the vampyre

Gothic fiction was popular in England in the 1800s. The genre emphasizes strong emotions, including a form of terror that is pleasurable. In this way, it is an extension of the romantic era of literature, of which Byron was one of the central figures, and which emphasized strong, individual emotions as the source of authentic experience. Polidori’s famous novella includes several key elements of gothic fiction, including the evocation of terror and of the sublime feeling beyond human understanding, as well as the tropes of the virginal young woman and the villainous, predatory male. However, Polidori's novella features the more modern, cosmopolitan setting of the 19th-century English upper classes.