“The darkness hung about our tiny circle”: Representations of and responses to power in the ‘dark academia’ novels The Secret History and If We Were Villains
The aesthetic and literary genre of dark academia has become popular due to its romanticisation of immersive academic learning and lifestyles. It has however been criticised for its frequent glorification of and focus on Eurocentric educational institutions which celebrate Western patriarchal exclusivity. This thesis examines in how far this is true of the genre’s prominent novels Donna Tartt’s Th