QUICK NUM NOTES

 Without disavowing my previous statements on the NUM formula, I continue trying to come up a simpler way to express it for the purposes of the theoretical book project. I posted this today on CHFB.

________

While I don't disagree with the stuff I wrote all those years ago, I have to admit that, if one depends on the "affective argument"-- that terrors like Jaws and Quasimodo are meant to carry the sense of being supernatural even though they aren't-- that argument becomes dubious just because not every reader responds to the same set of signals the same way. One reader may feel that Jaws is meant to carry a supernatural vibe, another will say he didn't get that vibe at all. 

It's the same thing with the "rational Gothic" stories I brought up recently in another thread. Even their authors thought that they were disavowing the supernatural by coming up with gimmicks like phosphorescent hounds to explain away the suggestion of ghostly apparitions. But my current line of thought is more like, "how much crap did an author have to come up with to put across this involved a deception?" And does that level of crap exceed what real swindlers do to gain their filthy lucre? 

Real criminals usually try to keep things simple. if Al Capone wants to kill a rebellious underling, he shoots him, or (more famously) beats him to death with a baseball bat. He doesn't put him in an electric chair, the way Blofeld executes his subordinate in THUNDERBALL the book. Real torturers are direct in the ways they compel confessions, with unsubtle devices like the rack and the strappado; they don't engineer a whole "Pit and Pendulum" setup. Real dreams aren't as elaborate and structured as Alice's dream of Wonderland.

The opposition I'm currently playing with is that we're used to thinking of "marvelous things" are total inventions while "uncanny things" are supposed to be in line with the way the natural universe works. But the latter are arguably just as much inventions as the former. if you can't observe a real Pit and Pendulum in human history, or a real crime in which someone pretends to be a ghost to get rid of all the heirs to a fortune, then the phenomenon described is still a creation of the imagination-- just not one that requires as much imaginative effort as something overtly marvelous. (See Stephen King's DANSE MACABRE remarks on his preference for Batman over Superman.) 

  

SCOTT AND THE SUPERHERO IDIOM PT. 3

 Following my earlier ruminations on Sir Walter Scott and the titular idiom, I decided to go through the index of Leslie Fiedler's magisterial LOVE AND DEATH IN THE AMERICAN NOVEL--which, though centered upon American authors, contains a lot about their European forbears-- and reread everything the critic had to say about the inventor of the historical novel. I knew from previous readings that nearly everything Fiedler had to say about Scott was virulently negative, with the exception of crediting Scott with being able to create literary myths that appealed to wide audiences. In Fiedler's demi-Marxist views from that era-- late fifties to early sixties-- Scott's greatest offense was that (according to Fiedler) all or most of the author's works allowed the viewpoint characters to give up ideas of revolting against authority and accepting the bourgeois lifestyle. I'm sure even back then Fiedler had read more of Scott than I have now-- though to be sure, Fiedler doesn't cite a lot of Scott works, saying nearly nothing about the classic IVANHOE and (quite naturally) not mentioning the work that recently engaged me, THE LAY OF THE LAST MINSTREL. But I still find this a very superficial pronouncement.

In previous readings I highlighted a lot of Fiedler's remarks in LOVE. But I missed an important insight, and it's a strange oversight on my part, given all of my earlier commentary about the intertwined literary categories of "the metaphenomenal" and "the heroic." In the overlooked insight, Fiedler brilliantly links the rise of the gothic novel in Europe (beginning with Horace Walpole's 1764 THE CASTLE OF OTRANTO) with Scott's invention of the historical novel with WAVERLY in 1814.

...behind the Gothic there lies a theory of history, a particular sense of the past. The tale of terror is a kind of historical novel which existed before the historical novel (the invention of Walter Scott) came into being.

Fiedler then credits Samuel Richardson with having essentially invented the naturalistic novel's sense of "the present," beginning with 1740's CLARISSA. I'm not sure why Defoe's 1722 MOLL FLANDERS is out of the running in that department, or why Defoe doesn't even rate a mention in the whole of LOVE. But I agree with Fiedler's next point, that "the Gothic felt for the first time the pastness of the past." Long before Walpole subtitled OTRANTO as "a Gothic Story," the word "gothic" had been used since the Renaissance to indicate that which was medieval and therefore barbaric. Following the Renaissance, the literary lights rejected, as Fiedler says of the naturalistic novel, all or most of those "improbable and marvelous" elements that culminated in the late 1500s with Spenser's FAERIE QUEENE. Wikipedia pegs the beginnings of the Enlightenment with Descartes, but I prefer 1603, the publication-year of the first book of DON QUIXOTE, which essentially ended the chivalric romance for the next two centuries.          

What is "the pastness of the past" in OTRANTO? Though of course Walpole wrote the novel in 1764, he published the book anonymously, claimed he had translated a manuscript from the 1500s, retelling a story from the era of the Crusades. Walpole fooled some contemporary reviewers into believing that OTRANTO was an authentic work penned between the 9th and 11th centuries, and after he eventually admitted authorship, many scholars of his time regarded the novel as meretricious. However, setting the story in the medieval past allowed the author to represent wild fantasies of his own creation, much like the metaphenomena of chivalric romances.

During the early 1700s there had arisen a passion in Europe for both original literary fairy tales and reworkings of oral stories, the last including a craze for the newly translated THOUSAND AND ONE NIGHTS. There existed a few broad fantasies like GULLIVER'S TRAVELS and proto-SF works like Voltaire's MICROMEGAS. But OTRANTO inspired imitators to delve into the historical past, and to threaten the commonplace natural world with such horrors-- ghosts (real or fake), deals with the devil, and even the "occult science" of alchemy that infuses Shelley's FRANKENSTEIN. The idiom of the Gothic even inspired an inventive hybrid of the European Gothic and the Arabian Nights fantasy in William Beckford's 1786 VATHEK.         

WAVERLY, the first of Scott's historical novels, doesn't delve very far into the past. Only about sixty years separate the novel's action during the Jacobite rebellion in Scotland and 1814, when Scott published the story. Then in 1820 Scott published IVANHOE, which, though it was a naturalistic story set in England's 12th century, nevertheless revived the genre of the chivalric romance. Further, even before the down-to-earth WAVERLY, it's also worth remembering that in 1805 Scott wrote his first original narrative poem, the aforementioned MINSTREL. And though it's not as imaginative as VATHEK, it certainly presents more wonders than did the average Gothic, such as a goblin, river-spirits, a book of magic spells, and a magician who comes back from death to reclaim his property. A case could made that just as Walpole gave birth the Modern Horror Story, Scott-- rather than usual nominees like George MacDonald or William Morris-- gave birth to the Modern Magical-Era Fantasy Tale. I now credit Leslie Fiedler with supplying me with a crucial conception for both of these modernized forms of older genres: that they are modern because they, unlike their predecessors, could not help but engage with modernity-- even when the authors might be seeking with might and main to forswear the heavy hand of history.                  

SPIDER-FEMME, SPIDER-FEMME PART 2

 As I said earlier, I'm working my way to my second mythcomic, which happens to be the eighteenth issue of SPIDER-WOMAN. I don't propose to go over each of the seventeen previous issues, but to give some flavor of the feature's early history, I want to touch on the high points.

#1-- I don't want to overstate the importance of Marv Wolfman having the insight to recycle Goodwin's idea that the starring heroine seemed to repel people, though not for Goodwin's original reason. It was typical for all Marvel heroes to have some sort of trauma or character flaw that would make them sympathetic to the audience. Yet Wolfman's treatment of his costumed champion was far more interesting than his uninventive treatment of his superhero "Nova" around the same time, and in some ways she's one of Marvel's first truly "feminine" superheroines. On the fifth page of the first issue, she's still in London, trying to make a living, but frozen out by many citizens, *especially* other women. She gets a new costume, new name Jessica Drew, a fuller origin and a potential new boyfriend, SHIELD agent Jerry Hunt.

#2-- Though I said elsewhere that Jessica's only connection with knights-in-armor were the demi-human Knights of Wundagore, here she has a Close Encounter of the Medieval Kind. While visiting a museum she finds she has a strange intuitive knowledge of Matters Arthurian. At the same time, the sorceress Morgan Le Fay-- only seen in a non-magical iteration back in the BLACK KNIGHT comic book of 1955-- projects her spirit to 1978. She uses a magic sword that's on display to take control of a petty thief, changing him into a super-knight to achieve her ends. The false knight seeks out an old, Merlin-like sorcerer, Charles Magnus, because Morgan wants Magnus's copy of the Book of the Darkhold. Spider-Woman befriends Magnus, defeats the pawn and banishes Morgan for the time being.

#3-6-- In a smorgasbord of storylines, Magnus accompanies Jessica to Los Angeles. In swift succession she meets a new villain called Brother Grimm (later revealed to be two villains in one, the Brothers Grimm), the Hangman (a WEREWOLF BY NIGHT foe created by Wolfman), the Werewolf himself, and Morgan LeFay again. The Morgan plotline links her desire for the Darkhold to the past history of the Werewolf, which is a more mainstream exposure for the evil tome than its appearances in the monster-books. Agent Jerry Hunt tracks Jessica to L.A. and the two become lovers.

#9-- After two more Wolfman issues, he departed the book. (A podcast quoted him as saying he didn't know what he was doing on the feature.) Mark Gruenwald assumed writing duties, and he, in tandem with artist Carmine Infantino, amped up the eerie qualities of the book. Infantino had been on the title since issue #1 but his arabesque artwork seemed pent-up in his work with Wolfman. Gruenwald's weird menaces gave Infantino lots of weirdness to illustrate-- the Needle, the Gypsy Moth, Madame Doll (admittedly set up for her role by Wolfman), the Cult of Kali and the albino mutant Nekra (originally from the short-lived SHANNA THE SHE-DEVIL title). I felt during this period that Gruenwald showed a strong predilection for sussing out the feminine nature of Jessica Drew-- particularly when she learns that her inability to make friends is the result of her giving off "allure or alarm" pheromones as a result of the spider-serum that mutated Jessica as a child.  

Not that the title was foreign to the sort of hard-hitting action that male readers tend to prefer. Even allowing for the fact that Marvel Comics almost never showed bloodshed, the battle between Spider-Woman and the near-invulnerable Nekra is one of the most brutal fights seen in Marvel Comics up to 1978. Curiously, it's also at this point that Gruenwald, who had slowly built up tensions between Jessica and Jerry, has Jerry take his leave, so that Jessica must deal with being the odd woman out again. That leads Jessica to the world of the L.A. dating scene-- and by the end of #17, she makes her first contact with the perfidious Waxman, the subject of my review in the forthcoming essay.

Parenthetically, the main reason Infantino was available to draw SPIDER-WOMAN was because he had been ousted from his position of editorial director at DC Comics. Since he's been responsible for the "Gothicization" of DC Comics beginning in the mid-sixties-- as I described here-- it's appropriate that one of Infantino's first assignments at Marvel was one of its few "Gothic" serials.

 ADDENDUM 7-13-2024: Since I commented above on Wolfman's rewriting of Goodwin, I may as well follow up with quick comments on Chris Claremont's rewriting of both previous SPIDER-WOMAN writers during his run, particularly in issue #41 (December 1981). This story has the heroine tilt once more with the sorceress Morgan LeFay, whom Wolfman introduced into the feature-- and into mainstream Marvel-- in issue #2 (1978). Claremont has LeFay put Jessica Drew through an Arthurian illusion, which is part of a complicated plot to make Spider-Woman serve her. Wolfman had Jessica experience some unusual psychic knowledge of Matters Arthurian in his issue #2 story, but Claremont does not follow up on this never developed plot-thread. 

Whereas Wolfman's Morgan simply tried to use the heroine to acquire the book of the Darkhold, in issue #41 Claremont's Morgan believes Spider-Woman to be an embodiment of the Darkhold powers. This concept was unquestionably a response to the 1979 "Yesterday Quest" story in AVENGERS #185-187, which tied together the story-threads of Morgan, the Darkhold, Wundagore and Modred the Mystic far more intimately. Claremont also brought up the Darkhold again in SPIDER-WOMAN #42-44 (1982). Yet Claremont made the odd statement that Spider-Woman remained in stasis at Wundagore for thirty years. Since Little Jessica looks to be about five before she succumbs to radiation poisoning, that would make her thirty-five as soon as she finally emerges from stasis, feels rejected by the New Men, leaves Wundagore, finds love in some European village, and then gets recruited by Hydra. All very well, but no artist ever rendered Jessica Drew as anything but a young woman in her twenties.

These minor ruminations on the AVENGERS retcon, some of which were reversed by later Marvel raconteurs, sum up Claremont's only significant additions to the "Spider-Woman myth." I will also note, though, that Claremont largely dropped the idea that the heroine had to regularly cope with repelling certain humans with her pheromones, which was one of the more interesting tropes of the character. 

NEAR-MYTHS: "IN THE GALLOWS OF THE GHOUL" (HANGMAN #8, 1943)

Many superhero comics of the Golden Age possess the extravagant and horrific elements of Gothic prose fiction, and a fair number of them use an expressionist style that's sometimes labeled "Gothic." The series I'm considering here, THE HANGMAN from MLJ, is one with such an artstyle.

The earliest prose Gothics, such as THE MONK and CASTLE OF OTRANTO, are noted for emphasizing a particular horror-element: that of incest. Despite the fulminations of comics-haters, most comics of all genres seem innocent of this particular element, in its sexual form.

In other essays I formulated an umbrella-term, "clansgression," to include all literary effects that even suggested incestuous activity or feelings, even if actual sexual transgression did not transpire. One form that did occasionally appear was the form of violence-clansgression. This usually took the form of madness-- fathers killed daughters, or brothers sisters-- but no sexual activity was suggested; such events were mainly melodramatic excess.

On the surface, "In the Gallows of the Ghoul" seems one of these. A madman, Jed Jennings, strangles his sister Mary, and on the next page throws his nephew out a high window. But Mary's plight has come to the attention of the heroic Hangman, and he saves the boy, though he can't prevent Jed's escape. So far, just "ordinary madness."

Hangman then tells his girlfriend the tale Mary told the hero (in his other identity)-- and then the story takes an unusual turn. Jed had been the sole support of his "widowed half sister." But when Mary conceives a child-- presumably from the late, unnamed father-- Jed becomes tormented with worry about being able to provide for both of them. As rendered by artist Bob Fujitani, the uncredited writer shows Jed spiraling down into madness, feeling himself mocked by the outside world-- though it's hard to say why the impoverished fellow would think the world would mock him for being poor. Then Hangman concludes his story, speaking of a "secret" revealed to him by Mary-- only to have the last narration cut off by the madman's appearance. Jed claims that his "secret" is that he suffered from a "brain disease" that made him feel persecuted. The villain kayos the hero, and threatens to strangle the hero's girlfriend the same way Jed strangled his sister. Hangman rises. Jed runs at him with a weapon, Hangman dodges, and Jed takes the same high dive out a window that he bestowed on his nephew, but with fatal results.

Yet the unknown writer created some odd discordances in the narrative, possibly even strange enough to make young readers think twice. The first picture those readers would've got with regard to Jed during the backstory was that when his half-sister was delivering her child, he was pacing the hospital floor "as though he were her husband, instead of her half brother." Then his first words to the doctor express his wish that the child will be born dead. In adult melodrama, these two elements lead to one conclusion: Jed *is* the child's father, but he's so ashamed of his sexual congress with his half sister that he wants all evidence of the act expunged.

Possibly the writer actually played around with using this raw idea-- man wants to murder his sister and sister's child-- but the writer realized he couldn't get away with such adult material in a kid's comic, even a gory one. Thus the script claims that Jed's concern is about having enough money to feed another mouth in addition to that of his half sister. And since worries over money were not enough to motivate a murder-- particularly since Jed could have just picked up and left Mary and her son to their fate-- the writer has to add in the excuse of a "brain disease."

Admittedly neither Mary nor her kid, due to their brief appearances, provide any support for this view. But I find it odd that the writer specified that Jed and Mary were half-siblings. It would make more sense if the two had been raised together, so that Jed felt a responsibility to take care of a full sister. But if they're half-siblings, the reader has no expectation about their having been raised together. Indeed, if they were not raised together, one might expect that sexual inhibitions would not have been naturalized by the so-called "Westermarck effect,"

Is it clear that literal sexual incest occurs in "Ghoul, as it does in Matthew Lewis's MONK. No. But Jed's extreme antipathy for his sister's son would have been a trope that many adults of the period would have recognized within the framework of an adult melodrama, enough to at least suspect some forbidden hanky-panky. The kids reading HANGMAN COMICS probably did not think twice about the matter, and probably accepted the explanation given. But the writer of the story was certainly an adult in the early forties, and one can't presume that he was at all innocent of the tropes used by adult melodramas. Even calling a man a "ghoul" is suggestive, not of a victim of psychological guilt and/or brain disease, but of a being that transgresses against society. And rather that transgressing by eating the flesh of corpses, Jed Jennings seems to commit murder to cover up a very different "sin of the flesh."

DOORWAY TO XANADU

I don't remember what drew my attention to DC's seventies spiritualist Madame Xanadu, but I found myself wondering how much, if at all, her introductory stories qualified her for (1) centric status, and (2) combative status. My verdict is that she satisfies my criteria for both, but oddly, the original five issues of her debut comic, DOORWAY TO NIGHTMARE, also reflect a strong influence from the Gothic subgenre that DC Comics toyed with during that decade. The Gothic, in my definition, tends to include a strong element of sexual transgression, while the more overarching category of horror fiction does not utilize sexual transgression as prominently.

I'll exclude two of these early "Madame X" stories from this summary, because I want to review them in more detail elsewhere. 

DOORWAY #1-- This issue, like the one following it, uses the title of the book in place of a separate story-title, so I'll use as a title a phrase from the first page of David Micheline's script: "The Emporium of Truth." The mysterious Madame Xanadu runs a fortune telling shop in New York's East Village, and like all the later DOORWAY stories, she seems to draw to her people with romantic conflicts. Actress Cindy Barnes has been dating playwright Brad Jacobs, but she finds herself sidelined by another actress, name of Erika. Xanadu intuits through her reading of her Tarot cards that Erika is more than she seems, and the quasi-heroine displays her ambiguous powers by defeating an apparent demonic attacker.

This scene also establishes a constant motif, that upon defeating a foe, Xanadu seemingly imprisons her former foe's essence in a glass jar. Cindy then learns that Erika is actually an ancient Egyptian sorceress in modern garb, and that she plans to drain Brad of his spirit-energies. Xanadu, rather than directly combating the sorceress, encourages Cindy to break the witch's soul-pyramid, after which the sorceress perishes.

Vaulting over issue #2 for later consideration, issue #3 is the first Xanadu story to merit a title, "Blood Red Tear." Scribe Bill Kunkel and artist Ric Estrada issue a serviceable vampire story, in which an unaging bloodsucker, Victor Christianson, falls for mortal woman Margot. Xanadu does not actively oppose the vampire, but uses her Tarot skills to make Victor sacrifice himself to keep from making Margot one of the undead. Xanadu does apparently collect his soul or whatever for one of her little jars. Given the theme of sacrifice, the last name "Christianson" is probably no coincidence.

DOORWAY #4 contains the risibly titled "Six Claws of the Dragon," written by Andrews and Hopen and penciled by EC legend Johnny Craig. Two mummies from ancient Manchuria go missing from a New York museum, and for some reason police detective Abrahms finds himself seeking the shop of Madame Xanadu for information. He also meets two Asian women, and he falls in love with the younger one, Sue Lie Hau. An undead Chinese swordsman appears to take Abrahms' life, but Xanadu apparently does some  hocus pocus so that, though she Xanadu appears to get knocked out a window by the assassin, somehow the swordsman ends up on the pavement. The older Asian woman is behind it all, seeking to transfer the soul of a mummy-princess into the body of Sue. At Xanadu's urging, Abrahms is able to reach Sue by the power of love, so that the evil spirit is exorcised. Xanadu adds another jar to her collection.

"Day of the Devils" in DOORWAY #5 is by Scott Edelman and Romeo Tanghal, and alone boasts no sexual transgression elements, though it's still a supernatural romance story, Handsome youth Johnny joins a vicious gang to gain acceptance, but cute girl Anne tries to talk him into leaving the gang. They both end up at Xanadu's shop, but for once, the seeress becomes pro-active. At the shop Johnny has a dream in which he becomes a literal devil and Anne wields mystic powers to stop him. When the dream ends, Johnny decides to tread the straight and narrow from then on. This time Xanadu appears to use a mystic jar to create the dream but she doesn't make any new acquisitions.

Once DOORWAY was cancelled, four inventory stories then appeared in DC's anthology magazine, THE UNEXPECTED.

UNEXPECTED #190 presents "Tapestry of Dreams" by Cary Burkett and Juan Ortiz. Young Stephen comes to Xanadu because his girl Lauren has become besotted with an older man, the mysterious Mister Hazel. Prior to Stephen's advent, though, the reader has seen Hazel visit Xanadu's emporium, making clear that he's no mystery to Xanadu. She reveals to Stephen he's truly an incubus named Azazel, and that the only way to free Lauren from his control is by entering the girl's dream-world and defeating the incubus in combat. Xanadu performs no combat herself but does lend Stephen some undefined power, and after the lovers are liberated, Mister Hazel ends up in a jelly jar.

UNEXPECTED #192 offers "Wheel of Fortune" by Bill Kelley and Romeo Tanghal. A girl named Joyce witnesses a "disco inferno" at a New York club, seeing female friend Erica disappear while dancing with the handsome but enigmatic club-owner Damon (whose band-members look like demons). After consulting with Xanadu, Joyce-- who is herself attracted to Damon-- returns to the club and sees Erica again, but the formerly young girl seems aged. Xanadu tells Joyce that a devil-cult has taken over the disco, and Joyce herself learns that the band of demons has suborned Damon. Though there's one incident in which Xanadu seems to protect Joyce from a mundane attack, she allows Joyce to have the triumph of banishing the club's evil, and this time one of the seeress' jars is comparatively crowded. I believe this is the first story in which the script calls Xanadu a "gypsy."

UNEXPECTED #194-- Andrews and Hopen return to write "Moonlight and Laughter" with art by Jess Jodloman. The story starts out with more action than usual, as a werewolf tries to exhort from Xanadu, only to be slain by the rifle of werewolf hunter Lyle Morgan. Xanadu makes a few dire predictions to Lyle, and then he goes to visit his girlfriend Mina, who's working at a comedy club (?) Mina knows all about how Lyle became a hunter after a werewolf slew his first love, and the two of them end up at Xanadu's emporium. Lyle desires vengeance on the particular shapechanger who killed his ex, and after that, a new wolf-thing shows up, almost killing Lyle until Xanadu repels the creature. Later Lyle and Mina learn of a whole cult of werewolves, and this leads to Lyle finding his quarry, though not with the usual upbeat romantic conclusion.

UNEXPECTED #195-- Finally, Denny O'Neil and Johnny Craig execute "Deadly Homecoming," in which an embittered soldier, Johnny Dallas, returns home from Vietnam, meeting his fiancee Vanessa. Johnny expresses rage at both his commanding officer and at Vanessa's father, and both of them die soon after. Vanessa visits the emporium, and Xanadu gives her a protective amulet. It turns that Johnny and his soldier-buddy Frank fell afoul of a Vietnamese war-god, who imbued Frank with mental powers, which he used to make Johnny the catspaw for his murders. Xanadu appears, shows Frank a soul jar, and that's enough for the soldier to commit suicide, so that the war-god somehow ends up in the jar.

In conclusion, like the majority of DC horror stories, most of these are mediocre at best. Though much is made of Xanadu's Tarot skills, none of the writers or artists do much with Tarot symbolism or imagery. The last inventory story happened to be executed by fan-favorites Steve Englehart and Marshall Rogers, so DC Comics decided to publish this story as a one-shot comic, MADAME XANADU, in 1981. I want to eventually giving this story more detailed attention, so aside from that story and the one in DOORWAY #2, Xanadu's debut is marked by a few scattered myth-nuggets in stories that feel a bit like a romance comic crossed with The Phantom Stranger.

STRENGTH TO DREAM, STRENGTH TO AWAKEN PT. 3

 In Part 2 of this series, I established that one can imagine, in keeping with Stephen King's reading of Samuel Coleridge, a special "muscular effort" the reader must make in order to entertain metaphemomena in fiction, given that metaphenomena go against what most readers "deem the expected phenomena of this world." But was King right about the nature of said effort? Once more, here's how King interpreted Coleridge's "suspension of disbelief:"

...I believe [Coleridge] knew that disbelief is not like a balloon, which may be suspended in air with a minimum of effort; it is like a lead weight, which has to be hoisted... and held up by main force...it takes a sophisticated and muscular intellectual act to believe, even for a little while, in Nyarlathotep, the Blind Faceless One, the Howler in the Night.

One problem with this extrapolation is that Coleridge did not say much about the nature of the "disbelief" that must be "suspended" in order for a reader to entertain "shadows of imagination." I hypothesized that one might compare this disbelief with Cassirer's "naive realism," the human tendency to believe only in what one can perceive through the senses. But though it's possible to read that in King, Coleridge doesn't generalize so much. It's possible he meant this "disbelief" to be something purely characteristic of his historical era.

So is King right that disbelief that "has to be hoisted, and held up by main force?" That might be the case with individuals' disbelief in metaphenoma occurring in the real world, and indeed, King's dichotomy about belief and disbelief takes places in a chapter where he narrates an experience in which a relative demonstrated the apparent reality of dowsing to Young King. But is the same effort necessary when an individual faces fictional phenomena that don't accord with what he expects?

Many individuals who don't believe in the existence of anything but material objects will prefer fiction that coheres with their beliefs; fiction which does not portray any "shadows of imagination" as real. But many readers may share that materialist philosophy, and yet they indulge in metaphenomenal fiction precisely because it does not resemble the real world, and so affords them an escape from reality's demands. Further, whereas as some people may earnestly believe in such rural fantasies as sprites and brownies, no one truly believes in hobbits, because hobbits are self-evidently the fictional creations of a particular author.

Given all these contingencies, I think that what Coleridge and King call "disbelief" is really "disengagement." 

As I observed previously, isophenomenal fiction does not have to establish ground rules for its phenomena, but both forms of the metaphenomenal, the marvelous and the uncanny, must do so, however implicitly. 

The marvelous, as I established in CAUSAL CONUNDRUMS AGAIN, rebels against the isophenomenal formula of "one cause yields one definite effect." For example, in the real world, there are no chemicals that can cause a person to turn invisible, but in H.G. Wells' INVISIBLE MAN, such chemicals are imagined into existence, and so Griffin's "invisibility formula" is a "shadow of imagination" given reality. A reader may choose either to engage with that shadow on its own terms or not, but the reader's credence in the concept does not affect the work's ground rules. The uncanny does not overtly challenge the causal order, but its creations carry the semblance of multicausality (is the House of Usher really alive in some fashion, or is it just a non-sentient building upon which people project their delusions?)

Historically, some readers have found it easier to engage with works of the uncanny than with marvelous ones. Early Gothic fiction, such as VATHEK and CASTLE OF OTRANTO, traded heavily in marvelous content, patently following models supplied by Arabian Nights fables and European knight-romances. But though Ann Radcliffe might not be the very first author to invent the "supernatural rationally explained," she supplied a new paradigm for those who didn't want to credence, even in fiction, the more outrageous imaginative shadows. Yet it's a major error on the part of many critics (not least Tzvetan Todorov) to believe that Radcliffe's "rational Gothics" had anything to do with realistic fiction, in which the possibility of ghosts and demons can't even be entertained for a moment.

Most uncanny fictions require a lesser "muscular intellectual act" for a reader to engage with their content, simply because the uncanny conveys the superficial appearance of adhering to rules of casual coherence. By contrast, overtly marvelous fictions usually formulate their own multicausal ground rules, ranging from a Tolkien, who imagines a world full of elves and trolls and angel-like entities, to an animated cartoon that can depict any bizarre transformation, "as long as it's funny." However, Herman Melville's MOBY DICK stands as an example of an uncanny work that requires just as much intellectual musculature as the most sophisticated marvelous fiction in order for a reader to fully engage with its ground rules. So, in essence, both the uncanny and the marvelous are equally capable of providing heavy-lifting exercise for a reader's imaginative muscles.

FROM ELFLAND TO NEW YORK CITY

 

I mentioned last year, in my review of the BEAUTY AND THE BEAST episode “To Reign in Hell,” that on occasion I’d contemplated the possibility of subjecting that series to an episode-by-episode analysis as I’d done with a few select teleserials. I’ve now re-watched the first season of the 1987-90 show, and I’ve decided that despite the artfulness with which BEAUTY was crafted, it’s more appropriate just to do seasonal overviews of the show on the NUM blog. But since I generally don’t post on theoretical matters over there, I’m going to descant a bit about the nature of the program, in part because BEAUTY was a great favorite of mine back in The Day.

In my “Reign”-review, I devoted almost half the essay to explaining the show’s setup, so I’ll repeat that explanation here:

As of this writing I’m not sure where the 1987-1990 series BEAUTY AND THE BEAST stands. During my contemporaneous viewing of the show, I remember thinking that it did offer a great deal of mythic material. In effect, the show took the romance-dynamic of the literary fairy tale, probably with strong reference to Cocteau’s cinematic adaptation, and transferred that sensibility to the mean streets of New York—or rather, transplanted it beneath those mean streets. This was “the World Below,” an urban faerie-domain beneath the Big Apple. In place of sprites and deathless queens, this world of subterranean tunnels became a haven to all the outcasts from the normal world above—sort of a demi-America within America. The outcasts, almost always attired in quasi-European garb, are led by a spiritual patriarch known only as “Father,” but Father recognizes only one of his children as his True Son, and he’s the greatest outcast of all. Where the original “Beauty and the Beast” had the beastly protagonist cursed by faeries, Vincent is condemned by biology to have the strength, claws, and face of a lion-made-human. And though Vincent does not rule his bizarre domain the way the Beast of the short story ruled his isolated mansion, he becomes the sole focus of the one outsider who comes and goes from the underworld with impunity. “Beauty” Catherine Chandler, a young lawyer is brought to the Tunnels by "Beast" Vincent to save her life, who subsequently forms a “soul connection” with the tender yet passionate lion-man.

But I also said, just before getting into the review proper:

I suspect that BEAUTY AND THE BEAST deserves to rate with the other three programs I mentioned above: as a show with a high incidence of high mythicity episodes. For now, I’ll concentrate on this 1988 offering.

This suspicion may yet be justified by either of the last two seasons, but only a few episodes of Season One qualify as high-mythicity narratives. The problem in my eyes is that the show’s transitions between its two settings—mundane New York City and the “Elfland” of the World Below—mitigates against a strong concrescence of mythic ideas.

The World Below, a.k.a. “The Tunnels,” bears only a mild relationship to the enchanted mansion where the original Beast of the literary fairy tale dwells; in a deeper sense, the subterranean domain is symbolically identical with the faery otherworlds of Celtic myth. These fantastic realms are almost pictured as existing underground, which by itself suggests a strong identity between the people of faerie and the spirits of the dead. All of BEAUTY’s subterranean dwellers begin as inhabitants of the mundane world above, but rather than passing through the veil of death, they are reborn into new lives, laboring to keep their commune-like existence secret from ordinary mortals, aided only by a network of “helpers” who also guard the secret of the Tunnels while still continuing to live in the surface world. In Season One at least, the World Below harbors no supernatural wonders, with the exception that some characters boast gifts that one might explain as “psychic.” Further, the European attire of the dwellers, couple with a marked capacity of some of them to recite Shakespeare and Wordsworth, makes this “demi-America” into a crypto-Europe, not unlike the uncanny environments one finds in the Gothic works of Horace Walpole, Matthew Lewis, and, most importantly, Edgar Allan Poe.

However, a difficulty arises whenever the stories transition into New York. Most fairy tales, whether spawned in folklore or literature, make the mundane world as sketchy as possible, so as to focus on the wonders of faerie. But New York, the domain of heroine Catherine Chandler, must boast at least the broad trappings of reality. The base conflict of the series is that, while the leonine Vincent can occupy the World Below and enjoy a semblance of normalcy, his spirit, at once gentle and savage, cannot possibly prosper within drab reality. In the original fairy tale, the Beast’s story ends when he loses the vesture of animality and becomes a man who can marry the Beauty in her world. But there are no miracle transformations for Vincent, and thereby rests the “impossible love” of Vincent and Catherine.

The first season of the series ends with Catherine considering the possibility of turning her back on the mundane world, and of attempting to live with Vincent in the Tunnels, at least on a trial basis. This development of course would have eliminated the main conflict of the series and the show could have ended in a manner not unlike the climax of the fairy tale. However, the writers found a rather clever way to prolong the agony, by making Catherine Chandler into a Woman with a Mission. Catherine, a child of privilege, suffers trauma and is “reborn” in a different sense than the Tunnel-dwellers: she becomes a do-gooder, obsessed with the holy mission of saving innocents from injustice. A few of Catherine’s altruistic missions are undertaken on behalf of the Tunnel-people, and when this is the case, the potential for mythic symbolism is high. But more often, Catherine defends the banal citizens of a jejune New York, the sort of New York one could find in any bland television cop-show.

It's not that it’s impossible to lend a mythic aura to people and places that would usually be deemed mundane; one can find “big-city” myths in everyone from Faulkner and Dos Passos to Chandler and Spillane. But as I also commented in the “Reign” essay, episodic TV shows are turned out on an exacting schedule. One might argue that the writers of BEAUTY were doing pretty good just to keep building up the Gothic world of the Tunnels, without expecting them to re-imagine the mundane Big Apple as well. Nevertheless, Catherine’s enemies—who inevitably become the enemies of her protector Vincent—are comprised of a boring amalgamation of thieves, pushers, grifters and serial killers, and their presence undermines a lot of the mythic potential of the stories. For that matter, most of the “innocents” are not that symbolically complex either.

Returning to the matter of metaphenomenality, the World Below is usually depicted as an uncanny dominion, just as Vincent’s lion-like appearance is implied to be a freak mutation, albeit one with some rather advantageous abilities. His fangs and claws are just barely within the boundaries of the uncanny, but the empathic bond Vincent shares with Catherine clearly belongs to the world of the marvelous, and so that phenomenality holds sway for every episode.

I think the mythopoeic potentiality was important to the writers, but not quite as much as the dramatic potentiality. Everything in the series had to revolve around the “impossible love,” and thus even episodes weak in myth were capable of generating intense dramatic situations, far more than one could ever find in “any bland television cop-show.” Thus I find that BEAUTY AND THE BEAST most deserves praise for its mastery of dramatic concrescence.

MYTHCOMICS: "THE MAN HATER" (SECRETS OF SINISTER HOUSE #6, 1972)

 i've not usually had a very high opinion of the DC Comics horror anthologies of the late sixties and early scventies, though they did serve as the crucible for the company's rebirth of horror in the 1980s. However, since I have an abiding interest in Gothic fiction, I decided to read through the whole run of a title initially devoted to Gothic romance, SINISTER HOUSE OF SECRET LOVE. Wikipedia claims that DC sought to emulate the craze for DARK SHADOWS, though there might also be some influence from the Gothic paperbacks of the period. In any case, SECRET LOVE changed its name to SECRETS OF SINISTER HOUSE with issue #5, where the company burned off its last horror-romance tale. Then for the remainder of its run it was just another horror-anthology, complete with a female horror-host named Eve (later worked into the SWAMP THING cosmos). 

The only mythcomic I discerned from the title's eighteen total issues was "The Man Hater" by Robert Kanigher and Bill Draut, and it's like the majority of anthologized horror-stories of the period, focused mostly on the notion of "the biter bit." However, Kanigher gets a little more into sexual mythology than the rest of SINISTER's contributors-- which might be said to make the story more "Gothic" than all the other offerings.

The story first shows us the central character Valla, in the act of offing her first husband, a big game hunter, by the unlikely method of dropping his stuffed rhino-head on him and thus impaling the unfortunate fellow. The next page reveals that Valla became a "black widow" murderess because she formed an Electra-style fixation on her father-- and when her father failed to return her affection, she killed him by rigging the brakes of his car-- skills she obtained while trying to emulate the father's interest in cars, by learning the "masculine" skill needed to work on automobiles.

Kanigher doesn't dive too deeply into Freudian waters, but it's pretty clear that Valla suffers from a repetition-compulsion: she likes the feeling of having killed her nasty dad, and she seeks to re-experience the emotional thrill by marrying rich older man and killing them, ostensibly for their inheritances (she calls one of these two husbands a "dirty old man" as she murders him). She claims that her first husband called her "princess," which Valla may or may not have instigated: either way, it sounds not unlike the sort of pet-name that a father might use for his daughter. "Man-hating" mania aside, Valla does maintain a strong relationship with one older male: a Hindu whom she addresses only as "Guru." 

Kanigher wastes no time explicating Valla's relationship with Guru, and for the most part he exists just to set up the "biter bit" finish. At most one might hazard that Valla hangs out with the old fellow because he's too old to seem threatening and because he feeds her ego by telling her that she used to be a real princess in ancient India. 

However, Valla's murder-lust makes her impatient for more victims,. and the police become aware of the unusual rapidity of her three mates' deaths. So they pursue Valla, who flees to her guru for help, as if he was indeed some all-powerful father-figure. The guru seems OK with helping Valla escape the long arm of the law, and he works a reincarnation-magic that sends the man-hater back in time, so that her soul will inhabit the body of that archaic princess mentioned earlier. (What happens to Valla's body? Who knows?)

Now, even though Guru has no hostile intentions toward Valla, he's patently Kanigher's means of doling out poetic justice to the murderess. And many writers would have simply placed the princess in some terrible but unimaginative situation-- being imprisoned for the rest of her life, or being sick with a plague. But Kanigher works things so as to avenge the men who were deceived with female deceptiveness, by having her wake to find herself about to die by the Hindu custom of suttee, wherein the wife is burned alongside the body of her deceased husband. Thus patriarchy has its fit revenge, as a girl desirous of being a princess found out that in India at least, to be a princess was to be little more than an appendage to the fate of a hated man-- even when the man himself was already dead.

LIKE A TROPE, ON THE WIRE

                           

 Whatever the virtues of my essay-series HOW CONTEMPT BREEDS UNFAMILIARITY,  it did not succeed in supplying a succinct “summation of my NUM theory,” so here’s a one-essay shot at simplification.

 Almost all Western critics from the 18^th century on have formed their theories against a background of predominantly “realistic” literature, in which it is taken for granted that the world of literature ought to emulate the world one sees outside one’s window, or, failing that, the world one would have seen had one lived at a certain time and place. Only in the 20^th century did some critics, such as Northrop Frye and Leslie Fiedler, attempt to articulate systems that accounted for the appeal of what is usually called “fantastic literature.” Even so, these authors still focused mostly on authors whose metaphenomenal visions had proved popular for centuries: Swift, Milton, Poe, et al.

My amateur “poetics” takes metaphenomenal literature as the starting-point and views all the developments of realistic literature as reactions against the literary formulas—tropes, as many call them-- of myth and folklore.

 

As it happens, the earliest literary critic—or at least, the earliest whose works have survived to the present day—lived in an era (384-322 B.C.) in which most major literary works took place in metaphenomenal worlds, whether they recapitulated the major mythic narratives associated with the Greek pantheon, as seen in Homer’s two epics, or simply used relatively minor fantasy-tropes, like the ghost that appears in Aeschylus’s THE PERSIANS. Because Aristotle’s literary world was full of gods, curses and oracles, his POETICS, the first extant statement of artistic principles, does not address in depth the subject of phenomenality; of how a given literary work portrays the nature of the phenomena available in its world. The POETICS makes several statements that are relevant to the subject of phenomenality, such as when the philosopher opines that comedy tends to be more down-to-earth than tragedy. But the closest Aristotle comes to an overall statement on what phenomena a work can portray is his elaboration upon the concept of mimesis (“imitation.”) For Aristotle, what he calls “poetry” is the “imitation of an action” of which the poet has conceived, and the philosopher breaks down three categories of narrative action of which the poet can conceive: “things as they are or were,” “things as they are said to be” (that is, things whose veracity the poet cannot vouch for), and “things as they ought to be.” The last category may have taken in for the rare narratives that paralleled what we now call science fiction, such as Aristophanes’ THE BIRDS (414 BC), which depicts the titular avians creating the imaginary domain of Cloud Cuckoo Land. But Aristotle does not offer more than one or two examples of each of these categories, for he did not live in a world whose literature privileged the naturalistic. There was no need to justify the metaphenomenal worlds of THE ILIAD and THE ODYSSEY, since everyone accepted them as genuine art.

 

If there is a “fatal flaw” in Aristotle’s categories, it would be his failure to point out that even the author’s depiction of “things as they are” were not windows upon reality as such; that they were, as much as depictions of gods and ghosts, literary tropes; formulas that were meant to evoke certain responses in their audiences. For instance, a scene in THE ODYSSEY depicts a servant’s recognition of the disguised Odysseus thanks to an unhealed scar on the hero’s leg. Even though the epic is full of gods and monsters, this scene is predicated on a naturalistic detail that convinces because everyone in the audience is familiar with the fact that wounds don’t always heal properly. Nevertheless, the scene is not “reality,” but an “imitation of reality.” It is not any less a construct than, say, a scene in THE ILIAD wherein Zeus makes the very un-human statement that, if he so desired, he could absorb all of his fractious fellow gods into himself as a show of his omnipotence.

 

Aristotle almost certainly knew that even realistic tropes were still products of human artifice, but he does not explicitly say so. There is no over-arcing statement to parallel that of the modern philosopher Suzanne Langer, who labeled all the productions of art as being “gestural,” i.e., that they gestured toward aspects of human existence without actually being coterminous with those aspects. The rediscovery of Aristotle’s works during the European Renaissance resulted in a misinterpretation of his concept of mimesis, so as to emphasize only “things as they are or were.” Of course, it may be that the Renaissance critics merely chose to emphasize the parts of Aristotle that validated their own culture, since during that period literature became increasingly naturalistic.

 

The predominant naturalism of 18^th-century works like MOLL FLANDERS and TOM JONES as I said, a reaction against the older forms of European romance and religious rhetoric, which had served roughly the same cultural purpose in the European countries that Greek polytheism had served in Greece. That century saw a limited counter-reaction against naturalism in a short-lived vogue for “Arabian Nights” fantasies and the more protracted European fascination with Gothic horrors. In the 19^th century the latter form of metaphenomenal literature also spread to the United States of America and affected the oeuvres of Poe and of Hawthorne. But the Gothics and all the subcategories of metaphenomenal fiction—eventually given the rubrics of “fantasy, horror and science fiction” in the ensuing century—were not regarded as being on the same quality-level as naturalistic literature. Not until the latter half of the 20th century did naturalism lose some of its hold on the Western psyche, resulting in the proliferation of so-called “speculative fiction,” much of which was given more literary cachet than the old “science fiction and fantasy.”

 

In my discussion of Aristotle I mentioned that Classic Greek literature could embrace both “naturalistic tropes,” which were often with the limitations of human fallibility and mortality,” and with “marvelous tropes” about gods and ghosts, describing imagined states of existence beyond the realm of human limitations. Gothic fiction was instrumental, however, in promulgating the interstitial category of “uncanny tropes.” Such tropes had existed even in mankind’s prehistory, and in my essay UNCANNY GENESIS I cited some examples of uncanny tropes from archaic story-cycles, such as the extra-Biblical “Bel and the Dragon” and “the Six Labors of Theseus.” But there’s no doubt that Gothic practitioners like Ann Radcliffe had a much more sustained effect in elaborating stories in which supernatural occurrences were “explained rationally.” In truth, though, the “rationality” of uncanny stories like THE ITALIAN and THE MYSTERIES OF UDOLPHO is compromised from the start by even allowing for the possibility of the supernatural, in contrast, say, to Jane Austen’s Gothic spoof NORTHANGER ABBEY, in which the existence of the supernatural is not even slightly validated.

 

The domain of “the naturalistic” emphasizes conformity with whatever idea of “natural law” an audience may expouse, whereas the domain of “the marvelous” conforms to whatever concepts are seen as transcending natural law, be it through Christian miracles or futuristic inventions. The domain of “the uncanny,” though, endeavors to perform a high-wire balancing act between these two literary phenomenalities. It might be argued that some forms of “the uncanny” sway toward the domain of naturalism, as when the story’s hero unmasks a marauding ghost as sinister Uncle Eben. But other forms sway closer to the domain of the marvelous. Nothing in Edgar Rice Burroughs’ original TARZAN story literally transcends natural law, however much one questions the probability of the hero’s advancement to his status of “lord of the jungle.” Tarzan is supposedly no stronger than a human male can be at the peak of development. But his immense strength SEEMS to make him a “superman,” as does his rapport with jungle-beasts like apes and elephants. And so, even though the author is working with a set of uncanny tropes akin to those of Ann Radcliffe, emphasizing *semblance* rather than *actuality,* Tarzan’s origins do not reduce him in stature in the way that arguably Uncle Eben is reduced by the revelation of his ghostly imposture.

 

All of these sets of phenomenality-tropes reflect the desire of human audiences to see stories that reflect either direct physical experience or indirect mental experience. It may be argued that the exigencies of physical existence signify that humans can never be “free” in the sense of being independent of those exigencies. However, literary work allows audiences to think and feel what it would like to enjoy such freedom, whether that sense of freedom is ultimately validated or frustrated. The freedom to think in terms outside those of immediate experience have arguably made it possible for humans to concoct real handheld communication devices to match those of the fictional STAR TREK. But even if no such innovations came about in response to fictional inspirations, literature is at its best when it offers its audiences the mimesis of all possible worlds.

HOW CONTEMPT BREEDS UNFAMILIARITY PT. 4

 I ended the previous essay in the series on this observation:

From one viewpoint, if the prehistoric myth-maker was trying to counter the unfamiliarity of the physical world with images of the familiar (like making the sun into a godly charioteer), the authors of metaphenomenal fiction were challenged by the familiarity of science's reading of the physical world into generating new images of the unfamiliar.

By "new" I meant images that were not wholly rooted in traditional mythico-religious concepts of unfamiliar presences or activities. Given my Jungian outlook, I don't believe that any such images are ever completely novel. The renascent dinosaurs of THE LOST WORLD are functionally identical with the dragons of knightly romance, even though each carries its own specific mystique. But because of the influence of science-based naturalism in the 18th and 19th centuries, both dinosaurs and dragons had to be justified as never before. So even a magical dragon has to explained as having originated in some special locale, like Oz, Middle Earth, or some period of Earth-history not yet governed by science, like Howard's Hyboria.

In fact, all marvelous things or entities, being a contradiction of naturalistic law, are implicitly separated from the naturalistic order by some *estrangement* from either the laws of time, space, or both. This deduction underscores the one of the flaws in Rudolf Otto's system. In the quote I cited in Part 1 of this series, Otto speaks of "the uncanny" as "a thing of which no one can say what it is or whence it comes." This raises the question as to what if any term the Lutheran Otto would apply to such Biblical marvels as the Ark of the Covenant or the burning bush. 

With the literary forms of uncanny phenomena, there's much more of an attempt to conform to the rules of naturalistic law. To my knowledge the term "uncanny"-- which debuted in the 18th century-- doesn't take on any literary significance until it appears in the works of Otto, Ernst Jentsch, and Sigmund Freud. None of them focus on the exact same interpretation of the world, but it can be argued that they all have in common is what Jentsch calls "psychical uncertainties." 

The Gothic works of Ann Radcliffe, most of which appeared at the end of the 18th century, may or may not ever use "uncanny," but they became famous for setting up supposed supernatural occurrence, only to explain it away with some contrivance. What is often overlooked, though, is that the feeling of the "uncanny uncertainty" is not necessarily dispelled by the revelation of the contrivance. Indeed, the contrivance itself, while not usually extravagant enough to contravene laws of time or space, may be sufficiently imaginative that it *seems* to depart from the naturalistic world. In Sherlock Holmes' world, no real demon-hounds can exist. Yet how realistic is a world in which murderers plot to kill their victims with trained dogs covered in phosphorescent paint?

In order to create strangeness of either phenomenality, the author must take a temporary holiday from verisimilitude, and draw upon tropes that exist not in the real world, or in our perceptions of it, but exist purely within the corpus of literature. Such tropes are fiction's conduits to the unfamiliar-- though, after a time, they too can become overly familiar, and can only be rejuvenated by seeking to put new wine in old bottles.

HOW CONTEMPT BREEDS UNFAMILIARITY PT. 3

The poet, described in ideal perfection, brings the whole soul of man into activity, with the subordination of its faculties to each other according to their relative worth and dignity. He diffuses a tone and spirit of unity, that blends, and (as it were) fuses, each into each, by that synthetic and magical power, to which I would exclusively appropriate the name of Imagination. This power, first put in action by the will and understanding, and retained under their irremissive, though gentle and unnoticed, control, laxis effertur habenis, reveals "itself in the balance or reconcilement of opposite or discordant" qualities: of sameness, with difference; of the general with the concrete; the idea with the image; the individual with the representative; the sense of novelty and freshness with old and familiar objects; a more than usual state of emotion with more than usual order; judgment ever awake and steady self-possession with enthusiasm and feeling profound or vehement... Coleridge, BIOGRAPHIA LITERARIA, PT. 14.

 

Coleridge's concept of art as a vast fusion of many different contrary aspects of life substantially agrees with my notion of the dialectic between "the unfamiliar" and "the familiar." In the previous two essays, I've defined a "primary familiarity" that applies principally to "life-as-we-live-in-every-day," and a "secondary familiarity" that is applied to the construction of abstract conceptual forms. I discussed the forms of science and of myth, connecting the latter to the practice of art by speaking of "mythology and its expression through art-works." By this I was not implying an absolute identity between myth and art. I believe that both forms strive for a fusion between the familiar and the unfamiliar, in contrast to science's quest for total familiarity of a quantifiable nature. However, regardless as to how deeply myths were believed by their adherents in pre-technological societies, the myth-tales were promulgated with the idea that the society OUGHT to believe them, at least to some degree. The stories of art and literature are promulgated with the idea that the listeners don't necessarily have to believe in them, particularly once the stories began to diverge from stories associated with religions concepts. 

Myth by definition needs concepts that extend beyond familiar life, since myth is meant to explain the workings of the universe through gods or giants or spirits or whatever. Fiction, however, can represent states of existence that go beyond immediate phenomena ("metaphenomenal") or it can represent states of existence that strongly resemble immediate phenomena ("isophenomenal.") We don't know how sort of isophenomenal  stories might have been related by early tribal humans, because most surviving narratives do have mythico-religious associations. Still, one may fairly assume that primitive humans had their versions of simple naturalistic stories even as we do-- fish stories about "the one that got away," or "Your mama is so fat that, etc." Still, for many centuries, metaphenomenal tropes seemed dominant, with the higher classes in, say, medieval Europe telling stories of knights chasing Grails while the lower classes told stories of talking wolves and horses. Centuries would go by before literature would to some extent embrace the POV of science, coming to focus more on stories of ordinary people moving around in a world without magic or miracles.

 In reaction to this sense that the naturalistic world had become more dominant-- arguably showing "contempt" for the old religious myths-- one also sees artists in say, post-Renaissance Europe making more of a freestyle use of magic and miracles than one saw in medieval Europe. Certainly Shakespeare's MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM feels more like the playwright's personal and playful take on fairies than like any attempt to adhere to any mythic or folkloric concept of fairies. Roughly a century later Europe would begin to see the rise of what some call "proto-science-fiction," as seen in Swift's 1726 GULLIVER'S TRAVELS, while, about forty years after that, we see the invention of the first Gothic novel with Walpole's 1764 CASTLE OF OTRANTO. As different as these two eighteenth-century works are from one another, they both depend on challenging the familiarity of the average reader by opening them up to new worlds of unfamiliarity-- though it's axiomatic that no metaphenomenal work can be too totally divorced from the familiar world, or it would be impossible for readers to understand, to say nothing of failing to exercise what Coleridge calls art's "synthetic" power.

This is the sense in which I'm claiming that Aesopian contempt-- the sense that things can be taken for granted, including the predominance of a naturalistic phenomenality-- "bred" unfamiliarity. At a time when it was difficult if not impossible to put forth new mythico-religious concepts, due to the vested interests of established religions, literature develops a wide number of genres designed to perpetuate a sense of unfamiliarity within an apparently familiar world. Even many "high class" artists, particularly among the English and German Romantics, launched such experiments with metaphenomenal material, as we see with Hoffmann's GOLDEN POT and "The Sandman," Mary Shelley's FRANKENSTEIN, and Coleridge's own experiment with vampire-fiction, the unfinished ballad CHRISTABEL. From one viewpoint, if the prehistoric myth-maker was trying to counter the unfamiliarity of the physical world with images of the familiar (like making the sun into a godly charioteer), the authors of metaphenomenal fiction were challenged by the familiarity of science's reading of the physical world into generating new images of the unfamiliar.

Hmm, I believe I need at least one more essay to clarify the specifics of the differences between the uncanny-metaphenomenal and the marvelous-metaphenomenal. Possibly tomorrow. 

THE READING RHEUM: THE LADY OF THE SHROUD (1909)

 

SPOIILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS

I don’t know what was going on in the mind of Bram Stoker in 1909 when he wrote his second-to-last novel THE LADY OF THE SHROUD (succeeded by THE LAIR OF THE WHITE WORM). I don’t even know how he felt about his 1897 masterpiece DRACULA, given that one account claimed the book didn’t sell all that well. But the first time I read SHROUD over thirty years ago, my impression was that Stoker was re-purposing old story-tropes and turning them on their heads, while unfortunately showing little awareness of what the tropes appealing in the first place.

SHROUD, like DRACULA, is a novel told via the letters exchanged by various characters. The action of the novel is the geographical reverse of DRACULA, since (aside from a short prelude) the story starts in England and then shifts for the remainder of the narrative to Eastern Europe. Instead of setting the novel in a real country e.g. Transylvania, Stoker takes a page from Anthony Hope and invents a small Balkan nation and gifts this fictional locale with the wordy cognomen “The Land of the Blue Mountains.” (In my review I will just call it “that Balkan place.”) Whereas DRACULA only devoted fleeting attention to the culture of Transylvania, SHROUD reads like a Balkan chamber of commerce report, with the author constantly extolling the steadfast charms of the locals.

SHROUD also includes vampirism, but (remember my spoilers) it’s of the fake variety. Stoker doesn’t even concoct a decent Gothic hoax, for his main interest is in providing a wish-fulfillment fantasy for his main character, an impoverished young adventurer who ends up becoming the ruler of this untamed Balkan land. Rupert Saint Leger, a poor relation to a rich family (whose history is given in exhausting detail in the novel’s first fifty pages), lives the life of a footloose adventurer, which includes investigating a lot of cultures and their claims to making magic. Then he’s summoned to England to receive a rich relative’s bequest. I’m not sure who was the first author to have a legatee forced to stay in an old mansion to gain his inheritance, but Rupert may be among the first. Rupert inherits his uncle’s castle in the Balkan place, but only if he stays there a year, overseeing all of the uncle’s business affairs with the Balkanians. Rupert happily accepts, for he has almost no real family ties. His father perished as a soldier in India at some unspecified time, and Rupert was twelve when he lost his (never named) mother. He does have strong ties, though, with his maternal aunt and surrogate mother Janet, who eventually joins Rupert in his new castle.

Rupert, who immediately appreciates the Balkanians for being as flawlessly noble and generous as he is, only encounters one impediment to success. One night a beautiful woman clad in grave-clothes wanders into his castle. She doesn’t give him her name or her history, and then wanders away again. On her second visit Rupert trails her and finds that she’s sleeping in a mausoleum, which is enough proof for Rupert that she must be a vampire (though she never claims to be such). Considering that the young man dismisses most occult beliefs as superstition, his credulity might raise a few eyebrows. Naturally love takes Rupert by storm, and he even marries the unnamed shroud-lady believing she’s undead, before eventually learning that she’s participating in an involved (but non-malicious) hoax.

The charade is so transparent, and Rupert is so dumb, that I’m tempted to banish LADY OF THE SHROUD from the annals of metaphenomenal literature. However, dull though all the pseudo-vampirism stuff is, I suppose the book still qualifies as an uncanny Gothic. But Stoker’s passion is clearly not for the phantasmal but for the political, for he devotes many sections to the role of the Balkan state in the European political scene of the time. Over time noble-souled Rupert becomes a noble in truth, for his phony vampire-lady is actually a real Balkan princess, and Rupert’s courageous defense of the Balkan people against invading Turks propels him to the position of the Balkan place’s king. But even as a political thriller, LADY OF THE SHROUD feels like a poor man’s PRISONER OF ZENDA—at least in part because Rupert is so fearsomely dull.

Given that DRACULA has been subjected to a thousand and one psychological readings, one would hope that SHROUD would at least hold some interest in that department. But Big Sigmund would have found little of interest here. Rupert’s father is barely mentioned, nor does any character serve as a credible paternal surrogate. Rupert’s mother is equally under-characterized, with Aunt Janet serving as the maternal substitute. The fact that Rupert brings Janet to the castle to live with him could be interpreted as “desire for the mother,” but there are only two suggestive moments. In one scene, Rupert observes that his very aged aunt has nevertheless kept her “girlish figure.” In another scene, he imagines his aunt (who is irritated with him for some reason) trying to spank him, a grown man, the way she did when he was a child. But this reflection is played for comedy, as are Aunt Janet’s unsubstantiated claims to “the second sight.” Since Rupert’s mother died when he was twelve, he ought to remember her, and Stoker could have drawn some parallels between the lost mother and the recrudescent Lady of the Shroud. Such parallels could have been maintained even once the revenant-fantasy was dispelled. But Stoker’s characters are such stock types that even this line of thought leads nowhere, and the novel is at best a curiosity, being an attempt to crossbreed tropes from both political thrillers and “fake supernatural” Gothics.