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Language and Monstrosity in the Literary Fantastic

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Language and Monstrosity in the Literary Fantastic ‘Impossible Tales’: Language and Monstrosity in the Literary Fantastic Irene Bulla Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 2018 © 2018 Irene Bulla All rights reserved ABSTRACT ‘Impossible Tales’: Language and Monstrosity in the Literary Fantastic Irene Bulla This dissertation analyzes the ways in which monstrosity is articulated in fantastic literature, a genre or mode that is inherently devoted to the challenge of representing the unrepresentable. Through the readings of a number of nineteenth-century texts and the analysis of the fiction of two twentieth-century writers (H. P. Lovecraft and Tommaso Landolfi), I show how the intersection of the monstrous theme with the fantastic literary mode forces us to consider how a third term, that of language, intervenes in many guises in the negotiation of the relationship between humanity and monstrosity. I argue that fantastic texts engage with monstrosity as a linguistic problem, using it to explore the limits of discourse and constructing through it a specific language for the indescribable. The monster is framed as a bizarre, uninterpretable sign, whose disruptive presence in the text hints towards a critique of overconfident rational constructions of ‘reality’ and the self. The dissertation is divided into three main sections. The first reconstructs the critical debate surrounding fantastic literature – a decades-long effort of definition modeling the same tension staged by the literary fantastic; the second offers a focused reading of three short stories from the second half of the nineteenth century (“What Was It?,” 1859, by Fitz-James O’Brien, the second version of “Le Horla,” 1887, by Guy de Maupassant, and “The Damned Thing,” 1893, by Ambrose Bierce) in light of the organizing principle of apophasis; the last section investigates the notion of monstrous language in the fiction of H. P. Lovecraft and Tommaso Landolfi. Table of Contents Acknowledgments iii Introduction 1 Chapter 1 – The literary fantastic 1. Reframing the supernatural 12 2. Charting the critical field 21 2.1. Inclusivism and exclusivism 21 2.2. Definitions of fantastic literature 24 3. On fantastic and realism 30 3.1. Fantastic as perversion 30 3.2. A photograph of the impossible 35 4. Narrative and rhetorical features 40 4.1. “La vicenda del narrare” 40 4.2. Unreliable narrators 42 4.3. “The story won’t tell” 48 Chapter 2 – Monstrosity as function of apophatic discourse in nineteenth-century fantastic literature 1. Telling monsters 56 2. Fantastic fiction as apophatic discourse and the function of 64 monstrosity 3. “Stretching tightly around a vacant space”: “What Was It?” by 73 Fitz-James O’Brien i 4. “The rule of mankind is over”: “Le Horla” by Guy de Maupassant 82 4.1. The mirror and the page 85 4.2. The void of the monstrous, the plenitude of monstrosity 94 5. “There are colors that we cannot see”: “The Damned Thing” by 102 Ambrose Bierce 6. “I find evidences of its presence”: fantastic apophasis and 111 monstrous reconstruction Chapter 3 – Twentieth-century mutations of monstrosity: the fiction of H. P. Lovecraft and Tommaso Landolfi 1. A brief note on twentieth-century fantastic literature 116 2. H. P. Lovecraft’s cosmic horror 121 2.1. Language grows tentacles 125 2.2. Merciful ignorance and the taint of monstrosity 132 3. The impossible literature of Tommaso Landolfi 142 3.1. The frightening face of the familiar 150 3.2. “E allora perché non taci?” 159 Conclusion 164 Bibliography 173 ii Acknowledgments I have accumulated many debts of gratitude during the long gestation of this project. First of all, I am thankful for the continued support and guidance of my advisor, Elizabeth Leake, who was always able to see through the noise and nudge me in the direction I wanted to go, even when I didn’t know it. My heartfelt thanks go to Paolo Valesio, who encouraged me to think fearlessly throughout these years, and whose course on fantastic literature at Columbia sparked my interest in this topic. I was lucky to count Jo Ann Cavallo, who has been an important presence throughout my graduate studies, among the members of the dissertation committee, together with Morena Corradi at Queens College (CUNY) and Simone Castaldi at Hofstra University, whose works I admired well before they kindly agreed to join the committee. I am grateful to Stefano Lazzarin at Université Jean Monnet (Saint-Etienne) for the incredible generosity and kindness with which he shared his expertise. My first forays into the field also benefited from the patient and expert guidance of Marcello Carlino at Università La Sapienza. I also wish to thank the students in my 2017 course Anatomy of Fantastic Fiction: The Uncanny, the Monstrous and the Other in Modern and Contemporary Italy at Columbia University: Ariel, Caitlin, Dina, Ellis, Erica, Luis and Sarah. Their earnest minds and their insightful contributions helped me become a better instructor and a better thinker. I have benefited greatly from conversations with my friends and colleagues in the ‘dissertation group’ (Jenny Rhodes, Alessia Palanti, Niki Kiviat, and Julia Sirmons), who helped me think through this project at various stages. iii Through the ups and downs of graduate school, I was lucky to be able to count on Federica Franze and Aurelia Rabot-Hernandez to always cheer me up, either over a quick crêpe or during a four-hour lunch break. The first years of my doctoral studies were graced by the presence of Maddalena Vaglio Tanet, who has shaped this experience (both personal and scholarly) in profound ways. I am grateful to my friends across the pond for their continued love and support as I left and came back and then left again: Viviana, Peppe, Francesca, Tancredi, Gabriele, Publio, Alessandra and Giulia. To Mauro, for the great conversations about our shared obsessions, and to Magda, for her compassion and support; and lastly, but only because she deserves a special category, to Fiorella. This project would hardly have seen the light of day if it wasn’t for Carlo, who made me braver in many ways and who supported me unwaveringly till the finish line. Finally, I am most grateful to my family: to zio Enrico and zia Santina, bastoni della mia giovinezza, for keeping the home fires burning; to my mother Fulvia, the most powerful white witch; to Valerio, whom I am proud to call my brother; and to my late father Guido, who knew what all this meant. iv To the memory of my father “Come, let’s away to prison: We two alone will sing like birds i’ the cage…” William Shakespeare, King Lear V.3 v Introduction This dissertation analyzes the ways in which monstrosity is articulated in fantastic literature, a genre or mode that is inherently devoted to the challenge of representing the unrepresentable. Through the readings of a number of nineteenth-century texts and the analysis of the fiction of two twentieth-century writers (H. P. Lovecraft and Tommaso Landolfi), I show how the intersection of the monstrous theme with the fantastic literary mode forces us to consider how a third term, that of language, intervenes in many guises in the negotiation of the relationship between humanity and monstrosity. I argue that fantastic texts engage with monstrosity as a linguistic problem, using it to explore the limits of discourse and constructing through it a specific language for the indescribable, built around the core principle of apophasis. The monster is framed as a bizarre, uninterpretable sign, whose disruptive presence in the text hints towards a critique of overconfident rational constructions of ‘reality’ and the self. The fantastic mode identifies a way of writing that flourished especially in the nineteenth century in the United States, Germany, France, England and (with some delay) in Italy. A decades-long critical debate has been developing around its definition; in this study, I consider a story fantastic if it employs a generally realistic setting to stage the encounter of a character with unknown and ineffable forces, usually (but not necessarily) of supernatural origin. The specificity of this type of narrative, compared to other genres or modes featuring the supernatural such as the epic and the fairy-tale, lies in the fact that the world it reconstructs is a faithful image of ‘reality,’ i.e. regulated by scientific laws and the rules of logic and identity; it is therefore dependent on a post-Enlightenment, post-scientific-revolution interpretation of 1 magical and supernatural thinking as a superseded cultural code. In the economy of a fantastic story, the impossible event or manifestation cannot be ascribed to mere physical causes such as dream or hallucination: the text refuses to be read this way. This sets up the fantastic occurrence as an inexplicable breach or “déchirure”1 in the fabric of reality, prompting questions on the relationship between real and unreal, natural and supernatural, possible and impossible, subject and object. In fact, according to Tzvetan Todorov, whose seminal Introduction à la littérature fantastique (1970) has defined subsequent critical debates on the supernatural in literature, the fantastic is a fertile ground for the analysis of issues underlying all literary texts precisely because it foregrounds the relationship between real and imaginary: in this sense, it represents “the quintessence of literature.”2 Such foregrounding takes the shape of represented encounters on the edge of the natural and the possible, resulting in characters being stuck in a cognitive and linguistic deadlock. The fact that fantastic literature deals in bizarre occurrences and supernatural apparitions that disrupt the laws of nature and logic (as established by a rationalistic, secularized culture) should not lead us to consider it, as Todorov does, “nothing but the bad conscience of [the] positivist era”3 – its irrational counterpoint.
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