American Literature Commons^™

Myriad Mirrors: Doppelgangers And Doubling In The Vampire Diaries, Kimberley Mcmahon-Coleman

Kimberley McMahon-Coleman

Mirroring is of fundamental importance in Gothic literature and filmic texts generally, and is a prevalent trope in the CW network teen drama, The Vampire Diaries. The television series is itself a “doubling” in that it is an adaptation of a series of novels by L.J. Smith, creating a situation wherein the same central characters inhabit the parallel townships of the novels’ Fells Church and television’s Mystic Falls, and thus have histories which are, at times, contradictory. The television version also explicitly explores the concept of the doppelganger, and thus the idea of reflection, even as it manipulates the historical …