The snake and death: history of a secular romance from the Poem of Gilgameš to the present day
Keywords:
The Epic of Gilgameš, plant of everlasting life, fountain of eternal youth, linkage between serpent and death, atavistic fear of snake, initiatory journey, self-cognition, alchemical knowledge, Bram Stoker, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Matthew Gregory Lewis, AmbrCopyright (c) 2019 Salomé Guadalupe Ingelmo
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
Abstract
From time immemorial, almost instinctively, man has feared and avoided the snake. Nonetheless, at same time, fascinated by this animal, he seems to have envied some of its attributes.
This dual impulse, responsible for opposing and contradictory feelings, has also left its mark, since the remotest past, on cultural manifestations, such as literature or plastic arts, which often reveal entrenched religious beliefs.
Thus, from a contemporary perspective, it would be possible to find, as early as on literary texts of ancient Mesopotamia, the origins of that role played by this reptile within the narrative of terror and, more broadly, inside the rich fantastic literature of 19th and 20th centuries.
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