Horror Novel
A horror novel is a literary genre that aims to evoke fear, terror, and suspense in readers. It often features supernatural elements, psychological horror, or gruesome and macabre themes. Horror novels can explore the darker aspects of human nature and often use suspenseful storytelling to create a sense of unease and dread in the reader.
6 Key excerpts on "Horror Novel"
eBook - ePubFrankenstein by Mary Shelley
A Story Grid Masterworks Analysis Guide
- Maya Rushing Walker, Shawn Coyne, Leslie Watts(Authors)
- 2020(Publication Date)
- Story Grid Publishing LLC(Publisher)
...WHAT IS THE HORROR GENRE? So what, exactly, is horror ? I mean this both for purposes of the experience and in terms of the literary genre. Let’s start with the definition of Horror as a literary genre. In The Four Core Framework, Shawn Coyne writes: “The Horror genre answers the primal question, ‘How do we secure and maintain the safety of our lives, our homes, and our beliefs when we are victimized by the manifestation of our greatest fears?’” Story Grid’s Four Core Framework is a tool to help us understand the experience readers of the twelve content genres expect to have. Each genre explores a problem related to our core needs, which are the basic human requirements we have to survive and thrive in the world. These correspond to psychologist Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, and for Horror, this is safety. From the need for safety, we can describe the protagonist’s state or condition at any given point in the story along a spectrum of universal human value. The core value in a Horror story spans damnation, or a fate worse than death, on the far negative side and life on the far positive end, with death, unconsciousness, and many other gradations of human experience in between. We’ll unpack this—gingerly—as we go along. Horror as a genre represents for us (as readers and as humans) the most terrifying possibilities in this world of ours. It’s the most basic response to our nervous questioning of the Universe. “What if this could happen?” we ask. The response of the Horror genre is always, “It can, and much worse.” These stories evoke the core emotion of fear in us, particularly in a special moment in the story called the core event. In the Horror genre, we call this the victim at the mercy of the monster scene, and the reader is expecting this climactic moment from the time they begin reading. We seek out Horror stories for this feeling, for more than just thrills and chills...
eBook - ePubThe Philosophy of Horror
Or, Paradoxes of the Heart
- Noel Carroll(Author)
- 2003(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...1 The Nature of Horror The Definition of Horror Preliminaries The purpose of this book is to develop a theory of horror, which is conceived to be a genre that crosses numerous artforms and media. The type of horror to be explored here is that associated with reading something like Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, Algernon Blackwood’s “Ancient Sorceries,” Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, H.P. Lovecraft’s “The Dunwich Horror,” Stephen King’s Pet Sematary, or Clive Barker’s Damnation Game; and it is also associated with seeing something like the Hamilton Deane and John Balderston stage version of Dracula, movies such as James Whale’s Bride of Frankenstein, Ridley Scott’s Alien, and George Romero’s Dawn of the Dead, ballets like Michael Uthoff s version of Coppelia, and operas/musicals like Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Phantom of the Opera. The relevant sort of horror can also be found in fine art, as in the work of Goya or H.R.Giger, in radio programs such as the Inner Sanctum and Suspense of yesteryear, and in TV series like Night Stalker, or Tales from the Darkside. We shall call this “art-horror.” Generally when the word “horror” is used in what follows, it should be understood as art-horror. This kind of horror is different from the sort that one expresses in saying “I am horrified by the prospect of ecological disaster,” or “Brinksmanship in the age of nuclear arms is horrifying,” or “What the Nazis did was horrible.” Call the latter usage of “horror,” natural horror. It is not the task of this book to analyze natural horror, but only art-horror, that is, “horror” as it serves to name a cross-art, cross-media genre whose existence is already recognized in. ordinary language...
eBook - ePub- Jule Selbo(Author)
- 2014(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...The drama genre, as noted in previous chapters, is best when it is focused on the everyman or everywoman, someone the audience can relate to, someone who has no—or very few—special skills. If the everyman protagonist has a lot to lose—perhaps his sense of self, a loved one or a family member or his entire world—the film story will resonate at a deeper level. The audience will connect with a horror film when they engage and empathize with the main characters while they are stalked or disfigured, terrified or brought to the edge of madness. Film theorist Torben Grodal writes, “Horror stories still often focus on the fear of becoming food for some other, alien creatures.” He notes that the hunter-versus-hunted scenario in the horror genre can be traced to primitive human beings and their encounters with enemies (beasts or other humans). Grodal believes the “fight or flight” impulse is embedded in human nature and is recalled deeply (consciously or unconsciously) in audiences (Grodal, 2009: 5–6). Horror films often feature plots where: evil forces, events, or characters invade the everyday world and upset the social order; the forces of evil affecting the protagonist can be human or of supernatural or extraterrestrial origin; the main characters are psychologically challenged as well as physically threatened; the terror bar is raised by sparking the viewer’s imagination with original horrific situations that feed into psychological fear. It is very important for the audience of the horror film to feel that just under the surface of normality there is a world that is dangerous and evil and one that could be pervasively destructive if unleashed. Core Evil Forces What sets the horror film genre apart from others is its exploration of evil. The idea of evil is, for most people, a mysterious “unknown” and/or “un-understandable” and/or “unreasonable” component that wants to invade the body or spirit of a person or thing...
...These have developed styles and varieties of their own based on their particular cultural histories (while many genre critics focus on Hollywood cinema, genres are also fundamental units of other national cinemas). The function of horror – to scare, shock, revolt or otherwise horrify the viewer – also means that filmmakers are constantly pushing at the boundaries in order to invent new ways of arousing these emotions in their audiences (who over time will naturally learn what to expect from a specific type of horror, a process that may well lead to viewers becoming used to or even bored with the formula) and thus keep the scares coming. In all these ways, notions of what the horror genre might be – or should be – are constantly shifting, creating new conceptual categories in order to keep on scaring the audience. We might, therefore, want to think about horror as an umbrella term encompassing several different sub-categories of horror film, all united by their capacity to horrify. This, the principal responses that a horror film is designed to exploit, is thus a more crucial defining trait of the horror genre than any set of conventions, tropes or styles. Nevertheless, it is worth thinking about those different conceptual categories that make up the horror genre. Some of the primary sub-categories or sub-genres of horror are presented in Table 1.1. These sub-genre categories illustrate that a range of different forms can be identified within the genre (this taxonomy is merely intended as examples rather than a definitive list of sub-genres – they could be broken down further, or other categories could be added)...
eBook - ePub- Dominic Strinati(Author)
- 2014(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...Eventually, usually through the acquisition of knowledge that can comprehend and combat the monster, the monster is confronted and killed. Since it is a monster from the supernatural world, this need not prevent it from returning for a sequel or two. Quite often the issue or dispute in the literature seems to concern how this narrative order is to be interpreted. Is it, for example, repressive or progressive? This type of question may arise because the horror film has attracted more theoretical attention than the gangster film and it will emerge again below when relevant. These points will thus be returned to in the subsequent discussion. First, we shall consider how horror can be defined. Here, questions will be raised about what the horror film genre consists of, how it has been understood and how it relates to ideas about realism and to similar genres, such as science fiction. Second, we shall look at the cycles that have been said to characterise the history of the genre. This historical survey will indicate how the horror film genre, like all genres, has to be understood as a product of the Hollywood system. Finally, we shall consider some theories of horror which have tried to account for the significance, popularity and influence of the genre. This will necessarily draw upon the historical outline of the genre. Definitions of horror Attempts to define horror rest to some extent upon the arguments of which they form a part. For example, the horror film will be defined as a genre that represents the need for suppression if the horror shown is interpreted as expressing uncomfortable and disturbing desires which need to be contained. The best way to define horror would be to use the changing definitions with which the film industry tries to sell its products and audiences try to make sense of their consumption...
eBook - ePubBehind the Frontiers of the Real
A Definition of the Fantastic
- David Roas(Author)
- 2018(Publication Date)
- Palgrave Pivot(Publisher)
...This anguish perhaps refreshes those archaic fears by means of the confrontation—be it intellectual and/or visceral—with a place, a situation, a figure, a ‘thing’ that is beyond the game of understanding, of knowledge, or the recognisable. (Bozzetto 2002 : 336–337) Lovecraft is very revealing on this issue in his aforementioned essay, which employs a variety of terms to refer to the fantastic (a term he never uses although it was already in wide usage at the time): “tale of preternatural horror”, “tale of cosmic fear”, “literature of supernatural horror”, “literature of cosmic terror”… all of these expressions draw attention to the two essential elements which define the category for Lovecraft: horror and the supernatural (the impossible). This is why he differentiates between the said effect and what he describes as fear of a physical nature (which is linked to fear of the materially horrifying). Faced with such stories, the truly preternatural story must contain: A certain atmosphere of breathless and unexplainable dread of outer, unknown forces must be present; and there must be a hint, expressed with a seriousness and portentousness becoming its subject, of that most terrible conception of the human brain—a malign and particular suspension or defeat of those fixed laws of Nature which are our only safeguard against the assaults of chaos and the daemons of unplumbed space. (Lovecraft 1927 : 11) Thus, Lovecraft centrally locates the emotional dimension and psychological effect in his definition: the fear provoked by the fantastic is what defines and distinguishes it from other aesthetic categories. It is a form of horror that is absent, as he points out—agreeing with what I explained in the previous chapter—in those stories where supernatural elements appear (and fear is even employed) but where the purpose is to depict or produce a social effect, or where the horror has a rational explanation...
