In the following essay, Slote uses concepts developed in the writings of Blaise Pascal, S0ren Kierkegaard, Martin Heidegger, and Jean Paul Sartre to explain how the fear of death accounts for many aspects of human behavior.

In the following essay, Hatcher discusses Chaucer's realistic presentation of Troilus's anxiety over Criseyde's infidelity in Book V of Troilus and Criseyde through comparison with a parallel passage in Boccaccio's Il Filostrato.

In the following essay, Merivale focuses on "Gothic pedagogy," or learning by fear.

In the following essay, Spacks traces the personification of the supernatural in English poetry of the late eighteenth century and its influence on the presentation of supernatural entities in poetry of the early nineteenth century.

In the following essay, Eickhorst surveys fear in German literature from the thirteenth century to the mid-1960s, highlighting works by Johann von Schiller, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Rainer Maria Rilke, Franz Kafka, Ernst Barlach, Thomas Mann, Gottfried Benn, Hermann Hesse, and Friedrich Dürrenmatt, among others.

In the following essay, Fowler traces aesthetic conditions for the enjoyment of horror in literature and film, including an undisclosed source of terror, the physical confinement of the protagonist, and reader/viewer identification with a protagonist who is aware of the source of terror but cannot convince others within the story.

In the following essay, Badenhausen focuses on "The Black Cat" to illustrate Poe's skill in eliciting a fearful, emotional response from the reader.

In the following essay, Hutton calls attention to Hamlet's last soliloquy in a discussion of Hamlet's changing attitude toward death.

In the following essay, Walcutt describes interwar literature as characterized by guilt following World War I, fear during the 1930s, and confrontation during the early years of World War II.

In the following essay, Starr draws parallels between the responses to fear by protagonists in Stephen Crane's "The Blue Hotel" and The Red Badge of Courage and Richard Wright's "Big Black Good Man" and Native Son.

In the following essay which was originally published in La Revue Mondiale in 1927, de Lorde broadly surveys fear in literature from the Gothic novels of the eighteenth century to dystopian visions in science fiction of the early twentieth century.