The Vampyre and Other Tales of the Macabre by John Polidori and others

This collection of "Tales of the Macabre" is very uneven in style, tone, and quality.  The introduction tells us that this collection was put together to complement a previous Oxford volume, Tales of Terror from Blackwood's Magazine.  Blackwood's, based in Edinburgh, Scotland, was extremely influential and widely read in the 19th century, containing essays on political and social issues, as well as literary offerings.  It published works by the likes of Percy Bysshe Shelley, Sir Walter Scott, William Godwin, James Hogg, and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, thus contributing to the development of the Romantic movement.  The Tale of Terror was in its heyday, and the magazines supplied the reading public with a steady stream of the macabre, horrific, and sensational.

Not content with limiting themselves with tales of terror from Blackwood's magazine, Oxford produced The Vampyre and Other Tales of the Macabre: "The aim of the present collection, however, is to exhibit the variety and vitality of the terror-tales and similarly macabre fiction published in the rival magazines  of London and Dublin, in the two decades following the appearance of Polidori's tale; that is, the 1820s and 1830s."  These are very narrow parameters, which limit the scope and quality of tales included in this collection.  

"Sir Guy Eveling's Dream" by Horace Smith is written in a pseudo-archaic style so bizarre and convoluted, with vocabulary to rival Jabberwocky, that I thought I might have hit my head and not realized it as I struggled to make sense of it all.

The absolute worst tale here has to be "Confessions of a Reformed Ribbonman" by William Carleton.  It reminded me of the torture that is reading The Valley of Fear, that blight on the Sherlock Holmes canon loosely based on the Molly Maguires and Pinkerton detectives.  The Ribbonmen were a secret society of violent Irish radicals.  While their midnight meeting in a chapel has imagery suggestive of a Black Mass, this tale quickly descends into gruesome (and disgusting) descriptions of violence.  This type of story is not the type of macabre story that I like.

I found "The Red Man" by Catherine Gore lurid and in extremely poor taste.  Miss Gore lived up to her name.

Putting these three aside, the rest of the tales were interesting and engaging to varying degrees, and a couple of them were real gems.  Madness, fears of being buried alive, the bodysnatching craze of 19th century, castles, secret passages, graveyards, and curses all make an appearance.  I loved the fairytale imagery (with a twist) in "The Bride of Lindorf," and the folklore feel of "The Master of Logan."   One of the best tales was "Passage in the Secret History of an Irish Countess" by the Irish Gothic writer Sheridan Le Fanu.  This one is part tale of terror, part locked room mystery, and was later developed into Le Fanu's novel Uncle Silas.  

Of course the real draw of this collection is "The Vampyre" by John Polidori.  I think a discussion of Dr. Polidori's tale merits its own post at some future date.  For now, suffice it to say that this is the tale that launched the vampire craze in literature which carries on to this day, and was the product of that infamous ghost story competition which also gave us Mary Shelley's Frankenstein.  This Oxford edition provides a bit of introductory material and notes on the publishing history.  It includes the "Letter from Geneva" that accompanied the anonymous manuscript to the publishing house, as well as a later "Note on 'The Vampyre'" by Polidori and Byron's "Fragment" which influenced Polidori's tale.

This Oxford collection would earn a place on my shelves for Polidori alone, but I very much enjoyed some of these other tales of the macabre.

Chosen for my Tea and Ink Society 2024 Classics Reading Challenge for October: a spooky classic or short story collection.

Weekly Reading Journal, October 13-19, 2024

Reading Journal is a day late this week because I was under the weather, but this gives me a chance to share the results of my Classics Club Spin.  Spin #39 was announced last Saturday, and I have been agog with anticipation awaiting the results.  As of this morning, the Wheel has spoken, and I will be reading The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer!  I have only read selected tales, so I am excited to read this work in its entirety.  My list is always compiled using a random number generator, but, weirdly, it generated several Gothic tales this time.  I was convinced that I'd get one of those, but I am not disappointed.

This week I started making my way through Tremendous Trifles, an essay collection by G.K. Chesterton.  There is no writer quite like Chesterton, in style or substance; he's always an interesting read.  I particularly loved a passage from the essay "A Piece of Chalk," which, on the surface, is about young Chesterton drawing with chalks upon brown paper out in the countryside:

They are much better worth drawing than Nature; also they are much easier to draw. When a cow came slouching by in the field next to me, a mere artist might have drawn it; but I always get wrong in the hind legs of quadrupeds. So I drew the soul of the cow; which I saw there plainly walking before me in the sunlight; and the soul was all purple and silver, and had seven horns and the mystery that belongs to all the beasts. But though I could not with a crayon get the best out of the landscape, it does not follow that the landscape was not getting the best out of me. And this, I think, is the mistake that people make about the old poets who lived before Wordsworth, and were supposed not to care very much about Nature because they did not describe it much.

They preferred writing about great men to writing about great hills; but they sat on the great hills to write it. They gave out much less about Nature, but they drank in, perhaps, much more. They painted the white robes of their holy virgins with the blinding snow, at which they had stared all day. They blazoned the shields of their paladins with the purple and gold of many heraldic sunsets. The greenness of a thousand green leaves clustered into the live green figure of Robin Hood. The blueness of a score of forgotten skies became the blue robes of the Virgin. The inspiration went in like sunbeams and came out like Apollo.

I love nature art of all sorts, from Romantic landscape to medieval manuscript borders to natural history illustration, so I was dubious about the start of this passage.  By the end, my breath was taken away.  I love where Chesterton went with this - artists and poets were always taking inspiration from nature on the plane of symbol and emotion, if not as direct copyists.

I finished three books this week, two of them on the same day!  On Wednesday I finally wrapped up Vanity Fair, which I have been reading for weeks, and also finished We Have Always Lived in the Castle, which was a short read.  On Friday I came to the end of The Compleat Angler by Izaak Walton.  Reviews to follow.

I did read some spooky stories from The Vampyre and Other Tales of the Macabre by John Polidori and others, but nothing that has really thrilled me yet.

COMMONPLACE QUOTE OF THE WEEK

"Once I planned to write a book of poems entirely about the things in my pockets. But I found it would be too long; and the age of the great epics is past." - G.K. Chesterton, "A Piece of Chalk," from Tremendous Trifles

ART OF THE WEEK

Jane Morris: Study for "Mariana" by Dante Gabriel Rossetti, 1868

Chalk on brown paper, in honor of Chesterton's essay. :)  This is a study of Jane Morris which Rossetti later referred to for his painting of Mariana, completed in 1870.  "Mariana" is a poem by Alfred, Lord Tennyson, based on the character of Mariana in Shakespeare's Measure for Measure.  Tennyson's poem very much inspired the Pre-Raphaelites, with Millais and John William Waterhouse also creating paintings based upon it.  The subject of a poem is a woman weary from waiting for her lover to return, forlorn, isolated, and despondent.  I actually prefer this chalk drawing to Rossetti's later painting - it better captures that expression of melancholy weariness on Jane's face, and her very posture seems listless and tired.  What makes you weary, Jane?  Is it your marriage to William Morris?  Is casting you as Mariana a sly comment by Rossetti that you should prefer him?

The Castle of Otranto (1977)

When I finished reading The Castle of Otranto, I checked to see if there had ever been any film adaptations of the story, though I had never heard of any.  Imagine my delight when I discovered this short film from 1977, directed by Czech surrealist filmmaker Jan Švankmajer.  Only 17 minutes long, it's structured as a mockumentary frame story in live action, featuring an adaptation of the story itself presented in cut-out animation.    

The film is set at a castle in Czechoslovakia, where amateur archaeologist Dr. Vozáb is being interviewed by a reporter.  Dr. Vozáb relates that Walpole's Gothic novel is based upon true events, and that the story has its origin not in the Italian town of Otranto, but here at the Czech Castle Orthany, near Náchod.  We are shown artifacts the good doctor has uncovered, and take a walk to the caves where Isabella hid.  The doctor's findings grow ever more fantastic, and I won't say more lest I spoil it for you!

Cut-out animation was the perfect medium to tell the story.  In the very first scene, we are looking at an actual book edition of The Castle of Otranto, turning pages and then focusing on an illustration of a castle.  It fills the frame and we begin to explore the illustration, subtly transitioning into exploring the interior of the illustrated castle, which we could not have have done by looking at the page in the book.  The lines between the tangible reality of the book and the imaginative world of the story have been blurred, mirroring the inner experience of an engaged imagination while reading.  The physical book begins to fade into the background as we read; we "live" in the story.  Cut-out animation is book illustration come to almost life.  It retains a slightly static, paperlike and two-dimensional storybook quality.  We are in a book, but the words are beginning to take on life, as scenes cut back and forth between turning pages and animated figures.  The juxtaposition of the scenes of the archaeologist and the reporter exploring the castle and looking at artifacts with the animated story world blur the lines between reality and imagination even further, until the glorious ending, when the two worlds merge into one.

The artwork and the overall tone of the film have that touch of macabre humor I always enjoy.  I feel like Edward Gorey would have liked this film.

Watch it HERE

Classics Club Spin #39

An October wind is blowing, the pale moon peeks from behind the clouds, the hoot of an owl rings out in the night as Lady Fortuna's hand hovers at the Wheel... Classics Club Spin #39 is Fraught with Peril!  Gothic novels, fiends, satanic pacts, dark secrets, ruined castles, and Our Mutual Friend!  

What literary terrors await?  We find out on Sunday, October 20th!

1.  Rob Roy - Sir Walter Scott

2.  The Lottery and Other Stories - Shirley Jackson

3.  The Canterbury Tales - Geoffrey Chaucer

4.  Recollections of the Lakes and the Lake Poets - Thomas De Quincey

5.  From the Earth to the Moon - Jules Verne

6.  The Book of Margery Kempe - Margery Kempe

7.  The Mill on the Floss - George Eliot

8.  The Scarlet Pimpernel - Baroness Orczy

9.  Faust - Goethe

10.  Nightmare Abbey - Thomas Love Peacock

11.  The Mysteries of Udolpho - Ann Radcliffe

12.  A Sentimental Journey - Laurence Sterne

13.  Gulliver's Travels - Jonathan Swift

14.  Melmoth the Wanderer - Charles Maturin

15.  Confessions of an English Opium Eater - Thomas De Quincey

16.  Lady Audley's Secret - Mary Elizabeth Braddon

17.  Piers Ploughman - William Langland

18.  The Monarch of the Glen - Compton Mackenzie

19.  Our Mutual Friend - Charles Dickens

20.  Barchester Towers - Anthony Trollope

Update:  THE WHEEL HAS SPOKEN!  I will be reading The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer.

Weekly Reading Journal, October 6-12, 2024

It's October, so it's time to pull out my collections of ghost stories and classic tales of horror for some spooky seasonal reading.  Where to start?  Perhaps "Green Tea" by Sheridan Le Fanu, or "The Wendigo" by Algernon Blackwood.

Perhaps the biggest news in reading this week is that I finally finished The Pilgrim's Progress by John Bunyan.  It certainly feels good to have come to the end of that particular pilgrimage.  I also read Rasselas this week, completing my first book by Samuel Johnson and checking off a category on my Literary Life Reading Challenge.  

On Monday morning, I woke early and read Treacle Walker by Alan Garner in one sitting.  Some of Garner's books can go quickly like this.  I have been a fan of Alan Garner ever since discovering the 1969 Granada television adaptation of his novel The Owl Service, in which the Welsh myth of Blodeuwedd manifests in the lives of three teenagers in 1960's Wales.  Treacle Walker and Garner's novel Elidor also explore the theme of myth, folklore, and ancient landscape memory intersecting with the modern "ordinary" world, making our world seem not so ordinary.

I have just started We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson.  The story is told from the perspective of a young woman named Merricat Blackwood.  So far all I know is that the Blackwood family are decidedly unpopular in the small town, for some mysterious reason.  This is my second book by Shirley Jackson.  I absolutely loved The Haunting of Hill House.  I plan to re-read it again someday, and would highly recommend it for spooky season reading.

I have been distressed by the loss of Open Library and Internet Archive this week, as I'm sure many readers are.  How can I read my York Mystery Plays and my Mircea Eliade??  Hopefully both will be back online soon.

COMMONPLACE QUOTE OF THE WEEK

"The best safeguard against bad literature is a full experience of good; just as a real and affectionate acquaintance with honest people gives a better protection against rogues than a habitual distrust of everyone." - C.S. Lewis, An Experiment in Criticism

ART OF THE WEEK

Landscape with Grave, Coffin, and Owl by Caspar David Friedrich, ca 1836

Something for Halloween season!  The German Romantic painter Caspar David Friedrich is best known for his landscapes of mist, craggy mountains, blasted trees, and Gothic ruins.  He sought to experience the sublime in the contemplation of nature.  Full of symbolism and sometimes religious mysticism, his art sought to evoke an emotional response in the viewer.  Several of his works explore themes of mortality, the transience of human endeavors, and the endurance of nature, as in this sepia drawing from 1836.  An owl, long associated with wisdom and death, directly confronts the viewer and serves as a living memento mori, a pale moon rising above his horns like a ghostly crown or halo - or a rising spirit, as birds have deep associations with Spirit and spirit-flight, as well as the wisdom of the Holy Spirit.  No human being is visible in the drawing; we can only infer human presence by the coffin and the discarded tools of the gravediggers.  In the foreground grow two thistles, known for their wild beauty and hardiness: nature endures when man's spirit has flown.

The History of Rasselas by Samuel Johnson

"Ye who listen with credulity to the whispers of fancy, and pursue with eagerness the phantoms of hope; who expect that age will perform the promises of youth, and that the deficiencies of the present day will be supplied by the morrow, attend to the history of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia."

So begins The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia, a short philosophical novel written by Samuel Johnson in 1759.  Dr. Johnson is perhaps best known today for being the subject of the lengthy classic biography The Life of Samuel Johnson, written by the devoted Boswell.  He was, in fact. an eminent man of letters, having written poetry, plays, essays, sermons, biographies, a travel book about the western islands of Scotland, and a Dictionary of the English Language.  His reputation loomed large over the field of English letters for decades, and allusions to him in literature abound.  Even if still known by reputation, readers of his work seem to have diminished.  Truthfully, I'm not sure if Rasselas would have been on my radar had it not been mentioned by Charlotte Mason, and in turn found its way onto the booklists of Ambleside Online.  I've known about Johnson for many years; I haven't read Johnson until now.

Attempting to approach reading Rasselas as one would a conventional novel is likely going to lead to confusion and possibly disappointment.  Sometimes referred to as a moral fable or philosophical romance,  Rasselas may be best considered as an apologue: "a short fable or allegorical story, meant to serve as a pleasant vehicle for some moral doctrine or to convey some useful lesson."  In an apologue, the narrative details and characters are subordinate to the moral truth the author wants to convey.  Some scholars don't like to call Rasselas a "novel" at all.  Once we understand all this, we're in a better position to appreciate Rasselas and what Dr. Johnson was trying to do with this book.

How should we live?  What mode of life will foster happiness?  These are the fundamental human questions at the heart of Rasselas' quest.  Rasselas' story begins when he is a young man, a wealthy Prince of Abyssinia, living a sequestered life in Happy Valley, where "all the diversities of the world were brought together, the blessings of nature were collected, and its evils extracted and excluded."  Life is devoted to pleasure and amusement, delicacies and comforts. "Every art was practised to make them pleased with their own condition."  Happy Valley is surrounded by a mountain fastness, and communication with the outside world is barred by an iron gate, only to be opened once a year for an eight-day festival. "Thus every year produced new scenes of delight, and new competitors for imprisonment."    This is not the only time Happy Valley is likened to a prison.  This Pleasure Garden is a False Eden, a bubble of artificial happiness which depends on shutting out the miseries of the world and keeping its residents in ignorance.  Ignorance is bliss - or is it?

Rasselas feels a sense of discontent, a longing for more, and a curiosity about the wider world.  "Man surely has some latent sense for which this place affords no gratification; or he has some desire distinct from sense, which must be satisfied before he can be happy," he muses.  He befriends Imlac, a poet and engineer who has come to Happy Valley from the outside world during one of the festivals.  The two plot their escape, and tunnel their way upwards and outwards, accompanied by Rasseslas' sister Nekayah and her maid Pekuah.  

The quest begins, and adventures follow, with each short chapter encapsulating some mode or station in life to be evaluated.  Rasselas has told us: "I am resolved to judge with mine own eyes of the various conditions of men, and then to make deliberately my choice of life.”  The choice of life is a phrase which recurs throughout the book.  We meet Epicureans, Stoics, the wealthy, the poor.  We muse about the life lived according to nature, and the life pastoral.  We discuss the merits of marriage and the life of solitude.  Does youth afford the greatest happiness?  Is old age free from vexation?  

The final destination of their travels is the catacombs near Cairo.  They descend and wander in labyrinthine subterraneous passages, discoursing on the nature of the soul.  Confronted with mortality, their thoughts turn to the shortness of their present state.  Is this endless searching after the choice of life really profitable?  “To me,” said the Princess, “the choice of life is become less important; I hope hereafter to think only on the choice of eternity.”  In the end, they determine to return home to Abyssinia.  Perhaps the most important sentence in the book was spoken by our poet-engineer: “It seems to me,” said Imlac, “that while you are making the choice of life you neglect to live."

Since some refer to Rasselas as a "philosophical romance," I wanted to consider the romance elements of the story, so I turned to The Secular Scripture: A Study of the Structure of Romance by Northrop Frye.  Frye tells us that ascent and descent are the primary narrative movements in literature.  In the beginning of Rasselas, we have an ascent from a lower world when Rasselas & co. tunnel upwards out of the prison of Happy Valley.  Frye points out that "the lower world is sometimes a world of cruelty and imprisonment; sometimes an oracular cave."  In Rasselas we do have this prison imagery, and a sense of an enclosed space that must be tunneled out of.  Frye says, "We found that in descent narratives the central image is that of metamorphosis, the freezing of something human and conscious into an animal or plant or inanimate object.  Ascent themes introduce us to the opposite kind of metamorphosis, the growing of identity through the casting off of whatever conceals or frustrates it.  The simplest form of such ascending metamorphosis is the removal of enchantment, in which an animal disguise or something parallel is replaced by the original human form."  The inhabitants of Happy Valley are under a sort of enchantment.  Rasselas makes several comparisons of his own state to those of the beasts there, and while he sees certain similarities, he ultimately concludes that he is something more than they are.  He goes on an identity quest.  For when he seeks to make his choice of life, when he wonders how man should live, the true underlying question is not only Who am I? but What is man?  When the group visits the catacombs, this is a descent into the underworld.  Like the shades in Classical Hades, the bones of the dead in the catacombs impart their own wisdom:  Man is a mortal creature whose earthly time is limited.  His physical body will decay, but his immortal soul is eternal.  The group return to their homeland, their quest complete.

The Pilgrim's Procrastination: My Journey with John Bunyan

I started The Pilgrim's Progress months ago.  My first encounter with it was way back in high school, when we were given an excerpt to read in a British Literature class.  I was not enamoured of it, and even though one finds allusions and references to it in literature from the seventeenth century to the present, I thought I might well give it a miss.  The turning point for me came when I learned that C.S. Lewis' earliest novel was called The Pilgrim's Regress.  The nod to Bunyan was obvious.  Since it is one of my life goals to read everything by Lewis that I possibly can, I thought I should probably familiarize myself with The Pilgrim's Progress to enhance my understanding of Lewis' book.  Some years went by.  I acquired a copy of The Pilgrim's Regress.  A couple more years went by.  I acquired a copy of The Pilgrim's Progress.  A couple more years went by.  This summer I bit the bullet and started reading.

I enjoyed it more than I thought I would.  Simply put, it is an allegory of the journey of the soul to God.  The whole book is framed as a dream of the narrator - who asserts himself occasionally to remind us that he saw these things in his dream.  Perhaps this fits into the tradition of spiritual wisdom coming to people in dreams.  The main character, Christian, is an Everyman figure: he is there to represent all Christians, rather than to serve as a developed character in his own right.  Christian departs from his hometown, the City of Destruction, leaving his family behind, and embarks on a journey to the Celestial City (representative of heaven, the soul's final destination).  Christian carries a burden on his back, symbolizing the weight of sin.  His journey is long and arduous.  All along the way he encounters various obstacles, trials, and missteps - often represented by allegorical geographical features with fabulous names like the Slough of Despond and Doubting Castle.  Sometimes he must battle adversaries, such as the fiend Apollyon and the Giant Despair.

Christian Reading in His Book, William Blake, 1820's

Perhaps the most famous stop on Christian's itinerary is the not-so-delightful village of Vanity Fair, which lent its name to William Makepeace Thackeray's celebrated Victorian novel.

In the end, Christian does reach the Celestial City.  And it's a good ending.  Which is why it's too bad that Bunyan felt the need to write a sequel.  The Second Part of The Pilgrim's Progress concerns the journey of Christian's wife - called Christiana - and their four sons.  Christiana has decided it's a good idea to leave the City of Destruction after all, and follow after her husband.  This is where I slowed down in my own journey through the book.  Though not entirely without interest, I'm not sure that Part 2 trods enough new ground to justify itself, nor that it quite lives up to Part 1.

Bunyan's purpose in writing the book was to teach Christians to see the world itself as an allegory: to learn to see the spiritual realities (and consequences) that lie behind life's trials and pleasures.  Though his allegorical style might be a bit heavy-handed and unsophisticated for some, I genuinely enjoyed it.  Whereas I am an Anglican and Bunyan was a Calvinist Dissenter, we do not see eye to eye about many things - that being said, I still found spiritual profit in this book, and I understand why it has won the hearts of so many Christians.  And it's a good story.  I suspect that Bunyan profited more than he knew from reading those "popular stories" in the chap-books when he was an unconverted youth.

The Castle of Otranto by Horace Walpole

The Castle of Otranto by Horace Walpole is considered the first Gothic novel.  It was first published on Christmas Eve 1764, in the guise of ancient manuscript, "found in the library of an ancient catholic family in the north of England" and claimed to have been printed in Naples in 1529 (though undoubtedly composed at some earlier date).  Walpole kept his own identity a secret, even adopting a pseudonym for the personage of the translator of this ancient Italian work: William Marshal, Gent.  Walpole went a step further with this fabricated air of authenticity, suggesting that while "the machinery is invention, and the names of the actors imaginary, I cannot but believe that the groundwork of the story is founded on truth.  The scene is undoubtedly laid in some real castle."  

Undoubtedly.  But the castle in question was not a crumbling stronghold in southern Italy, but a villa in Twickenham on the outskirts of London called Strawberry Hill, which Walpole had purchased in 1747.  Strawberry Hill was an ordinary country cottage at this point, a nice enough place, but lacking in the requisite "gloomth" to suit Walpole's tastes.  He spent the next 25 years adding turrets, towers, cloisters, pointed arches, stained glass, and finials, transforming the house into a Gothic castle in miniature.  Walpole now had a fitting backdrop for his eccentric antiquarian collections and his medieval imagination.

The Castle of Otranto had its dark genesis in a dream of its author, steeped as he was in this atmosphere of medieval Romance and Gothic architecture:

"I waked one morning in the beginning of last June from a dream, of which all I could recover was, that I had thought myself in an ancient castle (a very natural dream for a head filled like mine with Gothic story) and that on the uppermost bannister of a great staircase I saw a gigantic hand in armour.  In the evening I sat down and began to write, without knowing in the least what I intended to say or relate.  The work grew on my hands, and I grew fond of it..."

The imaginative background of Otranto is a Gothic story in itself.  Its publishing history gave us the trope of the "found manuscript," it was composed in a Gothic revival "castle," its ghostly armored giant came to the author in a dream.  

Medieval Romance was out of favor in the neoclassical 18th century.  Anything medieval was considered barbaric and uncouth by the aesthetic standards of the time.  We see the first stirrings of Romanticism in the "Gothic Revival" - a sort of pre-Romanticism, if you will, that will lead us on to the likes of Sir Walter Scott, Coleridge, Byron, and the Shelleys.  But that day was not yet come when Walpole first published The Castle of Otranto - he was helping to create this new movement in literature and the arts.  Edmund Burke's A Philosophical Inquiry on the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful had appeared in 1757 (seven years before Otranto).  Burke's new twist on the concept of the sublime  divorced it from mere classical notions of beauty instilling pleasure.  Burke maintained that awe and a sense of horror could also evoke a pleasurable emotional response - as long as the horror concerned was fictitious.  And so we add another ingredient to the simmering cauldron of Gothic literature.  Eye of newt, toe of frog, Burke's sublime, neo-medieval architecture... The Castle of Otranto is taking shape in the rising vapors.

Along with lizard's leg and howlet's wing, we must not forget to toss the plays of William Shakespeare into the cauldron.  Consider the witchcraft present in Macbeth, the chanting and prophecies of the three Weird Sisters, the omens, the dramatic weather reflecting dark deeds.  Think of the ghost in Hamlet.  Think of ancient kings and castle settings, revenge, murder, and high dramatic style.  Shakespearean elements abound in The Castle of Otranto - Walpole explicitly acknowledges his debt to the Bard in the preface to the second edition.  Even the five chapter structure of the novel echoes the five acts of a Shakespearean drama.

This post has not even touched on the plot of the novel in question - rather, its focus has been on setting the scene and the building up of a Gothic atmosphere, which I believe are crucial to the enjoyment of the book.  It can't be read like a modern novel with well-developed characters.  It isn't that sort of book.  It reads like a fast-paced drama peopled with stock characters who speak in elevated style, as one would find in the theater.  In Walpole's story, he sought to blend the imaginative elements of the medieval romance with the more naturalistic touches of the modern novel: and thus, the Gothic genre was born.  This may not be the best Gothic novel, but it was the first.  If we suspend our disbelief, spectres, prophecies, trapdoors, maidens in distress, dark secrets, and subterraneous passages await.   

Edited to add: My review of the 1977 short film version of The Castle of Otranto can be found HERE.

The Travels of Sir John Mandeville

 

"There are many different kinds of people in these isles.  In one, there is a race of great stature, like giants, foul and horrible to look at; they have one eye only, in the middle of their foreheads.  They eat raw flesh and raw fish.  In another part, there are ugly folk without heads, who have eyes in each shoulder; their mouths are round, like a horseshoe, and in the middle of their chest.  In yet another part there are headless men whose eyes and mouths are on their backs.  And there are in another place folk with flat faces, without noses or eyes; but they have two small holes instead of eyes, and a flat lipless mouth.  In another isle there are ugly fellows whose upper lip is so big that when they sleep in the sun they cover all their faces with it.  In another there are people of small stature, like dwarfs, a little bigger than pygmies.  They have no mouth, but instead a little hole, and so when they must eat they suck their food through a reed or pipe.  They have no tongues, and hiss and make signs as monks do, to each other, and each of them understands what the other means..."

And it goes on - we hear of many other strange peoples, hermaphrodites, etc.  With chapter titles like "Of the head of the Devil in the Vale Perilous" and "Of Saint John the Evangelist; and of Hippocrates' daughter, turned into the shape of a dragon," Mandeville's Travels is a strong contender for Weirdest Book at the 2024 Book Awards, giving The Beetle by Richard Marsh a run for its money.  If you long to hear about Amazons, cannibals, and men with heads like dogs; if you are curious to know the true purpose of the pyramids of Egypt; if you need a recipe for lemon ointment to repel the snakes that carpet the great pepper forests of India - Mandeville is your man.

Sir John Mandeville (or "Mandy," as my daughter calls him) was purportedly an English knight from St. Albans who travelled across the Holy Land, Egypt, the Levant, India, and China in the early 14th century - though he may not have been a real person at all.  Mandeville's Travels is largely dependent on other sources, in the form of other medieval travel books and legends, and there is no definitive evidence to substantiate his existence.

Well, there is this portrait:

If that's not proof, I don't know what is.

Whether its authorial persona was invented or not, the book was widely popular from the later Middle Ages through the early modern period, even being consulted by Christopher Columbus.  Why did this book achieve such popularity?  What did travel literature offer medieval and early modern readers?  While some may have prepared for actual journeys, and a (insert Severus Snape voice here) select few were sponsored by Kings and Queens for transatlantic voyages, the majority of its readers were not charting courses for the Orient or inquiring about the price of hiring camels in Cairo.  Is "armchair travel"  sufficient explanation for the book's popularity, or is there something more to it in a medieval context?  

Intrigued by these questions and this strange book, my research led me to an excellent article by Dr. Charles Moseley of Cambridge University entitled "The Travels of Sir John Mandeville and the ‘Moral Geography’ of the Medieval World."   I want to touch on two of the topics raised in Dr. Moseley's article: the practice of pilgrimage, and the medieval conception of space and geography.

Mandeville's book describes a journey through the Holy Land and Egypt, giving special attention to sites and places of interest to Christian pilgrims.  Pilgrim itineraries were a type of literature available in the Middle Ages, and these sections of  Mandeville's work has something in common with these.  While some people did make a physical pilgrimage, other readers used these itineraries as a type of devotional literature - a spiritual pilgrimage of sorts.

Dr. Moseley says that Mandeville's work is a 'geographical' encyclopedia cast in the form of a personal narrative.  His subsequent discussion of the medieval conception of space and geography is fascinating. "Their mental maps are not spatial, as ours might be, but narrative, mnemonic and ideological," he writes. We moderns think of "maps" and "geography," and we picture our post-Enlightenment charts with their grids of latitude and longitude and accuracy of scale.  Medieval sea charts were working towards this modern factual accuracy, but other maps and narrative geographies are operating on a different set of principles: "map(s) of moral history, where space becomes symbol."  Jerusalem is the symbolic center of the world; distance is not so much a matter of spatial perspective as a falling away from the moral center.  

While these symbolic conventions of medieval cosmology form the background of his work, Mandy is innovative.  He has praise for other cultures and beliefs, including the Eastern Church and Islam, even sometimes using them to draw attention to the shortcomings of Western European Christians.  He asserts that the same laws of Nature operate the world over, and believes in rational explanations for the apparently marvelous.  He is in many ways a bridge between medieval cosmology and early modern thought.

And yet... he tells you stories of phoenixes and cups made of griffon talons and dog-headed men.  The book fascinates.  This fantastical book stimulates the imagination, and can be experienced on many levels, with many layers: spiritual pilgrimage, moral geography, and imaginative exploration.  It has inspired me to learn more about medieval travel, both literal and symbolic - I've found a great list of resources here.

Oh, Mandy
Well, you came and you gave without taking
But I sent you away
Oh, Mandy
Well, you kissed me and stopped me from shaking
And I need you today
Oh, Mandy

Classics Club Spin #38

It's that time again!  Time for Lady Fortuna to spin her wheel of literary destiny and determine my next read!  In other words, Classics Club Spin #38 is coming!

This will be my second time to participate in a spin.  My previous spin book has been completed, but not within the original time parameters, as Lady Fortuna had even grander plans for me: an unexpected  cross-country move!  I have several book reviews to get uploaded here, but for now, I'm excited to jump into a new spin book.  So, without further ado...

Here is my Spin List:

1. Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
2. The Woodlanders - Thomas Hardy
3. Gulliver's Travels - Jonathan Swift
4. The Mill on the Floss - George Eliot
5. Vile Bodies - Evelyn Waugh
6. Kipps - H.G. Wells
7. Confessions of an English Opium Eater - Thomas De Quincey
8. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn - Betty Smith
9. From the Earth to the Moon - Jules Verne
10. The Bride of Lammermoor - Sir Walter Scott
11. David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
12. Recollections of the Lakes and the Lake Poets - Thomas De Quincey
13. The Beautiful and the Damned - F. Scott Fitzgerald
14. The Pilgrim's Progress - John Bunyan
15. Excellent Women - Barbara Pym
16. The Lark - E. Nesbit
17. The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner - James Hogg
18. Piers Ploughman - William Langland
19. The Monarch of the Glen - Compton Mackenzie
20. The Golden Ass - Apuleius

Update:  THE WHEEL HAS SPOKEN!  I will be reading The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner by James Hogg.  

The Awakening by Kate Chopin

The Awakening is one of those books that I've meant to get around to reading for years.  I don't think I was missing anything.  This book is tied with Kim by Rudyard Kipling for least favorite book of the year.  I'm aware of the book's prevailing reputation as a landmark of early feminism - please don't think I'm against books that explore the complexities of women's issues, emotions, and social limitations in the 19th century, as this is an area of interest for me.  I'm simply against this book.  

Set in New Orleans in the late 19th century, the novel tells the story of Edna Pontellier, a Kentuckian transplant to Creole society who grows to resent marriage, motherhood, social obligations, and pretty much the world.  I feel that Chopin used Edna to indict society for the constraints placed upon women, in terms of limited social freedom and under-education.  I'm just not sure that Edna is the ideal Poster Girl for this story.  Narcissistic, capricious, and immature, Edna fails to win my sympathy.  She cares very little about her children, or anyone else, really - except her lovers, who are the worst sort of losers.  Edna's judgment, sense of self-awareness, thoughts, and feelings are stunted and under-developed, and Chopin tries to makes this society's fault, in the same century that gave us the likes of Mary Ann Evans (George Eliot), Elizabeth Gaskell, the Brontës, Mary Seacole, and the novels of Jane Austen. 

At the end of the book, Edna walks into the sea, seemingly to do away with herself, because society has no place for a freethinking woman of superior sensibilities like her - or at least it seems that this is the narrative Chopin is asking us to accept.  I would never begrudge any woman the need to develop a sense of personal identity - but Edna's seems to be framed in terms of a resentment and self-absorption that I found off-putting and, for me, undermined the success of the novel.

Read for The Tea and Ink Society 2024 Reading Challenge (Category: Southern Fiction) - also on my Classics Club list 

Classics Club Spin #37

I'm so excited to be participating in my very first Classics Club Spin!  This is a fun game played to determine which classic you will read next.  You begin by creating a numbered Spin List of 20 books remaining on your Classics Club Challenge.  Then, Lady Fortuna spins her wheel and whichever number rises to the top launches the corresponding book on your list straight to the top of your TBR pile.

Here is my Spin List:

1. Kipps - H.G. Wells
2. We Have Always Lived in the Castle - Shirley Jackson
3. The Castle of Otranto - Horace Walpole
4. Wide Sargasso Sea - Jean Rhys
5. The Grasmere and Alfoxden Journals - Dorothy Wordsworth
6. The Canterbury Tales - Geoffrey Chaucer
7. A Vindication of the Rights of Woman - Mary Wollstonecraft
8. The Travels of Sir John Mandeville
9. A Journal of the Plague Year - Daniel Defoe
10. Piers Ploughman - William Langland
11. Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
12. The Sun Also Rises - Ernest Hemingway
13. He Knew He Was Right - Anthony Trollope
14. The Forsyte Saga - John Galsworthy
15. Faust - Goethe
16. Lady Audley's Secret - Mary Elizabeth Braddon
17. Shirley - Charlotte Bronte
18. Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
19. The Day of the Triffids - John Wyndham
20. Vera - Elizabeth von Arnim

Since I have just started my Classics Club Challenge, I decided to leave even more up to chance and made use of a random number generator to create my list, making a couple of substitutions when I already had reading plans for the books selected, or when I felt the book was just too long to read in a set time.  I did, however, allow He Knew He Was Right to remain, just to add an Element of Terror to the spin (it's 952 pages long).  

I find out which book I'll be reading on Sunday!

Update:  THE WHEEL HAS SPOKEN!  I will be reading The Travels of Sir John Mandeville!

Three Men in a Boat by Jerome K. Jerome

In 1889, Jerome K. Jerome was tasked with writing 'The Story of the Thames,' its scenery and history, for Home Chimes magazine.  In a move worthy of his three protagonists, J., George, and Harris, Jerome inadvertently managed to turn what was meant to be a serious travel guide into one of the great comic novels in English literature.  This little tidbit about art imitating life (or vice versa) somehow manages to make the book even funnier.

Not that the critics found it funny.  While Three Men in a Boat is something of a British institution today,  its initial critical reception ranged somewhere between unimpressed and sneering.  In his autobiography My Life and Times (1926), Jerome K. Jerome reminisced: "One might have imagined … that the British Empire was in danger. … The Standard spoke of me as a menace to English letters; and The Morning Post as an example of the sad results to be expected from the over-education of the lower orders. … I think I may claim to have been, for the first twenty years of my career, the best abused author in England."  

Critical disdain notwithstanding, the book sold like hot eels off a Victorian street vendor.  No longer snubbed as lowbrow and common, Three Men in a Boat has remained perennially popular with everyone possessing a sense of humor and a capacity for delight. This is one of those books I've been meaning to get around to reading for a long time, and I only regret not reading it sooner.  It really is wonderful, and very, very funny.

Three Men in a Boat (To Say Nothing of the Dog) - to give the book its full title - rests on the simple premise of a two-week boating trip down the Thames.  Three friends, Jerome (called J.), George, and Harris, decide that they are suffering from overwork and determine that the best remedy is a holiday.  This discussion is preceded by J.'s hilarious and hypochondriac perusal of a medical encyclopedia, during which he concludes that he is suffering from every ailment listed, with the exception of housemaid's knee.  J., George, and Harris set off on a boating holiday down the Thames, accompanied by J.'s fox terrier Montmorency.

Three Men in a Boat illustration by 20th century artist Paul Rainer

What follows is a series of anecdotes describing the journey of our three eccentric protagonists (to say nothing of the dog).  There are many digressions about particular foibles of human nature and general life observations, such as the unreliability of barometers and the advantages of cheese as a travelling companion.  The chapter subtitles had me in stitches.  Here are a few: 

Cussedness of tooth-brushes.

Heathenish instincts of tow-lines.

Being towed by girls: exciting sensation.

Possible reason why we were not drowned.

I will never stop laughing at the incident of Harris and the swans, the visit to the graveyard, and the creation of that culinary horror referred to as "Irish stew," to which Montmorency attempted to contribute a dead water-rat, "whether in a sarcastic spirit, or with a genuine desire to assist, I cannot say."

Alongside the humor, one finds the ghost of the original travel guide to the Thames haunting the pages.  While some find that these passages detract from the novel, I feel they enhance it.  They imbue the novel with a sense of place, a love of nature, and an appreciation for history that act as a perfect counterbalance to eccentric comedy and mishap.  These elements make the novel a bit sentimental, but I don't see that as a bad thing.  I see a perfect blend of charm, hilarity, and camaraderie.  I think this book echoes through the decades, and may claim kinship with that Edwardian bucolic masterpiece The Wind in the Willows - as well as Roy Clarke's Last of the Summer Wine. 

Kim by Rudyard Kipling

"It is less than three days since we took road together, and it is as though it were a hundred years."

Teshoo Lama speaks these words to Kim, but they could be used to describe my sentiments while reading this book - as long as they are taken in the spirit of snarky weariness in which I intend them.  Perhaps if I were a British schoolboy living in 1900 I might have found this book enthralling.  Or perhaps not. While I did not find the book to be completely without interest,  I know that somehow I failed to appreciate most of its charms.

Kim is the story of an Irish Indian boy who befriends a Tibetan lama, becomes a spy for the British, and must come to terms with his own identity. Born Kimball O'Hara to an Irish soldier and a nurse maid, Kim was orphaned at an early age and raised by a half-caste Indian woman.  He has a dark tan, speaks Hindi/Urdu, and is immersed in the local Indian culture.  In consequence, few realize that he is white.    He supports himself by begging and running errands, earning himself the nickname "Friend of all the World."

Kipling himself was born in Bombay in British India in 1865, and spoke Hindi as a boy - even supposedly often thinking and dreaming in Hindi.  His own conflicted sense of belonging and dual identity are reflected in characters such as Kim and Mowgli in The Jungle Book.  Kipling is a complex writer.  Despite his real love for India, his work often suffers from a romanticized orientalism and imperialism that are problematic for modern readers.

Kim is set against the background of the Great Game, the political conflict over colonial influence between Russia and Britain in Central Asia.  This is where the espionage comes in.  I didn't find this thread of the novel very exciting, though I did enjoy the bits about his spy training.

Kim's identity quest lies at the core of the story.  In the beginning of the novel, he is virtually nameless, known mainly by his moniker "little Friend of all the World."  The nickname reinforces the fact that Kim does not definitively belong to any one group, race, or religion.  Kim meets and befriends the lama, becoming his chela, or disciple.  The lama himself embodies what it means to be "Friend of all the World" in a different sense.  He practices earthly detachment, placing no man above another, and even referring to a cobra as "brother."  When Kim encounters his father's former regiment, they determine to send him to school.  He is given European clothing, communicates in English, and is ultimately trained as a spy.  I found it interesting that working as a spy is a sort of dark parody of "Friend of all the World," as Kim takes on different identities in his work.

Kim's relationship with the lama is one of the novel's strengths.  While Kim's quest centers around the question "Who is Kim?", the lama is on his own quest to find the River of the Arrow, the site where Buddha's arrow landed and transformed into a spring.  Bathing in this river will wash away his sins and free him from "the Wheel of Things" - the material world and the cycles of earthly existence.  The lama's insistence on earthly detachment is challenged by his affection for Kim, who is like a son to him.

The climax of the novel is reserved for the last few pages.  In the end Kim changes his question from "Who is Kim?" to "What is Kim?"  He rests under a tree, connecting with "Mother Earth," and remarks that it feels that he slept a hundred years when he wakes. This is a symbolic death and resurrection in which Kim forges his own identity, not determined by the world's categories.  There are echoes of the Buddha's attainment of Enlightenment under the bodhi tree. At the same time these things are happening to Kim, the lama finds his river.  He falls into the river while in a state of spiritual transcendence, and chooses to return to earthly life to teach Kim, rejecting absolute detachment in favor of human connection.  We are left with the implication that Kim and the lama will now walk upon the Way together.

The strange thing about this book for me is that it has so many interesting themes, but the actual experience of reading it was something of a slog, as many of the plot elements just did not grip my attention.

Read for my 2024 Victorian Reading Challenge, Book published 1890s-1901.  Also part of my Classics Club list.

Victorian Reading Challenge 2024

A Pleasant Corner by John Callcott Horsley, 1865

Another reading challenge I have in progress is a Victorian Reading Challenge I set for myself.  I have a lifelong fascination with the Victorian era and its literature, and I was delighted to discover some Victorian challenges from years past at Becky's Book Reviews.  I would like to credit Becky and thank her for the inspiration, as I modified and adapted her old challenges to create my list.  

What is it that I love so much about Victorian literature?

The Victorian era stretches one hand out to tentatively brush fingers with our modern world, while the other reaches backward, clinging fondly to the traditions of a fading rural past.  Fed by the twin streams of aesthetic Romanticism and Enlightenment rationalism and innovation, the landscape of Victorian art and literature is one of contrast, contradiction, and permutation in which anything may happen.  The luminous beauty of a pre-Raphaelite painting graces a stylish and well-polished drawing room, while mere blocks away, buildings smeared with coal dust crumble to ruin, cholera lurks in the water - and Mr. Hyde may be just around the corner.  Gaslit streets, typewriters, and phonographs are wonders of modern invention - yet your neighbor may still turn out to be a vampire. Detectives begin to practice scientific deduction and forensic investigation, but ghosts, cursed diamonds, and madwomen in the attic are not entirely off the table.  The age of industrialization brings us novels of social concern over poverty and pollution in the northern mill towns, while other writers trade union meetings for harvest festivals and seek to capture the seasonal rhythms of a vanishing agrarian life.  Writers begin exploring social questions about marriage, class, education, and the role of women.  Characters begin to be developed more fully, and we see the stirrings of psychological interest.  Add to this the vivid and descriptive prose of some of the greatest masters of the English language. 

I have chosen 12 books for 2024!  I may never read this many Victorian novels in one year again, but I really wanted to immerse myself in Victorian literature this year.  This challenge is truly a labor of love for me.  The categories are helpful in ensuring that I read broadly across the era.  Without further ado, here is my list:

Female Author - Middlemarch by George Eliot

Book with a name as the title - Esther Waters by George Moore 1/15/24

Book published in serial format - Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray

Book published 1837-1840s - Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens 2/26/24

Book published in the 1850s - Ruth by Elizabeth Gaskell

Children's Book - Black Beauty by Anna Sewell 1/13/24

Book Published in the 1870s - Under the Greenwood Tree by Thomas Hardy 3/15/24

Book published in the 1860s - The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins 3/11/24

Anthony Trollope - The Warden 1/9/24

Mystery, Suspense, Sensation - The Beetle by Richard Marsh

Book published 1890s-1901 - Kim by Rudyard Kipling 3/17/24

Book published in the 1880s - Three Men in a Boat by Jerome K. Jerome

I have already completed 9 titles.  Many of these books are going towards my Classics Club Challenge, and I have also counted Silas Marner as my re-read classic for the Tea and Ink Society Challenge.  Currently reading Three Men in a Boat and reveling in the humor!

Tea and Ink Society 2024 Classics Reading Challenge

I really love all of the wonderful offerings from the Tea and Ink Society, and I am excited to be participating in their 2024 Classics Reading Challenge.  I'm taking a break from Saturday spring cleaning this afternoon to plan out some of my reads for the challenge. (Today's tea: Bengal Spice with milk and honey.)  Here are the categories:

January: A classic you’ve read before
February: A Nordic or Scandinavian classic
March: A novel with a place or house name in the title
April: An epistolary novel
May: An L. M. Montgomery novel or short story collection
June: A novel or short story collection from the American South
July: A utopian or dystopian novel
August: A children’s classic
September: A pastoral novel
October: A spooky classic or short story collection
November: A classic recommended by a friend
December: A Shakespeare play

And here's what I have so far:

January: Silas Marner by George Eliot

February: The Summer Book by Tove Jansson

March: Picnic at Hanging Rock by Joan Lindsay

April: Evelina by Frances Burney

May: Anne of Windy Willows by L.M. Montgomery

June: The Awakening by Kate Chopin

July: News from Nowhere - William Morris

August:

September:

October: The Vampyre and Other Tales of the Macabre - John Polidori

November: 20.000 Leagues Under the Sea - Jules Verne

December:

Two of these I finished before I started this blog, and I will try to blog about them in due time.  Silas Marner was my re-read, and I chose The Summer Book by Tove Jansson for my Scandinavian classic.  I'm currently in the middle of Picnic at Hanging Rock, and I can't wait to talk about that one.

I was a bit daunted when I saw "epistolary novel" for April, because this is not a format I typically enjoy, with the exception of Dracula.  I have settled on Evelina by Frances Burney, because it was a favorite of Jane Austen.  If Jane loved it, it must be good, right?   I might have chosen Austen's own Lady Susan, were it not for the fact that I read it in 2022.

There is a lot of love for L.M. Montgomery over at Tea and Ink Society, which I find very sweet as she was my favorite author when I was a girl.  For the L.M. Montgomery selection in May, I'm going to read Anne of Windy Willows, the UK unabridged version of Anne of Windy Poplars, which is the version I'm familiar with.

June's category will stretch me a bit, because I don't often read Southern fiction.  I'm going to take this opportunity to read The Awakening by Kate Chopin, which has been on my reading list for a long time.

Utopian or Dystopian novel in July is quite a fun category.  I felt that I had read several of literature's great dystopias, so I went for something different and chose William Morris' utopian tale News from Nowhere.

August is the month for a children's classic. I am still undecided on this one, but I know I want it to be something by E. Nesbit that I haven't read yet.

A pastoral novel is a lovely choice for September.  I'm still mulling that one over, but I'm picturing myself with a mug of cider leaning against a hay rick reading Adam Bede by George Eliot in between weaving corn dollies.

One of the best things about this challenge is that we are quite rightly told to read a spooky classic or short story collection in October.  There is nothing better for October than eerie ghost stories or Gothic tales of terror.  I've chosen The Vampyre and Other Tales of the Macabre by John Polidori and others.  I've read "The Vampyre" a couple of times, but the other tales of the macabre will be new to me.

November's classic is a book recommended by a friend.  My daughter Fiona has told me I should read 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne for years now, so in November I take my chances with Captain Nemo.  Something about that Nemo fellow makes me nervous.

And we round off the year with Shakespeare for midwinter!  I love Shakespeare and have read all of his plays at least once, some multiple times.  I'm honestly just going to see which one I'm in the mood for when the time comes.  Perhaps a re-read of Cymbeline or Pericles?