“Reader, unbury him with a word”: The Revenant and/as Evil in Elizabeth Kostova’s ”The Historian”
“Reader, unbury him with a word”: The Revenant and/as Evil in Elizabeth Kostova’s ”The Historian”
Author(s): Yağmur TatarSubject(s): Language and Literature Studies, Philology, British Literature
Published by: Editura Universitatii Transilvania din Brasov
Keywords: Derrida; Dracula, evil; hauntology; Neo-Gothic; revenant;
Summary/Abstract: This research addresses the universal question of evil through an intertextual focus between Bram Stoker’s Dracula as a traditional Gothic production and its neo-Gothic counterpart, The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova. Through investigating the relationship between two ensuing genres, it explores the understanding of human nature and its transformative capacity for evil in Gothic and neo-Gothic fiction, as well as protagonists’ need, temptation, and failure to exorcise the Revenants of the past. With a theoretical framework supported by Jacques Derrida and his concept of hauntology, the present research further revolves around revealing how the monsters of the (neo-)Gothic fiction function as the manifestations of history itself by analysing the way the past haunts humanity’s present and future.
Journal: Bulletin of the Transilvania University of Braşov, Series IV: Philology & Cultural Studies
- Issue Year: 14/2021
- Issue No: Suppl
- Page Range: 167-176
- Page Count: 10
- Language: English