About the talk
Madeline Potter presents a talk via Zoom with audience Q+A on: ‘The Banshee and the Death Coach: Irish Folklore and Dark Romanticism in JS Le Fanu’s ‘Carmilla’’
We often think of vampires as menacing, bloodthirsty monsters; of fairies, as dainty, endearing creatures. But, as we find the castle room in JS Le Fanu’s ‘Carmilla’ flooded with sparkling moonlight ‘as if unseen hands had lighted up the rooms to receive fairy guests’, we might ask: do vampires and fairies share in the same nature? From his early years in a small village in County Limerick, to his friendship with folklorist Patrick Kennedy, Le Fanu’s consciousness was steeped in Irish fairy and folk lore, as this talk will show; and, indeed, his narrative trick at the beginning of ‘Carmilla’ is not a naïve description of a dream-like setting. Rather, it conflates fairy and vampire, in a sinister foreshadowing of Carmilla’s predatory nature: in Irish lore, fairies are often depicted as tricksters, luring humans, and never entering into fully reciprocal relationships with them, in a manner reminiscent of Carmilla’s own seduction and predation of young, innocent Laura. Le Fanu’s novella attempts to wed the natural and the supernatural in Carmilla’s undead body, providing a physical shape for Death.
This talk will explore how he uses aspects of Irish folklore to blur out the boundaries between the physical world and that of the beyond, placing the banshee and the cóiste bodhar (the silent death coach of Irish myth) at the centre of this fluidity. Looking at two of Le Fanu’s earlier fairy stories and how they bear upon the tale of Carmilla, Potter will uncover how he re-imagines the banshee as a vampire, and uses the materiality of the death coach to highlight the materiality of Death itself, weaving it with elements of occult theology in an attempt to think about the afterlife in concrete material terms. Additionally, touching upon the history of the Dublin University Magazine, Potter will explore how the legacies of German dark Romanticism have shaped Le Fanu’s folkloric Gothic imagination, and enabled him to depict Death as a flourishing, fertile land.
About the festival
Presented by the Embassy of Ireland in Berlin, The German Irish Vampire Festival celebrates, explores and expands a shared cultural history of Vampires in German and Irish gothic culture. The week-long festival will delve into the collective consciousness where this archetypal creature lurks, with talks, film screenings, art installations and an exhibition with partner transmediale, and closing with a specially commissioned live electronic music score to Nosferatu with Gudrun Gut and Linda and Irene Buckley.The festival marks the 125th anniversary of Dracula (1897) by Irish author Bram Stoker and the German expressionist film Nosferatu (1922), its unofficial adaptation. Furthermore, we celebrate the 150th year since the publication of Dubliner Le Fanu’s novella Carmilla, the ground-breaking queer Vampire tale that inspired many others to follow.The multi-disciplinary exhibition at transmediale studio features collaborative works, inspired by Vampire themes, by emerging artists from Staedelschule (with Gerard Byrne: Maximilliano Siñai, John Flindt), HGB Leipzig (with Clemens von Wedemeyer and Dieter Daniels: Adrian Hoerr, Stefania Tatiana Smolkina), HfbK Dresden (with Susan Philipsz: Veronika, Patryk Kujawa), University of Limerick (with Juergen Simpson: Duncan Murphy, Manuel McCarthy), University College Cork (with Bernadette Cronin: Melissa Morrigan, Adrian McCarthy), and ATU (with Ben Geoghegan: Sona Smedkova, Rocio Romero Grau) as part of the Embassy’s Creative Pathways programme in partnership with the Goethe Institute, Ireland. For depth of understanding, film screenings of classic and contemporary Vampire films will be supplemented by talks by academics and experts featuring: Madeline Potter (The Banshee and the Death Coach: Irish Folklore and Dark Romanticism in JS Le Fanu’s ‘Carmilla’), Daniel Shea (The Many Ghostly Traditions of this Place: The German Romantic Origins of an Irish Vampire), and Dieter Daniels (The use of Media in Murnau’s Nosferatu and Stoker’s Dracula).Tickets for the talks, screening and exhibition are complimentary. Due to limited capacity, the film programme will be announced two weeks in advance, register for the festival to be informed and reserve your places. Tickets for the concert of Gudrun Gut and Linda and Irene Buckley are €10/€15 through Zwinglikirche e.V. however complimentary tickets can be won in the Embassy’s draw through the Festival registration page here.
