Edgar Allen Poe’s work is typically categorized as Gothic fiction, a genre that often conveys stories of death and romance through their relationship to fear. In Poe’s short stories, fear is an embodied emotion; however, the means by which this fear is expressed differ depending on circumstances that construct the plot. Ultimately, the embodied fear can be defined through horror and terror. In terms of genre, terror is often conflated with horror, as there is no presence of a genre dedicated to terror and many novels that are considered “horror” are instead tales of terror. Through a literary analysis of Poe’s short stories, this research intends to define horror and terror as separate terms of categorization for theme and genre. Although terror and horror may exist in the same text, the two are distinctly different. Terror defines a dread that is intangible and reliant on a spiritual or psychological experience, whereas horror exists solely as a physical and contact-based experience of the macabre. Justifying these terms as separate forms that can coexist in a text aids in the understanding of how fear itself manifests within us. These distinct concepts offer a more complex understanding of the emotion of fear as a common human experience.
