1.4.1
First-Person Narration & Epistolary Format
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Suspending Disbelief and Gothic Narration
English poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge helped Gothic literature gain popularity by urging readers to suspend their disbelief.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge's view
- Initially, critics were dismissive of the literary merits of Gothic writing and its depiction of the supernatural or fantastical.
- However, English poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge was an advocate of the genre and urged readers to evoke a “willing suspension of disbelief” in order to engage with supernatural aspects of the Gothic.
Meaning: suspending disbelief
- Through suspending their disbelief, a reader is able to look past the irrational and become immersed in the Gothic narrative.
- It is partly in relation to this need for a reader to suspend their disbelief that Gothic literature (including Dracula) is written in the first person - adding an artificial layer of plausibility to the events, told through the perspective of someone who has ‘experienced’ them.
Dracula - epistolary format
- _Dracula- takes the ‘realism’ of a first-person narration a step further in its epistolary format, with multiple narrative perspectives in the form of diaries, journals, ship logs and newspaper reports.
- The opening note to the novel explains that “How these papers have been placed in sequence will be made clear in the reading of them. All needless matters have been eliminated, so that a history almost at variance with the possibilities of latter-day belief may stand forth as simple fact.”
Pall Mall Gazette clipping
- The epistolary format really pays dividends in Chapter 11, where the reader first learns through the clipping of Pall Mall Gazette (18 September) how the Count is responsible for the escape of the wolf (old Bersicker) that causes Lucy’s mother to be frightened to death, as detailed in the Memorandum left by Lucy Westenra (17 September, night).
1Context - Gothic Literature
1.1Origins & Conventions of Gothic Literature
1.2Vampires in Gothic Literature
1.3'Terror' & 'Horror'
1.4Narrative Features
2Context - The Victorian Era
2.1The Victorian Era
3Chapter Summaries & Analyses
4Character Profiles
4.1Archetypal Gothic Characters
4.2Count Dracula
4.3Other Main Characters
4.4Minor Characters
5Key Ideas
6Writing Techniques
7Critical Debates & Interpretations
7.1Initial Reception of Dracula
7.2Modern Reception of Dracula
Jump to other topics
1Context - Gothic Literature
1.1Origins & Conventions of Gothic Literature
1.2Vampires in Gothic Literature
1.3'Terror' & 'Horror'
1.4Narrative Features
2Context - The Victorian Era
2.1The Victorian Era
3Chapter Summaries & Analyses
4Character Profiles
4.1Archetypal Gothic Characters
4.2Count Dracula
4.3Other Main Characters
4.4Minor Characters
5Key Ideas
6Writing Techniques
7Critical Debates & Interpretations
7.1Initial Reception of Dracula
7.2Modern Reception of Dracula
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