A city in the savage garden: La Nouvelle-Orléans telle que représentée par les vampires d'Anne Rice

Abstract

While writers in the 18th and 19th centuries kept New Orleans' untamed and eerie spirit alive in their literary works, Anne Rice has added a new dimension to its atmosphere to serve the purposes of a community of vampires. This thesis focusses on the representation of New Orleans in Rice's The Vampire Chronicles. The "autobiographical" style of her series provides a vampire's perspective on New Orleans. This is particularly evident when we consider the following: the space depicted by the vampire is limited by its nocturnal as well as its immortal nature (New Orleans from 1791 to 1999 is seen through the eyes of the same characters). We will use a series of typical locales used by the vampires to illustrate the nocturnal lifestyle of the vampires. From the seven novels of the series, New Orleans is represented through various descriptions of place, comparisons with other cities, recollections, and gothic elements. The reader senses the feelings of identity, rootedness and belonging described by the vampiric characters. Descriptions of spatial activities by the vampires themselves make New Orleans even more familiar. Rice's fiction demonstrates the social relevance of literature. The representation of New Orleans in The Vampire Chronicles has contributed to tourists' expectation of the city and has drawn many fans around the world to experience the "magical and magnificent" New Orleans as described by her vampires.