/10.1525/nr.2023.26.4.118 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Tools Icon Tools Get Permissions Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation Joseph P. Laycock; Review: The Forbidden Body: Sex, Horror, and the Religious Imagination, by Douglas E. Cowan. Nova Religio 1 May 2023; 26 (4): 118–120. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/nr.2023.26.4.118 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All ContentNova Religio Search Douglas Cowan has written several books exploring religion and popular culture from a sociological perspective. Two of these––Sacred Terror (2008) and America’s Dark Theologian: The Religious Imagination of Stephen King (2018) explored the connection between horror and the religious imagination. Cowan’s new book builds on this body of scholarship by adding a third element: sex. The result is a challenging book that resists simplistic or reductionistic interpretations of horror texts and instead raises challenging, and sometimes disturbing, questions about the affective relationships between these texts and people who read them. In order to explain what this book is about, it is necessary to break down the triad of elements that it examines. First, The Forbidden Body does not just explore horror, but “the horror mode.” Cowan borrows literary critic David Hartwell’s definition of the horror mode as “the creation of an atmosphere and emotional environment that sparks a transaction... You do not currently have access to this content.