Date of Award

2024

Document Type

Thesis - Open Access

Degree Name

Master of Arts (MA)

Department

Art Business

First Advisor

Agnes Berecz

Second Advisor

Morgan Falconer

Abstract

This thesis investigates William Bouguereau’s Dante et Virgile (1850) in the context of nineteenth century vampire literature, emerging as the seminal text on the matter. Through a cross-discipline examination of Dante’s Divina Commedia (ca. 1308–1321), and two canonical works of Gothic vampire fiction — John Polidori’s The Vampyre (1819) and Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu’s Carmilla (1872), respectively — prominent affinities are articulated. Comprising a broad scope, this text propounds a panoptic argument that such consonance is demonstrative of a reconciliation between the classical and Gothic, forged by nuances of the composition’s own nineteenth century — the Byronic hero, homoeroticism, Neoclassicism, and Gothic vampirism, amongst others — in tandem with propinquities to the antique and Renaissance. This paper provides a cross-disciplinary overview of an array of historical periods spanning over one thousand years and regions, analyzing the highly complex mechanics of the classical-Gothic relationship through the forging of others: classical-Italian Renaissance, Italian Renaissance-Neoclassical France, British Gothic-French Revolution, and post-reformation England-Gothic, for instance. Interwoven is the overarching role of the historical imagination, traced through these rich matrices, literature, and Dante et Virgile. Clarifying Bouguereau’s enigmatic and single creation of a terribiltà with the pervasiveness of Gothic literature calls for an enhanced assessment of Dante et Virgile, proffering a comprehensive survey that divulges the abiding intricacies of transgressive desire within a tremendously overlooked composition.

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