JUŽNJAČKA GOTIČKA TRADICIJA I RODNA SUBVERZIJA U ROMANU CARRIE STEPHENA KINGA / THE TRADITION OF SOUTHERN GOTHIC AND GENDER SUBVERSION IN STEPHEN KING’S CARRIE

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to show how Stephen King creates horror in his first novel Carrie (1974) through the transfer of Southern Gothic elements into popular horror fiction. Contextualized by the concept of genretransfer based on Julia Kristeva’s intertextuality, Jessica Mason’s narrative interrelation and intertextual reference, and Southern Gothic genre conventions, the paper analyses the elements of the Southern Gothic in King’s Carrie by focusing not only on typical Southern Gothic topoi and thematic issues but also on the narrative techniques of William Faulkner and Flannery O’Connor, as the most prominent representatives of Southern Gothic, to show the hierarchy of fear – terror, horror, and gross-out – that horror fiction evokes in its readers.