Le Fanu's gothic: the rhetoric of darkness

242 Pages·2004·14.055 MB·English

by  Victor Sage

Le Fanu's Gothic
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10.1057/9780230287419 - Le Fanu's Gothic, Victor Sage
Also by Victor Sage
Fiction
DIVIDING LINES
A MIRROR FOR LARKS
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Criticism 11-
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HORROR FICTION IN THE PROTESTANT TRADITION ct -
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THE GOTHIC NOVEL: A Selection of Critical Essays n
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MODERN GOTHIC: A Reader (ed. with Allan Lloyd Smith) av
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MELMOTH THE WANDERER: Charles Maturin (ed. with Introduction and Notes) Pal
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UNCLE SILAS: J. S. Le Fanu (ed. with Introduction and Notes) ms
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GOOD AS HER WORD: Lorin Sage, Selected Journalism (ed. with Sharon Sage) et i Tr
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10.1057/9780230287419 - Le Fanu's Gothic, Victor Sage
Le Fanu's Gothic
The Rhetoric of Darkness
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10.1057/9780230287419 - Le Fanu's Gothic, Victor Sage
© Victor Sage 2004
All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this
publication may be made without written permission.
No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted
save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence
permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, 90 20
Tottenham Court Road, London W1T 4LP. 04-
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Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication 20
may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. ct -
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The author has asserted his right to be identified nn
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as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright, C
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Designs and Patents Act 1988. av
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First published 2004 by Pal
PALGRAVE MACMILLAN o -
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Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS and m
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175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010 Tr
Companies and representatives throughout the world et i
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PALGRAVE MACMILLAN is the global academic imprint of the Palgrave ot
Macmillan division of St. Martin's Press, LLC and of Palgrave Macmillan Ltd. bibli
Macmillan® is a registered trademark in the United States, United Kingdom ets
and other countries. Palgrave is a registered trademark in the European sit
Union and other countries. ver
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ISBN 0-333-67755-2 o U
This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully ed t
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managed and sustained forest sources. en
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A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. m - li
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data c
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Sage, Victor, 1942- n
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Le Fanu's gothic: the rhetoric of darkness /Victor Sage ec
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p. cm. gra
Includes bibliographical references and index. al
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ISBN 0-333-67755-2 (cloth) w.
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1. Le Fanu, Joseph Sheridan, 1814-1873—Criticism and interpretation. w
2. Horror tales, English—History and criticism. 3. Gothic revival (Literature)— m
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Ireland. 4. Ireland—In literature. I. Title al fr
PR4879.L7Z87 2003 eri
823'.8—dc22 2003058075 at
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13 12 11 10 09 08 07 06 05 04 yri
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Printed and bound in Great Britain by C
Antony Rowe Ltd, Chippenham and Eastbourne
10.1057/9780230287419 - Le Fanu's Gothic, Victor Sage
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10.1057/9780230287419 - Le Fanu's Gothic, Victor Sage
Contents
List of Illustrations viii 0
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Introduction 1 01
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Part I Re-Framing the Gothic n
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1 Two Stories: Chiaroscuro and the Politics of Superstition 11 gr
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2 Gothic and Romance: Retribution and Reconciliation 29 o -
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3 'Cyclopean History': The House by the Churchyard 47 Tr
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Part II Gothic Hybrids bliot
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4 Dreadful Witness: Narrative Perversity and Wylder's Hand 77 sit
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5 Magic Lanthern: Uncle Silas, Narrative Indirection, Uni
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and the Layered Text 102 d t
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6 Doubleplot I: The Tenants of Malory 131 m - lic
7 Doubleplot II: Haunted Lives 157 co
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8 'Carmilla': 'I'll let you be in my dream, nn
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if I can be in yours' 178 e
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Postscript 202 gr
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Notes 206 w
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Bibliography 225 al fr
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Index 230 mat
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10.1057/9780230287419 - Le Fanu's Gothic, Victor Sage
List of Illustrations
1. (a) and (b). '... it seemed to her ... that his face was 0
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growing like that of Leonora's phantom trooper ...'. 04-
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From 'Retzsch's Outlines to Burger's Ballads' (London, 1840), 01
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BL Shelfmark 506.aa.16., Plates 5 & 6, Illustrations to ct -
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Burger's 'Lenore'. By permission of the British Library. 82 nn
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2. (a) and (b): 'the phantom Dane' from 'Retzsch's Outlines to eC
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Shakespeare' (London, 1828), BL Shelfmark, 840.m.3. gr
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Illustrations to 'Hamlet', Act 1, Sc. 3, and Act 1, Sc. 4. o - P
By permission of the British Library. 83 ms
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3. 'Remember-this key.' From Gustave Dore, 'Les Contes Tr
de Perrault' (Paris, 1862), BL Shelfmark 1871 f. 11. ket i
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By permission of the British Library. 108 bliot
4. 'Like the Eleusinian Priestess on the vase', from sbi
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'The Portland Vase' by D.E.L. Haynes. (Courtesy of the sit
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British Museum.) 124 v
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5. '... the phantom of Beatrice'. Portrait of o
Beatrice Cenci, attributed to Guido Reni, Galleria Barberini, ed t
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Rome. Photo by Alinari Bros. By permission of the e
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Alinari Picture Library, Italy. 133 m - li
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10.1057/9780230287419 - Le Fanu's Gothic, Victor Sage
Introduction
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J.S. Le Fanu has always been known to aficionados as one of the masters so -
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of the Gothic horror story, but he remained a kind of Barthesian ghost Tro
until 1980, when the first real biography of this notoriously elusive, et i
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almost fugitive author was published. Nowadays, he is still known ot
mainly for his shorter fiction, which is frequently anthologised, large bibli
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amounts of which can still be obtained in two fine Dover anthologies, sitet
edited by E.F. Bleiler. The other works he is famous for are Uncle Silas, his er
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classic frightener of 1864, which is regularly reprinted, his last (overtly) U
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Irish novel, The House by the Churchyard (1861), which has an intertex- d t
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tual connection with Joyce's Finnegans Wake, and the fine collection of n
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stories In a Glass Darkly, which includes the other single work which has m - li
caused his reputation to rise and flourish, the later Gothic masterpiece, o
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'Carmilla', a novella that has slowly built its reputation, first, through ect.
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cinema adaptations, in the 1930s, and 1960s, and then, through the rise on
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of the Gothic as a subject of academic study since the 1960s. Le Fanu, v
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today, stands at the conjunction of Irish Studies, Gothic Studies and the algr
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study of the Victorian Sensation Novel.1 w.
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The critical results of this rise in interest are uneven. Le Fanu has cer m
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tainly been politicised by recent work in Irish Studies and we now have al fr
no difficulty seeing his Gothic, along with that of Charles Maturin and eri
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Bram Stoker, and even Elizabeth Bowen, as articulating the attenuated, m
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hyphenated existence of a dying Protestant Ascendancy caste. In the last g
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two decades or so, the study of the Gothic itself has been feminised and op
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historicised; and the study of the Victorian sensation novelists has been
feminised too, and no longer accepts the label 'sensation fiction' as a
real description of this type of writing. Wilkie Collins, for example, who
for years was Le Fanu's twin 'sensationalist', and was in a similar state of
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10.1057/9780230287419 - Le Fanu's Gothic, Victor Sage