There are two traditions, we might argue, in the history of literature: the fairy-tale tradition (as I call it) and its opposite. The fairy-tale tradition sees the world as making sense, as leading to the happy fulfillment of expectations. Boy meets girl, boy courts girl, wins girl, marries girl – in simple or complicated arrangements. The fairy-tale tradition hinges on a linear storyline which inevitably leads to a definite denouement.

“Bonnie und Kleid”1 was the title of a fashion article which appeared in Der Spiegel, the German newsmagazine, in 1968 (“Bonnie” 123). Apart from being a mildly amusing pun, this title is typical of media representations of violent female terrorists in 1970s Germany, not least in its invocation of fashion – a prime signifier of the feminine – to defuse the fear aroused by the figure of the violent woman.

Horror is, without question, among film's most enduring genres; audiences in search of thrills have been able to find a chiller to attend since the turn of the century. Even the studio of film pioneer Thomas Edison produced a 16-minute version of the Frankenstein story in 1910. The remarkable longevity of the genre does not, however, guarantee that a near century's worth of fans have all been lining up for the same motion picture show.

I too exclusively esteemed that love,
And sought that beauty, which, as Milton sings,
Hath terror in it.

To have laws associated with libertinage seems ridiculous at first glance; for how can the unhinged spirit possibly be bound by conventional rules, even if people with libertine ideals create them? Similar to everyday life, where the carnival exists in its raw and purest form, certain liberties are taken when abiding by the laws of any given community. The same liberties, therefore, apply to the carnivalesque world present in The Marquis de Sade's The 120 Days of Sodom.

I.

I want to map out the metaphors of terrorism to critique how they are used in United States political rhetoric. These metaphors and their usage parallel United States history, cold war ideologies, and globalization. Central to this investigation is an analysis of how the hegemonic order appropriates the media and uses such metaphors to manufacture consent for supporting a vaguely defined “war on terror” indefinitely.

Because representation necessarily mediates between a subject — in the case of the Shoah, a subject of acute moral magnitude — and its reader, there is inevitably a moral peril involved in its artistic rendering. Representation after all requires a medium, medium implies the imposition of form, form raises the question of literary language as the means of representation.

Who is this Schiller? This convulser of the Heart? Did he write his tragedy amid the yelling of Fiends? ... Why have we ever called Milton sublime? (Coleridge,Letters 1:122).

Coleridge’s reaction to the English translation of Schiller’s The Robbers heralded nearly a decade of personal enthusiasm for the German that led to translations, imitations and poems in his honour. Schiller was, for Coleridge, the unparalleled artist of sublime terror.