Lacunas, orisons, and attics: David Mitchell’s Slade House (2015) as Gothic locus.
Tavener-Smith, Taryn (2021) Lacunas, orisons, and attics: David Mitchell’s Slade House (2015) as Gothic locus. In: PopMeC CFP. 50+ Shades of Gothic: The Gothic Across Genre and Media in US Popular Culture, 20 April 2021, Online.
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Abstract
Historically, borderlines in vampire fiction have played a significant role and are often figured as “obstacles [that] protect humans from vampires” (Bubke, 2018, p. 5). Such thresholds are evident, for example, when vampires are unable to pass through the doorway of humans’ homes without invitation. This “threshold-myth” serves to “prevent unwanted guests from entering [and] signifies an insurmountable protection” (6). Such boundaries are “used to protect us, separating humans from monsters by keeping the vampires out” (5). However, in Slade House, the opposite applies as vampires (the Grayer twins) entice victims across the threshold of the “small black iron door” (Mitchell, 2015, p. 10) to cross the borderline by entering the decaying yet expansive Slade House on Slade Alley in downtown London. Such coercion emphasises the imaginary threshold between the human and the monster observed in the house.
| Item Type: | Conference or Workshop Item (Paper) |
|---|---|
| Depositing User: | RED Unit Admin |
| Date Deposited: | 12 Mar 2021 08:09 |
| Last Modified: | 06 Aug 2021 13:28 |
| URI: | https://bnu.repository.guildhe.ac.uk/id/eprint/18203 |
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