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Viewing report
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Aesthetics of Horror. Edition No. 1
VDM Publishing House, Feb 2009, Pages: 88
This dissertation explores the various elements that
produce the horror effects in film, and the pleasure
that is associated with them. The aesthetics of
horror is also a critical area discussed while the
sources of horror, such as the sublime, the
grotesque, and montage, are examineed. In Chapter 1,
based on Edmund Burke’s work on the sublime and the
beautiful, several sources of the sublime, such as
astonishment, obscurity, power, privation, vastness,
infinity, light and darkness, suddenness of sound
and ugliness, are examined for their effectiveness
in evoking horror. Chapter 2 deals with horror
generated by grotesque imagery, using Mikhail
Bakhtin’s writings on the Rabelaisian imagery. The
grotesque bodies discussed in this chapter are
giants, fantastical human beings, oaths, curses and
abusive expressions, carnivalesque and epic
grotesque anatomy. The paradoxical nature of the
grotesque will also be examined to explain how it
appeals and repels at the same time. The last
chapter proposes that, since horror has a rigid
narrative structure, montage is thus an effective
technique in evoking filmic horror.
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