Ubi sunt? The Flirt with Death in Gothic Fiction

Anna GEMRA

Pracownia Literatury i Kultury Popularnej oraz Nowych Mediów, Instytut Filologii Polskiej, Wydział Filologiczny, Uniwersytet Wrocławski, plac Nankiera 15, 50-140 Wrocław, Poland , Poland

Abstract

Although Gothic fiction belongs to popular literature, which is destined for entertainment, it touches upon many important topics, like death, evil, suffering or loneliness. In the modern world topics of this kind are belittled, trivialized or simply ignored, also in works of art. This is particularly the case with the topic of death. The fear of death has always accompanied human beings in their lives, but nowadays it seems exceptionally strong: expelled from the everyday life and ‘hidden’ in hospitals and hospices, death has become ‘undomesticated’ and thus even more horrifying. Moreover, modernity has lost the belief in an afterlife, in the possibility of existence after death. What appears real and certain to the human beings of our time is what they know and experience: the worldly. Simultaneously the desire not to die has become stronger than ever before. The pitfalls of such an attitude are depicted in terror literature first and foremost by the figure of a vampire. Yet immortal life on earth turns out full of anguish and sorrow, and contradicts the idea of humanity as such. However, in the case of numerous protagonists of the literary fiction belonging to that genre the temptation of everlasting existence prevails over the fear of what the vampire represents. Paradoxically, their lust for life drives them towards glorification of death, of which a visible representation is the vampire, and to the concept of the ‘benevolence’ of evil (Malitätsbonisierung) the vampire epitomizes.

Keywords:

Gothic fiction, fear, death, immortality, vampire