horror

Genre of fiction and film, devoted primarily to scaring the reader or audience, but often also aiming to achieve some catharsis (purging of the emotions) through exaggeration of the bizarre and grotesque. Horror fiction is difficult to distinguish from the gothic novel but horror stories do not require the gothic tale's code of morality and can have immoral or distasteful endings. This may blur the line between mainstream literature and pornography, as in the writing of the notorious French writer the Marquis de Sade.

In common with the gothic, horror fiction tends to use supernatural motifs such as vampirism, the eruption of ancient evil, and monstrous transformation, which often derive from folk traditions, ghost stories, and the symbolism of madness. It can also address more realistic psychological fears, and many horror stories owe their power to everyday settings. Such works include Russian writer Aleksandr Pushkin's The Queen of Spades (1834) and English writer W W Jacobs's ‘The Monkey's Paw’.

Many mainstream writers have experimented with horror. Among the most successful are the French writer Guy de Maupassant and the English writer Saki.