Abstract:

In the last few decades, the renewed professional interest in popular culture has shown that literary works belonging to popular culture genres (crime fiction, thriller, horror, fantasy, science fiction) offer relevant analytical aspects suitable for integrating popular culture genres into public education.

Horror is perhaps aesthetically the most problematic of all pop culture genres. Among the most frequently formulated critical reflections and stereotypes about horror are that the texts belonging to the genre have low aesthetic quality and that they are unsuitable for didactic purposes because of the negative aesthetic effects they induce in the recipient (fear, anxiety, disgust).

Despite this, horror is still very popular today, and statistics show that the majority of the horror audience is young adults aged 15-25.

The rise of popular culture and canonization processes in contemporary youth literature has led to the emergence of genres alien to children's and youth literature. It is noteworthy that contemporary children's and youth literature contains 'tamed' versions of not only crime fiction, science fiction, and fantasy, but also horror and horror stories, adapted to the age-specific characteristics of the age group concerned.

In the theoretical part of the paper, I deal with the phenomenon of fear and the apparent paradox of horror. By reviewing the relevant psychological and philosophical literature, I seek to answer the question of why the recipient voluntarily exposes himself to a chain of frightening and disturbing influences, and to argue why students may find horror stories useful. The practical part focuses on the disclosure of different teaching strategies, methodological techniques, and procedures that I believe are effective and appropriate for teaching horror stories and for developing the following key and transversal competencies: self-awareness, empathy, tolerance, critical thinking, problem-solving, text comprehension, sense of style.

Keywords:

Horror, contemporary literature, Children’s and Youth literature, text comprehension.