Euripides' Bacchae and the Birth of Western Horror

When does horror start? Where did it come from, as a genre?

Conventionally, people who study English literature say that “horror,” as a recognizable and distinct genre, originates somewhere between Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and Bram Stoker’s Dracula. Edgar Allen Poe has a big role to play, too. So, horror is a post-Enlightenment phenomenon, largely of …