"From Text to Screen: A Comparative Study of Horror Aesthetics in The Exorcist (1971) and its Cinematic Adaptation (1973) through the Lenses of Abjection and Spectatorship"

William Peter Blatty’s The Exorcist (1971) and William Friedkin’s 1973 film adaptation remain seminal works in horror studies, yet their interplay between literary and cinematic terror remains underexplored. This article conducts a qualitative comparative analysis of horror aesthetics across both mediums, interrogating how demonic possession, religious anxiety, and bodily abjection are constructed differently in text and film. Deploying Julia Kristeva’s theory of abjection (1982)—which frames horror as a collapse of boundaries between self and other—and Noel Carroll’s cognitive theory of horror (1990)—which examines audience engagement with