Fear in Gothic Fiction: A Cognitive Poetic Analysis of Angela Carter’s The Bloody Chamber

Abstract

Based on the Deictic Shift Theory as adopted by cognitive poetics (Stockwell 2002), this paper offers an account of fear generating mechanisms involving spatial, temporal, perceptual, relational and compositional deictic shifts in Angela Carter’s The Bloody Chamber. Focusing on the ways the reader gets involved in the terrifying story of Carter’s protagonist, the paper uncovers the complex mechanism of the “production of horror” in the text.