Pandemics and the gothic, then and now: a hum in the background

While the assertion, 'no one really wants to talk about COVID anymore', has become a common refrain, cultural evidence suggests otherwise. Rather, cultural materials indicate not only a sustained interest in epidemic and pandemic experiences in the past but also continuing interest in our own pandemic era. However, this interest is often registered through gestures and brief mentions rather than explicit and sustained plague narratives. This paper considers these trends, especially in Gothic works, a literary tradition rooted in hyperbolic representations of threats that also represents disease on frank terms consistent with current medical knowledge. Pandemics appear in Gothic writing two centuries ago through brief references that suggest the daily experience of danger.Pandemic-era television is following the same strategies. Like 'fevers' and 'plagues' in the early 1800s, COVID-19 can be raised briefly and often indirectly. There is also attention to other aspects of the pandemic, including isolation and misinformation. In the popular Gothic series, <i>Interview with the Vampire</i> (2022-), 'plague' and misinformation are captured on terms drawn from earlier Gothic writing and intertwined to reflect on the misinformation of the COVID-19 era.