Frenetic and melodrama: the vampires of Polidori and Nodier

Abstract

Charles Nodier was one of the great responsible authors for spreading the Gothic novel or roman noir in France, which he named “frenetic”, concerning with the exaggeration that characterizes this kind of literature. In the beginning of the 19th century, an intensive circulation was established in French romanticism between the frenetic and the melodrama in an interchange of literary authors, reasons and procedures. From 1820 on, the melodrama is set in the supernatural, especially with Le Vampire, by Nodier, written in collaboration with Jouffroy and Carmouche. This melodrama, adapted from Polidori’s The Vampyre, published in 1819, harmonizes with the return of popularity that Gothic novel goes through. The frenetic union with the melodrama allows two very fertile literary tendencies to be seen in French romanticism, which also connect each other in a way that respond to the longing of a public tired of centuries of rationalism and eager for all kinds of sensations and feelings.