Danse Macabre (book)

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Danse Macabre

First edition cover
Author	Stephen King
Language	English
Subject	Horror fiction
Publisher	Everest House
Publication date	April 20, 1981
Publication place	United States
Media type	Print (Hardcover and Paperback)
Pages	400
ISBN	978-0-89696-076-3
Followed by	Nightmares in the Sky

Danse Macabre is a 1981 non-fiction book by Stephen King, about horror fiction in print, TV, radio, film and comics, and the influence of contemporary societal fears and anxieties on the genre. When the book was republished King included a new Forenote dated June 1983 (however not all subsequent editions have included this forenote). And when the book was republished on February 23, 2010, it included an additional new forenote in the form of a longer essay (7,700 words) entitled "What's Scary".

Danse Macabre examines the various influences on King's own writing, and important genre texts of the 19th and 20th centuries. Danse Macabre explores the history of the genre as far back as the Victorian era, but primarily focuses on the 1950s to the 1970s (roughly the era covering King's own life at the time of publication). King peppers his book with informal academic insight, discussing archetypes, important authors, common narrative devices, "the psychology of terror", and his key theory of "Dionysian horror".

King's novel The Stand was published in Spanish as La danza de la muerte 'The Dance of Death', which caused some confusion between the two books (A later Spanish edition of this novel was titled Apocalipsis 'Apocalypse'). The same happened in Brazil and Portugal with both countries translating The Stand as "A Dança da Morte", meaning also "The Dance of Death".^[1] Similarly, his 1978 collection of short stories Night Shift was released in France as Danse macabre in 1980. To avoid confusion, the actual "Danse Macabre" essay was given the title "Anatomie de l'horreur" ("An Anatomy of Horror") when it was released in France 14 years later, in 1995.^[2]