“Сubitum eamus?”: Donna Tartt’s “The Secret History” as a Literary Hypertext

This article examines Donna Tartt's university novel “The Secret History” as a literary hypertext within the contemporary digital subculture of the dark academia. It explores the interplay between Latin code within the literary text and both semantic and aesthetic units of this subculture. The analysis incorporates Latin lexemes and phrases utilized in the novel, alongside examples from ancient Greek culture, which serve as significant subtexts to the Latin code. Additionally, it considers the widely recognized student hymn “Gaudeamus” and various publications by proponents of dark academia in digital media. The theoretical aspects of the topic are also addressed, including the thanatology present in “The Secret History” and the reflection on the motif of death through a Freudian lens. The study demonstrates that the Latin context, the intentional layer of “Gaudeamus,” the novel “The Secret History,” and dark academia exist in hypertextual relationships, with the latter forming a cohesive posttext. The novelty of this research lies in its articulation of the connective links between these media texts, which together create an aesthetic whole unified by the perceptual properties of a small social group. The relevance of this study is underscored by the increasing importance of aesthetic means for understanding the world, characteristic of contemporary media texts.