Radcliffe, Ann (1764 - 1823) | Ann Radcliffe (Essay Date 1826)
ANN RADCLIFFE (ESSAY DATE 1826)
SOURCE: Radcliffe, Ann. "On the Supernatural in Poetry." New Monthly Magazine 16 (1826): 145-52.
In the following excerpt from a fictional conversation between two travelers, Radcliffe presents a distinction between horror and terror.
[Said W―:] "Terror and horror are so far opposite, that the first expands the soul, and awakens the faculties to a high degree of life; the other contracts, freezes, and nearly annihilates them. I apprehend, that neither Shakespeare nor Milton by their fictions, nor Mr. Burke by 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 the uncertainty and obscurity, that accompany the [latter] …, respecting the dreaded evil?"…
"How can any thing be indistinct and not confused?" said Mr....
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