✪✪✪✪✪ http://www.theaudiopedia.com ✪✪✪✪✪ What is HORROR FICTION? What does HORROR FICTION mean? HORROR FICTION meaning - HORROR FICTION definition - HORROR FICTION explanation. Source: Wikipedia.org article, adapted under https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/ license. Horror is a genre of fiction which is intended to, or has the capacity to frighten, scare, disgust, or startle their readers or viewers by inducing feelings of horror and terror. Literary historian J. A. Cuddon has defined the horror story as "a piece of fiction in prose of variable length... which shocks or even frightens the reader, or perhaps induces a feeling of repulsion or loathing". It creates an eerie and frightening atmosphere. Horror is frequently supernatural, though it can be non-supernatural. Often the central menace of a work of horror fiction can be interpreted as a metaphor for the larger fears of a society. One of the defining traits of the genre of horror is that it provokes a response; emotional, psychological or physical, within readers that causes them to react with fear. One of H.P. Lovecraft's most famous quotes about the genre is that: "The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown." the first sentence from his seminal essay, "Supernatural Horror in Literature". In her essay "Elements of Aversion", Elizabeth Barrette articulates the need by some for horror tales in a modern world: The old "fight or flight" reaction of our evolutionary heritage once played a major role in the life of every human. Our ancestors lived and died by it. Then someone invented the fascinating game of civilization, and things began to calm down. Development pushed wilderness back from settled lands. War, crime, and other forms of social violence came with civilization and humans started preying on each other, but by and large daily life calmed down. We began to feel restless, to feel something missing: the excitement of living on the edge, the tension between hunter and hunted. So we told each other stories through the long, dark nights...when the fires burned low, we did our best to scare the daylights out of each other. The rush of adrenaline feels good. Our hearts pound, our breath quickens, and we can imagine ourselves on the edge. Yet we also appreciate the insightful aspects of horror. Sometimes a story intends to shock and disgust, but the best horror intends to rattle our cages and shake us out of our complacency. It makes us think, forces us to confront ideas we might rather ignore, and challenges preconceptions of all kinds. Horror reminds us that the world is not always as safe as it seems, which exercises our mental muscles and reminds us to keep a little healthy caution close at hand. In a sense similar to the reason a person seeks out the controlled thrill of a roller coaster, readers in the modern era seek out feelings of horror and terror to feel a sense of excitement. However, she adds that horror fiction is one of the few mediums where readers seek out a form of art that forces themselves to confront ideas and images they "might rather ignore ... preconceptions of all kinds." One can see the confrontation of ideas readers and characters would "rather ignore" throughout literature, in famous moments such as Hamlet's musings about the skull of Yorick and its implications of the mortality of humanity and the gruesome end that bodies inevitably come to. In horror fiction, the confrontation with the gruesome is often a metaphor for the problems facing the current generation of the author. Stephanie Demetrakopoulos illustrates a common interpretation of one of the benchmarks of the canon of horror literature. Tina Broussard in an annotated bibliography of Dracula surmises Demetrakopoulos' thesis: This scholarly journal article explores sexuality in Dracula, including overtones of sexuality in the typical aggressive male and female sexuality which is either reflective of the chaste woman or the sexually aggressive female vampire. Demetrakopoulos suggests Dracula was an outlet for Victorian society, breaking through sexual norms with symbolic group orgies, male desire for sexually aggressive women, denial of motherhood, etc. She highlights ways in which the females defy gender boundaries by embodying masculine traits such as intelligence.

• published: 15 Apr 2017
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