As I was reading some things about the Seven Youths of Ephesus yesterday for their feast, I was noticing some parallels between the story and Gothic literature that I am familiar with, especially when stripped of the hagiographical elements. And as I wondered what a movie or book would look like if the story of these Seven Sleepers was transformed into a Gothic story, I decided to do some research on the internet. Google then provided me with a rough draft of these parallels I noticed through their AI generator, which I thought was worth sharing. Below are three entries on the subject generated by AI, with the last of the three specifically concentrating on the parallels between the story of the Seven Sleepers and Edgar Allan Poe stories.
The ancient legend of the Seven Sleepers of Ephesus is not part of the traditional Gothic canon, but its thematic elements — such as suspenseful entombment, supernatural phenomena, and the uncanny passage of time — have influenced Gothic and Romantic literature. The tale's emphasis on fear and the unknown makes it a precursor to later Gothic works that explored similar dark and mysterious concepts.
The Legend of the Seven Sleepers
According to early sources, seven Christian youths in 3rd-century Ephesus fled persecution under the pagan Roman emperor Decius and hid in a cave. The emperor discovered their location and sealed the entrance, trapping them inside to die. Instead, they fell into a miraculous, divinely-induced sleep that lasted for centuries. Upon their awakening, they discovered that the Roman Empire had become Christian, and they were celebrated as a miracle before dying permanently.
Parallels Between the Legend and Gothic Literature
The legend of the Seven Sleepers contains several elements that would later become staples of Gothic fiction:
Entrapment and premature burial: The initial threat of being walled up in the cave is a macabre scenario of premature burial, a common fear explored in Gothic tales. The story's suspense comes from the initial feeling of hopelessness and inevitable doom.
The uncanny and supernatural: The "miraculous sleep" that defies natural law creates an uncanny atmosphere. The disorientation and supernatural quality of their long slumber and eventual awakening resonate with the sense of a world where supernatural events intrude upon reality, a core characteristic of Gothic writing.
Decay and the passage of time: The moment one of the youths, Malchus, awakens and is shocked by the changes to his world is a powerful illustration of the terrifying effects of time. The anachronistic, decades-old coin he tries to use is a tangible symbol of temporal decay, a theme also explored in stories of haunted houses and family decline in Gothic fiction.
The cavern and claustrophobia: The dark, claustrophobic cave setting provides a natural Gothic backdrop. Caves and crypts are staples of the genre, symbolizing secret horrors, imprisonment, and the finality of death.
Influence on Later Literature
While the legend's themes are rooted in Christian faith, the narrative structure and psychological impact influenced secular Gothic and Romantic authors who explored similar elements of fear and the unknown.
Washington Irving's "Rip Van Winkle" (1819): This story is perhaps the most famous and direct descendant of the Seven Sleepers legend. Irving secularizes the plot, replacing the saints' martyrdom with a tale of an idle man who awakens to find his world completely changed. Like Malchus, Rip uses his anachronistic knowledge and experience to navigate his new reality.
H.G. Wells' The Sleeper Awakes (1899): This science fiction novel draws on the "awakening into a new world" premise. The protagonist, Graham, sleeps for 203 years due to a trance-like state. He awakens to a futuristic, dystopian version of London and must adapt to the new society and grapple with his long-lost identity, playing with the Gothic themes of isolation and alienation.
Romantic literature: The Romantics, like Thomas de Quincey and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, were also fascinated by the legend. They were attracted to its themes of spiritual endurance and the confrontation with a profoundly changed world.
Entry Two
The legend of the Seven Sleepers of Ephesus, though rooted in Christian hagiography, contains several key elements that echo and prefigure later Gothic literature. The parallel themes include premature burial, supernatural events, the uncanny passage of time, and the use of a dark, confined setting.
Premature burial and entrapment
The initial premise of the legend involves the gruesome threat of premature burial, a core theme in Gothic literature and a common human fear.
The story: To escape persecution under the pagan Roman emperor Decius, seven Christian youths hide in a cave. The emperor discovers them and orders the cave entrance to be sealed, trapping them inside to die.
Gothic parallel: This act of walling the young men into a cave parallels the imagery in Gothic tales like Edgar Allan Poe's "The Cask of Amontillado," where characters are immured in tombs. It creates a sense of claustrophobia, impending doom, and dread, all hallmarks of the Gothic tradition.
The uncanny and the supernatural
The miraculous, centuries-long sleep and subsequent awakening of the youths introduce supernatural elements that create an uncanny atmosphere.
The story: The young men fall into a divine slumber, only to awaken centuries later to a world they do not recognize. When one of them goes into town with coins from the time of Emperor Decius, the anachronism disorients both him and the townsfolk.
Gothic parallel: This "sleep that defies nature" disrupts the natural order and creates a chilling sense of otherworldliness. The shock of the protagonist, Malchus, when he encounters a changed world evokes the disorientation and terror of characters who confront supernatural forces or inexplicable events in Gothic stories.
The dark, enclosed setting
The cave setting itself serves as a classic Gothic location, providing a backdrop of mystery, isolation, and confinement.
The story: The seven youths retreat to a secluded mountain cave, a natural crypt that becomes both their refuge and their prison. The emperor's sealing of the entrance turns it into a tomb.
Gothic parallel: The cave is a claustrophobic, isolated place where dark and supernatural events occur. This aligns with the Gothic genre's use of haunted houses, desolate castles, and underground crypts to create a sense of unease and terror.
A shocking passage of time
The legend's central tension revolves around a temporal disjunction—the men go to sleep for what feels like a single day but is actually centuries.
The story: The sleepers awaken completely unaware that time has passed. Their gradual, shocking discovery of the world's radical transformation creates psychological suspense.
Gothic parallel: This theme was later famously secularized by Washington Irving in "Rip Van Winkle," where a man's long sleep results in a world that has moved on without him. It explores the fragility of memory and identity, and the terror of being a stranger in a familiar place, a sensation often used in Gothic narratives to unsettle characters and readers.
From pious to chilling
While the legend is ultimately a story of religious perseverance, later Gothic and Romantic writers could reframe its elements to produce a story of pure psychological horror and human alienation.
The pious romance of the Seven Sleepers focuses on divine providence and resurrection.
The Gothic re-imagining could focus on the horror of waking up centuries late, finding everything and everyone you know to be dust. This transforms a holy miracle into a dreadful, lonely fate.
Entry Three
While Edgar Allan Poe does not explicitly reference the legend of the Seven Sleepers of Ephesus, the legend's themes of premature burial, suspended animation, and the terrifying passage of time deeply resonate with his Gothic sensibilities. Poe was a master of psychological horror and frequently explored similar concepts of entombment and the uncanny.
Parallels in Poe's work
Several of Poe's works contain clear thematic links to the Seven Sleepers legend, though adapted for his signature style of psychological terror rather than religious piety.
Premature burial and the sealed tomb
The legend: Seven Christian youths are walled up in a cave, a form of live burial, for centuries.
Poe's tales: The fear of premature burial was a recurring obsession for Poe. In his story "The Premature Burial", the protagonist suffers from taphephobia, a paralyzing dread of being buried alive. This tale, along with "The Cask of Amontillado", where a character is bricked into a catacomb wall, are literal interpretations of the Seven Sleepers' original, dreadful fate.
Suspended animation and the uncanny
The legend: The seven youths fall into a miraculous, divinely-induced sleep that lasts for centuries, an uncanny defiance of the natural order.
Poe's tales: Poe often used suspended states to explore the blurred line between life and death. In "The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar", a man is mesmerized at the moment of death and lingers in a grotesque, decaying state between life and death for months. Poe's poem "The Sleeper" also explores this liminal state, describing a woman's sleep with a sense of unease and morbidity.
Disorientation and the passage of time
The legend: The sleeper, Malchus, is shocked to find that centuries have passed, symbolized by the ancient coin he tries to spend. This temporal disjunction is central to the narrative.
Poe's tales: Poe used disorientation to dismantle a narrator's sanity. In tales like "The Pit and the Pendulum", the narrator loses his sense of time, location, and even reality while trapped in a Spanish Inquisition dungeon. The psychological horror is derived not from an external threat, but from the terror of a crumbling mental state.
A tale of terror, not piety
The primary difference lies in the narrative's purpose and tone.
The legend's moral: The Seven Sleepers legend, as a religious story, affirms divine providence, demonstrating the power of God over time and death. The miracle is one of hope and divine preservation.
Poe's secular fear: Poe strips these themes of any religious comfort. His explorations of entombment and suspended animation focus on the psychological dread of isolation, decay, and a loss of identity. In Poe's universe, supernatural events are sources of inexplicable horror, not miraculous salvation.
In essence, Poe took the unsettling elements from ancient legends like the Seven Sleepers and transformed them into the modern Gothic. He traded the miraculous for the macabre, using elements of the legend to craft tales of sanity unraveling under the weight of fear and the unknown.
