“The Thing We’re Already Afraid Of”: Metatextual Artifacts, Trope, and Subversion in the Contemporary Horror Novel

Abstract

An exploration of the formal features of contemporary horror literature, specifically embedded texts within the novels. Traces the history of the epistolary form from early English language novels to the Gothic, examining how these techniques are applied and subverted in modern horror to evoke stronger feelings of narrative tension and sympathy from the reader.