Le transfert maléfique : un nouveau motif du genre de l’horreur
Evil transfer: a new motif of the horror genre

Summary/Abstract: The present article discusses a motif of horror fiction, the “Evil transfer”, that remained unnoticed until now. The key idea of this motif is that, because evil is eternal and indestructible, it cannot be annihilated but only transferred. Four books and movies of the second half of the 20th c. have retained our attention: “Thinner” by Stephen King, “The Exorcist” by William Peter Blatty, “It Follows” by David R. Mitchell and the “Ring” trilogy by Kôji Suzuki. However, these rather recent examples must not hide the diachronic depth of such a motif: Renaissance humanists or biblical texts also present a similar idea.

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