Essa coisa fascinante, o medo

Abstract

With the objective of understanding how literature explores fear, I developed the present Master's dissertation in Creative Writing, divided between the writing of an original novella and an essay. The essay discusses narrative genres such as the strange/weird, the fantastic, the wonderful and the gothic. In the creative part, I wrote a novel in third person following Lauren, the central character. The novella, within the aesthetic of the fantastic, talks about bullying, violence among children and teenagers in school, religious fanaticism, the physical and emotional changes experienced by a girl living in a conservative town in the countryside, and the difficulty to establish personal relationships. Finally, through the writing of the essay and the novella, I was able to reflect on some elements that have haunted us through time – and their literary manifestations.