According to the definition of “bribery” in encyclopedic entry, choose the correct alternative.

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[1]   Apart from being about murder,  

suicide, torture, fear and madness, horror  

stories are also concerned with ghosts,  

vampires, succubi, incubi, poltergeists,  

[5] demonic pacts, diabolic possession and  

exorcism, witchcraft, spiritualism, voodoo,  

lycanthropy and the macabre, plus such  

occult or quasi occult practices as  

telekinesis and hylomancy. Some horror  

[10] stories are serio-comic or comic-

grotesque, but none the less alarming or 

frightening for that. 

  From late in the 18th c. until the  

present day – in short, for some two  

[15] hundred years – the horror story (which is  

perhaps a mode rather than an identifiable  

genre) in its many and various forms has  

been a diachronic feature of British and  

American literature and is of considerable  

[20] importance in literary history, especially in  

the evolution of the short story. It is also  

important because of its connections with  

the Gothic novel and with a multitude of  

fiction associated with tales of mystery,  

[25] suspense, terror and the supernatural,  

with the ghost story and the thriller and  

with numerous stories in the 19th and  

20th c. in which crime is a central theme. 

  The horror story is part of a long  

[30] process by which people have tried to  

come to terms with and find adequate  

descriptions and symbols for deeply  

rooted, primitive and powerful forces,  

energies and fears which are related to  

[35] death, afterlife, punishment, darkness,  

evil, violence and destruction. 

  Writers have long been aware of the  

magnetic attraction of the horrific and  

have seen how to exploit or appeal to  

[40] particular inclinations and appetites. It  

was the poets and artists of the late  

medieval period who figured out and  

expressed some of the innermost fears  

and some of the ultimate horrors (real and  

[45] imaginary) of human consciousness. Fear  

created horrors enough and the  

eschatological order was never far from  

people‟s minds. Poets dwelt on and  

amplified the ubi sunt motif and artists  

[50] depicted the spectre of death in paint,  

through sculpture and by means of  

woodcut. The most potent and frightening  

image of all was that of hell: the abode of  

eternal loss, pain and damnation. There  

[55] were numerous "visions" of hell in  

literature. 

  Gradually, imperceptibly, during the  

16th c. hell was "moved‟ from its  

traditional site in the center of the earth.  

[60] It came to be located in the mind; it was a  

part of a state of consciousness. This was  

the beginning of the growth of the idea of  

a subjective, inner hell, a psychological  

hell; a personal and individual source of  

[65] horror and terror, such as the chaos of a  

disturbed and tormented mind, the  

pandaemonium of psychopathic  

conditions, rather than the abode of lux  

atra and everlasting pain with its definite  

[70] location in a measurable cosmological  

system. 

  The horror stories of the late 16th  

and early 17th c. (like the ghost stories)  

are provided for us by the playwrights.  

[75] The Elizabethan and Jacobean tragedians  

were deeply interested in evil, crime,  

murder, suicide and violence. They were  

also very interested in states of extreme  

suffering: pain, fear and madness. They  

[80] found new modes, new metaphors and  

images, for presenting the horrific and in  

doing so they created simulacra of hell.  

One might cite perhaps a thousand or  

more instances from plays in the period c.  

[85] 1580 to c. 1642 in which hell is an all-

purpose, variable and diachronic image of 

horror whether as a place of punishment 

or as a state of mind and spirit. Horrific  

action on stage was commonplace in the  

[90] tragedy and revenge tragedy of the  

period. The satiety which Macbeth claimed  

to have experienced when he said: “I have  

supp‟d full of horrors;/ Direness, familiar  

to my slaughterous thoughts, /Cannot  

[95] once start me…” was representative of it. 

  During the 18th c. (as during the  

19th ), in orthodox doctrine taught by  

various „churches‟ and sects, hell remained  

a place of eternal fire and punishment and  

[100] the abode of the Devil. For the most part  

writers of the Romantic period and  

thereafter did not re-create it as a  

visitable place. However, artists were  

drawn to “illustrate” earlier conceptions of  

[105] hell. William Blake did 102 engravings for  

Dante‟s Inferno. John Martin illustrated  

Paradise Lost and Gustave Doré applied  

himself to Dante and Milton. The actual  

hells of the 18th and 19th c. were the  

[110] gaols, the madhouses, the slums and  

bedlams and those lanes and alleys where  

vice, squalor, depravity and unspeakable  

misery created a social and moral chaos:  

terrestrial counterparts to the horrors of  

[115] Dante‟s Circles.  

  Gothic influence traveled to America  

and affected writers such as Edgar Allan  

Poe, whose tales are short, intense,  

sensational and have the power to inspire 

[120] horror and terror. He depicts extremes of  

fear and insanity and, through the  

operations of evil, gives us glimpses of  

hell. 

  Poe‟s long-term influence was  

[125] immeasurable (and in the case of some  

writers not altogether for their good), and  

one can detect it persisting through the  

19th c.; in, for example the French  

symbolistes (Baudelaire published  

[130] translations of his tales in 1856 and  

1857), in such British writers as Rossetti,  

Swinburne, Dowson and R. L. Stevenson,  

and in such Americans as Ambrose Bierce,  

Hart Crane and H.P. Lovecraft. 

[135]   Towards the end of the 19th c. a  

number of British and American writers  

were experimenting with different modes  

of horror story, and this was at a time  

when there had been a steadily growing  

[140] interest in the occult, in supernatural  

agencies, in psychic phenomena, in  

psychotherapy, in extreme psychological  

states and also in spiritualism.  

  The enormous increase in science  

[145] fiction since the 1950s has diversified  

horror fiction even more than might at  

first be supposed. New maps of hell have  

been drawn and are being drawn; new  

dimensions of the horrific exposed and  

[150] explored; new simulacra and exempla 

created. Fear, pain, suffering, guilt and  

madness (what has already been touched  

on in miscellaneous „hells‟) remain  

powerful and emotive elements in horror  

[155] stories. In a chaotic world, which many  

see to be on a disaster course, through  

the cracks, „the faults in reality‟, we and  

our writers catch other vertiginous

glimpses of „chaos and old night‟,  

[160] fissiparating images of death and  

destruction. 

From: CUDDON, J. A. The Penguin Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary Theory. London: Penguin, 1999.

Among the many writers influenced by Edgar Allan Poe, the text mentions