Date of Award
5-2026
Document Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Arts (MA)
Department
English
Committee Chair/Advisor
Dr. David Coombs
Committee Member
Dr. Megan Eatman
Committee Member
Dr. Michelle Smith
Abstract
In a world of digital platforming, those who adhere to the trend of dark academia seek a kind of virtual community through their reposted poems and their meticulously curated Pinterest boards, engaging with literature that follows these markers of the subculture to languish in what Mitch Therieau calls a “diffuser of atmosphere,” or a vibe rather than a mode of action. Donna Tartt’s The Secret History is often celebrated as the ‘ur-text’ for the dark academia aesthetic. However, to place The Secret History as solely a forefather to the dark academia aesthetic would be to ignore her greater commentary on the social contentions surrounding the state of the contemporary university. Tartt explores the contradictory nature of the contemporary collegiate space through her reinstitution of the gothic modes of navigating social conflict, while simultaneously highlighting the evolution of the collegiate space as a valid setting for a gothic novel to occur. By intersecting these two forms which view setting in contradictory lights of beauty and terror, Donna Tartt’s The Secret History establishes a new kind of gothic subgenre, coined in this thesis as the collegiate gothic. This subgenre invoked by Tartt works to recognize the death of the institutional ivory tower through the very same principles of selfish disconnection and elevated knowledge that created its appeal.
Recommended Citation
Crowe, Megan, "“A Morbid Longing”: An Examination of Donna Tartt’s The Secret History and The Emergence of the Collegiate Gothic Genre in Post-War America" (2026). All Theses. 4698.
https://open.clemson.edu/all_theses/4698
Included in
Aesthetics Commons, American Art and Architecture Commons, American Literature Commons, Higher Education Commons