The Bathory Quartet: treating anxiety with anxiety, the benefits of horror in rehearsing traumatic situations in a fictional safe-space

"The Bathory Quartet: treating anxiety with anxiety, the benefits of horror" is a work of literary horror with some elements of weird fiction accompanied by a creative commentary contextualizing my novel within the vampire genre. "The Bathory Quartet" is a novel in four voices, a fragmented attempt at exploring the childhood trauma of the cellist, Mina Fisher, and the sudden paralysis of her hands during a recital at the Royal Festival Hall. Through the overlapping fragments we learn of The Bathory Quartet and their cello, The Countess, with its enormous and sinister emotional resonance. The thesis considers how horror can be used to treat anxiety and my own experience of childhood trauma, examining film and literature that influenced my decision making and their effects on mind and body.