Haunting Affinities: Seduction and Subversion in Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s “Christabel”and Sheridan Le Fanu’s “Carmilla”

Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s “Christabel”, a long narrative ballad, unfinished and gothic, first appeared in a pamphlet in 1816, alongside his “Kubla Khan” and “The Pains of Sleep”. Initially slated to be published in the 1800 edition of Lyrical Ballads, “Christabel” was left out, apparently at the suggestion of William Wordsworth. Years later, in 1872, appeared “Carmilla”, one of the five supernatural tales in In a Glass Darkly by Irish author Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu. Drawn from medieval romance, folklore, superstition, and gothic tradition, both “Christabel” and “Carmilla” exhibit striking parallels in their exploration of the themes of desire, female intimacy, seduction, and the uncanny. This paper aims to trace the shared affinities between these two seminal works whose gothic undertones, atmospheric tension, vampiric lore, and a complex fusion of fear and longing have played a pivotal role in cementing their place in vampiric fiction in particular and literary history in general.