Episode 67: Floating In The Blood — Carmilla by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu

Long before Twilight, and 26 years before Ol’ Abe Stoker had visions of Dracula, there was another drinker lurking in the annals of western lit. This week, Morgan and Isabeau explore the classic gothic vampire novella Carmilla by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu, a prototype for the prolific genre. Set in a shloss in the forests of Styria, Laura, our heroine, describes her lonely childhood through epistles and recounts the arrival of a peculiar stranger, the alluring and abhorrent Carmilla, as if conjured from a dream. But the novel’s languor is underpinned with anxiety as desire mixes with consumption, and questions of Carmilla’s origin prove all too familiar. It’s a sensual nightmare that revels in the repression of the Victorian Age, and may help explain our continued obsession.

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