Terror versus Horror

Question 1

What is the difference between terror and horror?

Answer 1

Terror is about anticipating the fear and the suspense leading up to a horrific, whereas horror is about the revulsion and disgust within the event taking place

Question 2

What did Ann Radcliffe suggest and in what critical work was this?

Answer 2

In ‘On the Supernatural in Poetry’ Ann suggests that terror is linked to the sublime and ‘expands the soul’. It suggests that female writers, unlike men, rationally explain the terror away in the cold light of day. However, male writers use horror to create ghastly revelations of violence.

Question 3

How is terror created?

Answer 3

unexplainable sounds, indistinct sights, dim shadows and dangling a thousand different murderous possibilities in front of the reader without acting on any

Question 4

How does horror visually differ from terror?

Answer 4

Its much more explicit in detailing unsettling events. Terror uses visual ambiguity in order to focus on the psychological thrill

Question 5

What does Devenerenda P. Darma think the difference is between terror and horror?

Answer 5

‘awful apprehensions’’ versus ‘sickening realisation’ like the difference between smelling death and stumbling across a dead body

Question 6

How does Robert Hume critique Radcliffe?

Answer 6

He says that the only way she holds the readers attention is simply drawing out the suspense over a ‘long book with slight plot’

Question 7

How does Hume suggest horror writes work?

Answer 7

‘attack [the reader] frontally’ with disturbing events and heaping a succession of horrors onto the reader through murder, torture and rape