ABSTRACT
In the seventeenth-century Dutch Republic, the exploration of limits and possibilities in images and plays evoking terror was widespread and innovative. Not only were Dutch humanists frontrunners in interpreting Greco-Roman texts on the subject, but other writers also made themselves heard, sometimes with surprisingly new ideas. Art and theater historians have usually limited themselves to poetics and art theory stricto sensu in examining early modern regulation, focusing mainly on the creative process and the responsibility of the artist or playwright, but if we look outside this strict context, we see that there was also attention paid to the role of the spectator. Moreover, these texts can often be linked to artistic networks because they were written by artists and playwrights or by writers within their immediate environment. This chapter deals with the combined emotions of repulsion and attraction, just as we did in Chapter 3 with the fear of God. Here, however, we will look at expressions of dread, not the divine.
