“No light – in this obscure – silent – shut building”  Cover Image
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"Ni światła - w ciemnej - cichej - zamkniętej budowie"
“No light – in this obscure – silent – shut building”

Author(s): Adam Adamczyk
Subject(s): Literary Texts
Published by: Stowarzyszenie Czasu Kultury
Keywords: castle in literature; Gothic novel; Bram Stoker; Franz Kafka; Witold Gombrowicz

Summary/Abstract: An analysis of the space of the castle as exemplified in the novel. The Gothic novel genre, characterised by Bram Stokes’s Dracula, made the space of the castle fundamental to the atmosphere of terror, owing to its mysterious, labyrinthine topography. It was the Gothic novel that continued the legend of the castle space, once the domain of fairy-tales and fables. Franz Kafka allegorized the space of the castle. In his work, the castle is not only a setting, but above all a metaphor for existential solitude. Witold Gombrowicz, on the other hand, experimented with the Gothic novel, with the aim of doing justice to the unjustly marginalized art of Inferiority. With this intention, he wrote Possessed.

  • Issue Year: XXVII/2011
  • Issue No: 06
  • Page Range: 30-43
  • Page Count: 14
  • Language: Polish