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Abstract

This study examines a wide range of strategies used in fiction to trigger a specific feeling or mood in the reader, i.e. anxiety regarding the social constructs they live in, and their specific positions within these constructs. For this purpose, the focus is on popular fiction - "those books that everyone reads" (Glover and McCracken 2012:1). In addition, internet-based forms of popular fiction have been included in order to appropriately represent the scope of the field of popular reading material in the 21st century. This encompasses web-based contemporary legends, which share a number of characteristics - above all, conventional genres or themes - with what has traditionally been referred to as popular fiction. All these texts are treated as fiction, and analysed in regard to their designs of leaving recipients in a state of societal unease. On a broad basis consisting of not only literary theory but also philosophical history, folklore theory and socio-political concepts, a basic recipe is formulated and consequently substantiated in analyses of a range of texts from the core genres of popular fiction.