Aesthetics and horror: the monster, the uncanny and the abject

Abstract

This paper undertakes an approach to the theme “Aesthetics and Horror” by highlighting its theoretical aspect and its three main categories: the monster, the uncanny and the abject. The study, developed in the project “Literatura e Autoritarismo”, try to show how the artistic creation has found in the horror one of the most expressive forms of displaying contemporary spirit trends, as well as its problems and the meanings its language intends to express. It seems that the anguishes and disturbances of an apocalyptic period have converged into the horror. The horror, as an artistic genre, has structures made to articulate the anxiety diffused in periods of tension. The paralysis created by states of shock and the incapacity to deal with inconceivable and incredible limit-experiences finds in monstrous, uncanny and abject figures its main cause. The reflection on how literature treats horrorific aesthetics reveals that horror brings in itself conditions to create its own universe, to generate ghostly settings and to talk about the unspeakable through contradictory elements.