Anxiety differences btw literary and horror fiction?

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I'm thinking like Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Charles Dickens and Jane Austen in contrast to Stephen King, Thomas Harris and Anne Rice.

I wish I could contribute more but I can't 'off the top of my head'.Part of me thinks that there is an 'overlap' in the form of 'gothic fiction' but I can't speak to that, not the least because I'm not a literary expert.

Ever heard of Edgar Allen Poe? He is taught in schools as high brow lit. and he was horror.

There was a little thing called "Frankenstein" by Mary Shelly. The best ghost suspence thing I ever saw on TV was based on "The Turn of the Screw" (another nineteenth century classic. Forget the name of the author).

So they do overlap.

I don't think there is a difference between genre - it will be between writers. I think a given genre will affect how one (re)presents an anxiety, not what the anxiety is.

I think the dividing line is that, when those in the genre of (modern) literary fiction use monsters (or other horrors), they're very clear to do so at a distance with a big warning sign that reads 'don't worry, I do not actually take monsters seriously, this is just a metaphor'. There's an anxiety difference - lit fic is scared of taking monsters seriously.

Dickens wrote some brilliant ghost stories, and wasn't scared of doing so. To flip it around, Stephen King writes as much about the sh***y things people do to each other every day, and the struggles of working class life, as the more overt supernatural stuff. I think a writer like Ligotti could stand fair comparison to Dostoevsky or Kafka.

Well, horror does indeed have a venerable history as the Gothic novel, and the bounderies weren't always clear. One of my favourites is Sheridan Lefanu, who wrote supernatural short stories like "Carmilla" and "Madame Crowl's Ghost", but also the non-supernatural novel "Uncle Silas". Which is a cross between a thriller and the highbrow "psychological" novel of the time.

[Moved to Art, Writing, and Music]