Gothic, Angela Carter, Dracula and Cormorants

Dear year 13,

once you come back after the Easter holidays, we shall be working on the Gothic unit, so I am going to use the blog to keep up with some Gothic thoughts and background reading over the break.

We shall be working on Angela Carter's The Bloody Chamber next term, but I would like you to start thinking about the Gothic precursors to Carter, and the ways in which other texts can be helpful in approaching the Gothic from--for instance--a feminist angle.

But today, I am going to blog about Dracula and Cormorants.

Did you know that these inoffensive seabirds are supposed to be as popular a symbol for Dracula as the bat? Well, you can easily see why, when you think of Lucy's vaguely menacing reference to being 'as hungry as a cormorant', though it always makes me think of that HSBC advert with the wise chinese fisherman... You can see an article about the connection here.

Satan in Paradise Lost is also seen as a cormorant in Book4, ll 194-6:

Thence up he flew, and on the Tree of Life,
The middle Tree and highest there that grew,
Sat like a Cormorant;

This reminds me of one of my favourite poems, by Christopher Isherwood:
The common cormorant or shag
Lays eggs inside a paper bag
The reason you will see, no doubt,
It is to keep the lightning out
But what these unobservant birds
Have never noticed is that herds
Of wandering bears may come with buns
And steal the bags to hold the crumbs.

Notice the sentential adverb?