The Philosophy of Horror, or Paradoxes of the Heart by Noël Carroll
Published 1990 · 272 pages · 78,000 words · about 7 hours at an average pace · Essays & Criticism
How hard is The Philosophy of Horror, or Paradoxes of the Heart to read?
The Philosophy of Horror, or Paradoxes of the Heart scores 59 out of 100 for difficulty on ReadingRate, making it quite demanding. The score is a weighted composite of nine measures: four of how hard the prose is to parse, five of how hard the meaning is to extract.
- Vocabulary: 65 out of 100
- Analytic philosophical vocabulary — propositional attitudes, criteria, necessary and sufficient conditions — used throughout.
- Sentence structure: 60 out of 100
- Abstraction: 82 out of 100
- Primarily philosophical argument about the nature of genres and emotional responses.
- Information density: 76 out of 100
- Dense argumentation with examples drawn from film and literature.
- Narrative indirection: 12 out of 100
- Analytic philosophy style is direct and definitional.
- Symbolic density: 12 out of 100
- Analyzes symbolic meanings of monsters without adopting a symbolic register itself.
- Ironic distance: 100 out of 100
- Earnest philosophical inquiry with dry wit in the examples.
- Resolution withholding: 100 out of 100
- Conclusions are stated after argument; philosophy of art favors clear propositions.
- Structural complexity: 42 out of 100
- Built as a sustained philosophical argument with careful sub-question structure.
How The Philosophy of Horror, or Paradoxes of the Heart is regarded
The Philosophy of Horror, or Paradoxes of the Heart holds a literary regard score of 48 out of 100, weighing its place in the canon, its critical reception, its influence on other writers, and the standing of its author. Regard is measured separately from difficulty: a demanding book is not necessarily an admired one.