MODIFICATIONS OF THE HORROR GENRE

Abstract

The article analyses the history and genre system of the formation of horror literature and highlights its role in the modern era. Examining the origins of the horror genre in literature, one can trace the combination of mysticism, mystery, and mythological imagery, which acquire new features with the flow of literature. article briefly reveals the genesis of the horror genre in the cluster of genres of horror literature. The structure of the genetic and typological evolution of the genre of horror literature in literary studies is analysed, and the systematisation of genre-creating elements is also presented. It is proven that horror by its nature belongs to those genres that are realized in literature on the basis of genre memory, which was formed in the modification process of the transition from stylistic reception to the actual genre. Horror literature is a complex polysemantic construct, for the interpretation of which, in addition to general scientific methods (descriptive, typological), such methods as hermeneutic, cultural-historical, mythopoetic, psychoanalytic, bibliographic, comparativist, philological, structuralist, and intertextual are used in the article. Such scientific research methods will allow a more detailed description of the functioning structure of both the system of genres as a whole and a separate genre. The horror genre was formed in uneven waves. This process can be characterised as a gradual crystallization of the genre structure, taking into account stable stylistic elements. In the course of its genetic and typological apparatus, the horror genre developed its inevitable functions: specific types of chronotopes and mechanisms for the implementation of genre memory. The article is supplemented with a concise bibliography of thematic critical literary texts and source materials.