Katarzyna Gadomska

According to common opinions, horror films are the art of monstration par excellence, whereas horror fiction is based on ambiguity and the unsaid. The purpose of this article is to show that this statement is false. In order to evoke the feeling of fear in the reader/viewer, horror films and fiction remain in a fruitful and permanent dialogue: this is reflected in many exchanges used in anxiety‐provoking techniques that are analysed in this article. The structure elements of scary texts and films are recurrent. My study aims to demonstrate that, on the one hand, both literary and cinematic gore are based on hyperrealism of massacre scenes/descriptions/close‐ups, preferably exteriorized parts, figurative narrative structures and visual hyperbolization. On the other hand, however, both horror films and fiction play with ambiguity and off‐screen scenes, building up the anxiety‐provoking structure. This ongoing interdisciplinary dialogue enriches the literature and the cinema – protean and ever‐changing.

The article discusses the main premises of Anna Swoboda’s monograph La Prose de Ken Bugul : entre le réel et le surnaturel. Swoboda assumes that the key to deciphering the characteristics of Ken Bugul’s prose is the interpenetration of the two dimensions present in the work of this contemporary Senegalese writer: the real and the supernatural. The book analyzes the fantastic, marvelous and uncanny elements that constitute the supernatural aspect of Bugul’s hybrid prose, as well as examines the fragmentation and multifaceted identity of the autofictional female protagonist (in the part devoted to the real elements). The eclectic methodology combines Western and African research on non-mimetic fiction with postcolonial and feminist theories.