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Horror and terror
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==Literary Gothic== The distinction between terror and horror was first characterized by the [[Gothic fiction|Gothic]] writer [[Ann Radcliffe]] (1764–1823), horror being more related to being shocked or scared (being horrified) at an awful realization or a deeply unpleasant occurrence, while terror is more related to being anxious or fearful.<ref>Varma 1966.</ref> Radcliffe considered that terror is characterized by "obscurity" or indeterminacy in its treatment of potentially horrible events, something which leads to the [[Sublime (philosophy)|sublime]]. She says in an essay published posthumously in 1826, 'On the Supernatural in Poetry', that terror "expands the soul and awakens the faculties to a high degree of life". Horror, in contrast, "freezes and nearly annihilates them" with its unambiguous displays of atrocity. She goes on: "I apprehend that neither [[Shakespeare]] nor [[John Milton|Milton]] by their fictions, nor [[Edmund Burke|Mr Burke]] by [[A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful|his reasoning]], anywhere looked to positive horror as a source of the sublime, though they all agree that terror is a very high one; and where lies the great difference between horror and terror, but in uncertainty and obscurity, that accompany the first, respecting the dreader evil."<ref>Radcliffe: 1826.</ref> According to [[Devendra Varma]] in ''The Gothic Flame'' (1966): <blockquote>The difference between Terror and Horror is the difference between awful apprehension and sickening realization: between the smell of death and stumbling against a corpse.</blockquote>
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