Symbolism ↔ naturalism, realism • Spirituality, imagination, dreams, mysticism, other wordliness • Ordinary→ Ideal • Darker gothic side of Romanticism (Rops. Pornocrates, 1896) • Metaphorical evocations of absolute Truths, esoteric affinities, symbolic imagery expresses the poet’s soul • Prophetic might of imagination+ refuge from mundane reality • Arthur Symons. The Symbolist Movement in Literature (1899) • 1890s literary journal Yellow Book (Huysmans Against Nature, influence on Wilde’s Dorian Gray) • Decadence and Aestheticism: Aubrey Beardsley • Opposed to moralizing, rationality, pragmatism • „All art is quite useless”: self-sufficiency of artwork • French inspiration: Baudelaire, Les Fleurs du Mal • Kant’s philosophy: pure aesthetic experience=disinterested contemplation of an object that pleases for its own sake without reference to reality or externel ends of utility or morality • Aesthete Walter Pater: goal of art= celebration of ideals, sensous pleasure, cult of beauty • Elitism, irrationalism, Hellenistic ideals ART FOR ART’s SAKE, L’ART POUR L’ART LIFE FOR ART’S SAKE SEX FOR SEX’S SAKE Decorative arts, orientalism, arts and crafts movement, dandy fashion Charles Algernon Swinburne (1837-1909) Decadence & Symbolism • Controversial themes in his poetry • Sadomasochism (the poetics of passion: erotica & pain) • Death wish – prophetic treatment of human condition • Lesbianism –in hommage of Sappho of Lesbos • Irreligion • The lure of the evil: unclean for the sake of uncleanliness Roundels, „The little eyes that never knew light” (vö. postmortem photo) *„Faustine” from Poems and Ballads, 1866 -- Ave Faustina Imperatrix, Morituri te Salutant. --femme fatale figure, vampiric, dominatrix, voracious, Vagina Dentata --the devil throwing dice w God for you, Faustine. (see Coleridge) Chance, hazard, fate ↔ divine order --Blakeian question: Did he who made the lamb make thee? (phil/ethical/religious dilemma of coexistence of good and evil) --”Did Satan make you to spite God? / Or did God mean To scourge with scorpions for a rod / Our sins, Faustine?” --Is life worth to be lived in sin? What is the meaning of life if you are a sinner? (see Dorian Gray) If she is doomed to be evil, it’s in her nature and cannot help it, is it really her fault? --omnipotent power but no choice, new-born soul w no consciousness --addressing the Evil: Who are you, Faustine? → How are you, Faustine? Attempt to communicate w cursed woman (dark double of Lady of Shallot), ravished by riddle and attempts to solve it Oscar Wilde (1854-1900) • * Celebrity figure, dandy, fashion icon, „the green carnation” • * witticisms, verbal fencing games • * Aestheticism, Decadence, Neo-Platonism (Walter Pater, Huysmans) • * Art for Art’s Sake (L’Art pour L’Art): anti-utilitarianism, cult of beauty, non-mimetic agenda: „Life should imitate art” • * Writes in a variety of genres: • --popular fairy tales (The Selfish Giant, The Happy Prince religious allegory, moral didacticism, symbolic layers, gay subtext • --gothic novel The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890) • --dramas: Salome: lure of sin incarnated as beautiful woman, dance of 7 veils, Biblical theme, prohibition to perform on stage, written in French • --comedy of manners The Importance of being Earnest: protagonists escape Victorian social mores by ‚bunburying’, alternative personas in country and city, WIT, An Ideal Husband • --essays on aestheticism, art, socialism: The Soul of a Man under Socialism (1891) libertarian socialism, criticize charity • *Biography: fame ends w downfall caused by „sexual deviance”, „act of gross indecency”, sodomy/invert, a humiliating trial followed by a sentence for two years of hard labour • „The Ballad of Reading Gaol”–identification w suffering prisoners, „De profundis” : letter on his spiritual journey through trials, counterpoint to his former philosophy of pleasure --dies alone, and deserted in Paris Oscar Wilde (1854-1900) The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891) •The cult and corruption of beauty •ekphrasis •The Gothic double •Faustian theme •New hedonism: only things worth in life are beauty and sensual satisfaction •Theme of evil, ethical Q: what’s the meaning of life if you are a sinner? Is there redemption? Relation of crime/punishment. •Victorian underworld, corrupted delights of the privileged elite: opium dens, ennui, manipulative games •Shock value: „a poisonous book w odours of moral, spiritual putrefaction”, violates the laws guarding public morality •1st version: Lippincott Magazine (1890) revised version w preface defending the artist's rights and art for art's sake (1891) •Triple self-portait= Narcissus+ the artist aesthete+ witty dandy: „Basil Hallward is what I think I am: Lord Henry is what the world thinks me: Dorian is what I would like to be—in other ages, perhaps.”
Charles Gill (prosecuting): What is "the love that dare not speak its name"?
Wilde: "The love that dare not speak its name" in this century is such a great affection of an elder for a younger man as there was between David and Jonathan, such as Plato made the very basis of his philosophy, and such as you find in the sonnets of Michelangelo and Shakespeare. It is that deep spiritual affection that is as pure as it is perfect. It dictates and pervades great works of art, like those of Shakespeare and Michelangelo, and those two letters of mine, such as they are. It is in this century misunderstood, so much misunderstood that it may be described as "the love that dare not speak its name," and on that account of it I am placed where I am now. It is beautiful, it is fine, it is the noblest form of affection. There is nothing unnatural about it. It is intellectual, and it repeatedly exists between an older and a younger man, when the older man has intellect, and the younger man has all the joy, hope and glamour of life before him. That it should be so, the world does not understand. The world mocks at it, and sometimes puts one in the pillory for it.[136] Bram Stoker: Dracula (1897) *Gothic horror romance, invasion fantasy, *epistolary form: letters, diaries, newspaper cuttings, shiplogs *Polidori: The Vampyre, Sheridan Le Fanu: Carmilla Fictionalization of Victorian anxieties: • pseudosciences (mesmerism, animal magnetism, spiritist sessions, Royal Society of Psychic Research) • fear of degeneration (Darwin) • Scientific, mystical, religious view of paranormal powers converge (fight vampire with cross, garlic, blood transfusion, Dr Van Helsing, Lawyer Jonathan Harker ↔ unknowable supernatural beast) •bourgeois fear of moral degeneration: sexual licentiousness: French disease: rape fantasies: wasting, corrupted, contaminating virgins: Mina and Lucy as doubles (Goblin Market) •industrialized city as site of corruption •Fear of New Woman, Dandy, Homosexual, decadence • Dracula represents otherness: ethnic, gender, genetic, moral, religious (inverted Christ!: Blood is life!) •breaks boundaries bw life/death, civilization/barbarism, reason/madness, home/abroad, animal/human METAMORPHIC shapeshifter •Both repulsive and seducing → abject •ending: function of cultural memory, adventure retold as a story by survivors
Robert Louis Stevenson: The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886) *A shilling shocker, penny dreadful, a fine bogey tale, a crawler: sensational tale of supernatura incident designed to produce pleasurable chills *Scene: present day London, recognizable but eerie: urban gothic: shadowworld w.in civilized metropolis (Dickens, Gaiman) *Ambiguity already in title: strange ↔ case *Mad scientist stock character *The figure of the double: fear of degeneration, unspeakable horror *Metamorphosis blurs binaries: J→H, physician→patient, abnormal hysteric → respectable bourgeois, 1→2 *Never trust appearances –suspicion BUT Utterson is a strange detective: does not work to reveal crime but to cover it, save reputation of Dr Jekyll –see: hypocrisy of bourgeoisie *Relationship bw Jekyll and Hyde: hideous sin: speculations: blackmail? illegitimate son? homosexuality? Robert Louis Stevenson.Treasure Island (original title: The Sea Cook. A Story for Boys 1881-2) *Adventure novel: tale of pirates & buried gold (influential of pop perception of pirates: X marks the spot on secret map, tropic island, parrot on one-legged buccaneer’s shoulder) *serialized in children’s magazine Young Folks (1881-2) *Coming of age story, boys’ adventure story, ambiguous morality *Popular genre: sea novels, the navy yarn (more realistic, historical context,a adventures of capable navy officer) ≈≈ desert island romance (fantasy, shipwrecked threatened by savage natives or pirates) Defoe. Robinson Crusoe 1791, Rousseau, Noble Savage) •COMPLEX LAYERS OF MEANINGS •Fairy tale fantasy •Twisted fairy tale •First non-didactic, non-moralizing piece of children’s lit •Portal quest fantasy, a girl’s adventure story •A fantastic Bildunsgroman/Künstlerroman? (growing up) •A dream tale •Literary nonsense (metalinguistic + transverbal) •Language philosophy (necessity of misunderstanding +impossibility of meaninglessness) •Social, cultural criticism (codes of conduct, bourgeois conventions, 5’o clock tea, small talk, sports, education) •Science fantasy in age of epistemological crisis (Darwinism, photo, train) •Satire (didactic poems, tyrannic monarchs, adult wisdom) • Ludic text (chess, card games, interactive) •Metamorphosis as leitmotif •Black humour, death jokes, body horror + Innocence •Multilayered: metaphorical + referential: private story for particular child (Alice Liddell) & Oxford allusions & references to life in Victorian Britain •Dual readership –intergenerational epiphany THE ADAPTOGENIC QUALITY OF THE TEXT 1862 July 4: oral narrative improvised on a rowing „Perhaps the hardest thing in all literature— at least I have found it so: by no voluntary effort can I accomplish excursion with the Liddell sisters up the Isis it: I have to take it as it comes— is to write anything 1863 Alice’s Adventures Under Ground Manuscript of original. And perhaps the easiest is, when once an fairy tale decorated by his own drawings, „A original line has been struck out, to follow it up, and to write any amount more to the same tune.” Christmas Gift to a Dear Child in Memory of a Summer's Day„ (w author’s illustrations) 1865 July 4 Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Giftbook published by Macmillan, illustrated by John Tenniel 1872 Dec. Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There illustrated by Tenniel 1886 Dec 23. theatrical play (dir. Henry Savile Clarke) facsimile edition of Under Ground manuscript 1887„Alice on the Stage” 1890 Nursery Alice 1870 “Puzzles from Wonderland” in Aunt Judy’s Magazine as appetizer for his impending sequel 1871 collaborated w composer William Boyd who set to music some verses of Looking-Glass. Looking Glass biscuit tin, Wonderland postage stamp case (commercial enterprises, tie-in products) • → a fluid text (Bryant) • → Walter Benjamin on storytelling as “the art of repeating stories” (Alice falls down bw bookshelves)
THE ALICE TALES AS A PICTUREBOOKS Carroll: a highly visual storyteller *pioneering photographer *illustrated manuscripts (hand printed gift copy of Alice’s Adventures underground, 1863) *rebus letters to child friends “And what is the use of a book, without pictures or conversation?” “nondescript Everygirl” but many illustrations images wedded to total performance of work watch+read the text Metamediality & metafictionality ***literary nonsense defamiliarizes our conventional language use ***images functions as “the eye of/in the text” **verbal and visual nonsense simultaneously challenge the boundaries of the Imaginable and the Speakable the Jabberwock/y as a specimen of imagetextual monstrosity “‘It seems very pretty,’[…]‘but it’s rather hard to understand!’[…] ‘Somehow it seems to fill my head with ideas–only I don’t exactly know what they are!’”
Charles Kingsley. The Water Babies, a Fairy Tale for a Land Baby (1862-3) a serialized evolutionary fairy tale by a Reverend combines scientific views & belief in wonder & religious faith --Story of magical transformation: brutish, ape-like, ignorant chimney sweep little Tom falls into lake and becomes a waterbaby METAMORPHOSIS meaningful on various levels • Christian allegory: water=cleansing, purification, baptism, journey through purgatory, redemption • Darwinism: degeneration/evolution, amphibians: transitional beings, in uteral development aquatic environment • Bildunsgroman, moral education, reformation, from chimneysweep becomes a man of science, social descent/ascension *COMMENTARY ON VARIOUS BELIEF SYSTEMS: scientific hypothesis just as much grounded in proofs invisible to the naked eye as religious faith or a belief in fairies *In line w era’s popular scientific fairy tales: the world seen through the microscope=Wonderland *biological creatures (newts, fish, crabs) & water fairies Mrs Doasyouwouldbedoneby *Mock Victorian scientists’ false self-confidence, pseudo-sciences ↔ wisdom and faith of an innocent child * Tom’s picaresque under water journey to the end of the world George MacDonald. (Scottish writer of fairy tale fantasies and Christian miniter) The Princess and the Goblin (1872), The Princess and Curdie , At the back of the North Wind, Lilith, Phantastes „I write not for children but for the childlike whether they be of five, or fifty, or seventy-five.” • Evil race of goblins (Darwinian degenerates, cobs creatures, expulsed from kingdom, ancestral grudge) • Goblins try to undermine royal castle, but Princess saves the Kingdom w help of miner boy, ghost of fairy great great grandmother, and the magical power of song • Subterranian world: repressed other of consciousness, working class, racial difference • Irene is not a princess because she was born so, but because she behaves like one: courage, faith, hope, solidarity –class equality of 2 child protagonist • Fairy tale tradition, myth (magic web), maternal marvels Sensation novel o Peak of popularity in 1860s-1870s o Literary predecessors: melodrama, Newgate novels (glamorised biographies of famous criminals), crime mistery, gothic romance,’novel with a secret’ o Themes: loss of identity (common social anxiety) adultery, theft, kidnapping, insanity, bigamy, forgery, seduction, murder o Expert plot: dangerous beauty adept at disguise & deception, endangered virgins, aristocratic villains, disclose hypocrisy of society, misdirected letters, romantic triangles, drugs, potions, coincidences, suspense o Embodied reading experience: "extremely provocative of that sensation in the palate and throat which is a premonitory symptom of nausea.„ „preaches to the nerves instead of judgment” o Reasons of genre’s popularity: notorious trials (poisoner Palmer), tabloid journalism, reforms in divorce procedures, public education, increase of journals and readers o Wilkie Collins: The Woman in White (1860) o Georges du Maurier. Trilby (1896) o Collins: Moonstone (1868) the first detective novel o Dickens. The Mystery of Edwin Drood (1870) Detective fiction: Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1859-1930) • Sherlock Holmes series (1887-1927): 4 novels, 56 stories • London-based brilliant "consulting detective" w abilities bordering on the fantastic (astute observation, deductive reasoning, forensic skills to solve difficult cases), scientific detective, man of reason and technology, gentleman, epitome of Victorian imperial values • his assistant Watson • Tries to kill SH off in Reichenbach Falls episode in fight w Prof Moriarty→ revived bec public demand • Also wrote historical romances • volunteer doctor: The Great Boer War (received knighthood) • the History of Spiritualism, Through the Magic Door Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849) Monsieur Dupin, masterdetective Tales of Mystery and Imagination Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque –tales of mystery, macabre, detective fiction, science fiction, thriller, gothic horror, American Romantic Movement Unreliable narrators, madness, uncanny „The Raven” (1845) immense success, stylized lgg, supernatural theme, folk motifs, talking raven pays visit to student mourning his lover and drives him to madness: „Nevermore!”