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THE ENDURANCE OF THE GOTHIC THE ROMANTICS’ CONTRIBUTION TO THE VAMPIRE MYTH

The end of the eighteenth century and the beginning of the nineteenth century, also known as the period of Romanticism, were marked with the interest of the authors in nature and emotions, but also in the supernatural, horrible and the exotic. Although it was the era of reason and the progress of sciences, critics have identified the significance of the Gothic influence on the works of most of the English Romantic figures, among which Lord Byron is known to have had the major influence on the creation and persistence of the vampire figure, as a Gothic trope, haunting the last and this century’s literature and film. This paper attempts to unravel the origins and nature of the mysterious cultural appeal to the literary vampire by tracing its origins from Eastern European folklore, the first poem titled “Der Vampir”(1743) by Heinrich Ossenfelder, to the German Sturm and Drang poets, such as Johann Wolfgang Goethe and Gottfried August Buerger and their respective poems “Die Braut von Korinth” (1789) and “Lenore” (1773). The role of British ballad writers Southey, Lewis and Scott and their ballad collections will be considered as a significant effort to “renew the spirit” of British poetry which according to Scott had reached “a remarkably low ebb in Britain” (as cited in Thomson, 2002, p.80). Another literary figure engaged in writing Gothic ballads following the tradition of Mathew Lewis, not so well-known during her time, was the Scottish writer Anne Bannerman. Her ballad “Dark Ladie” deserves special attention in this context, as it features a female character who is transformed from the previous ballad tradition: from a passive victim of male seduction, here she becomes a fatal woman who comes back from the undead to seek for revenge and initiates the line of female vampires such as Keats’s “Lamia” and Coleridge’s “Christabel”. Thus, this paper elaborates on the major contributors to the Gothic stream in poetry in the specific period, mainly ballads, and traces the presence and development of Gothic elements and vampiric features. The continuous appeal to the Gothic found its place in the works of several major English Romantics, even though they put great effort to differentiate their poetry from the popular literature of the day – Gothic novels. This paper will concentrate on Lord Byron’s Oriental tale The Giaour (1813) and Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s The Rime of the Ancient Mariner (1798). Both works incorporate Gothic themes, settings and characters, but there hasn’t been much literary focus with reference to the vampire theme they are based on. Although, critics have observed the contribution of the ambivalent vampire figure in Romantic literature, critical evaluation of the growth of this Gothic character in these two poems until now is incomplete. Hence, we will focus on Byron and Coleridge’s appropriation of the vampire figure and their contribution to the growth of this character. The various metaphoric usages of this character will also be explored and defined to determine their purpose.