Donna Tartt’s Poetics of Thanatos (Based on the Novel “The Secret History”)

The aim of the current research is the study and description of the literary depiction of death in Donna Tartt’s fiction. The death in the work under consideration is not only presented at the textual levels of themes, ideas, and images, it also fulfils a plot-forming function, it defines the chronotope and the narrative peculiarities of the novel. Inclusion of the gloomy landscape descriptions in the novel contributes to the suspense creation. The dichotomies of “Chaos - Cosmos” and “Eros - Thanatos” determine the basic plot collisions of “The Secret History”. The use of the psychoanalytical approach made it possible to reveal the archetypes of Shadow (Henry Winter) and the Wise Old Man (Julian Morrow) in the novel. The indirect characterization is realized due to Donna Tartt’s depiction of the heroes’ attitude to death and crime. The novelist’s Postmodern play consists in the inclusion in the story the instance of “the unreliable narrator” that raises doubts about the veracity of Richard Papen’s account of the crime. The detailed description of the crime scenes and the murders contributes to the creation of the tense atmosphere. In order to depict the death Donna Tartt uses such key images as ‘permanent darkness’, ‘a muddy pit’, ‘fallen leaves’, ‘the cold and empty sky’, ‘dreary twilights’, ‘strange, tremulous sadness’

Art · Depiction · Freudian slip · Linguistics · Literature · Narrative · Poetics · Poetry · Postmodernism · Psychoanalysis · Sadness · Contemporary Literature and Criticism · Crime and Detective Fiction Studies · Gothic Literature and Media Analysis · History · Philosophy · Psychology

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• “Сubitum eamus?”

  Open Access•Yu V Shuyskaya, A V Platitsyn•Nauchnyi Dialog•2025

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