The Literature Book
Author: Dorling Kindersley
Date: 2000-01-01 05:00:00+00:00
Keywords: www.ebook3000.com
Description: 本书将带你踏上探索世界文学的奇妙旅程。从《伊利亚特》到《堂吉诃德》,再到《了不起的盖茨比》,你将一览古往今来那些伟大的文学作品,并从全球化的视野探索历史上里程碑式的小说、短篇故事、戏剧与诗歌,发现文学作品背后的神秘故事和传说。 无论你是文学专业的学生或文学爱好者,还是仅仅是一个爱书之人,翻开这本书,你都将收获无尽的灵感。
Publisher: Publishing House of Electronics Industry

THE

LITERATURE

BOOK

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THE

LITERATURE

BOOK

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DK LONDON
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ROBIN LAXBY

HILA SHACHAR

NICK WALTON

A freelance editor and writer, Robin Laxby

A lecturer in English literature at De Montfort

Nick Walton is Shakespeare Courses
has a degree in English from Oxford University,

University, England, and writer for The

Development Manager at the Shakespeare

England, and has worked as a publishing

Australian Ballet, Hila Shachar has a doctorate

Birthplace Trust in Stratford-upon-Avon,
director in London. He has reviewed fiction
in English literature from The University of

England. He has written introductory material
for The Good Book Guide and has published

Western Australia. She has published widely
for the Penguin editions of Timon of Athens
five books of poetry since 1985. The Society
on literature and film, including her New York
and Love’s Labour’s Lost, and is coauthor
of Authors recently awarded him a grant to

Times featured book, Cultural Afterlives and
of The Shakespeare Wallbook. He is also a
complete a 30,000-word prose poem.

Screen Adaptations of Classic Literature (2012).

contributor to DK’s The Shakespeare Book

She is also the author of several studies on
in the Big Ideas series.

DIANA LOXLEY
the adaptation of literary works, feminism
in literature, and popular and classic fiction.

MARCUS WEEKS

Diana Loxley is a freelance editor and writer,

She is currently writing a monograph on
and a former managing editor of a publishing
literary biopics, examining the screen

Marcus Weeks studied music, philosophy, and
company in London, England. She has a
adaptation of the figure of the author.

musical instrument technology, and had a
doctorate in literature from the University
varied career, first as a teacher of English as a
of Essex. Her published works include an

ALEX VALENTE
foreign language, then a musician, art-gallery
analysis of colonial and imperial ideology
manager, and instrument restorer before
in various key texts of 19th-century fiction.

A researcher at the University of East Anglia,
becoming a full-time writer. He has written

England, literary translator, and writer,
and contributed to numerous books on the

ESTHER RIPLEY

Alex Valente has contributed to the Oxford
humanities, arts, and popular sciences aimed

Companion to Children’s Literature (2015),
at making big ideas accessible and attractive,

Esther Ripley has a first-class degree in
the Cultures of Comics Work (2016), and
including many titles in DK‘s Big Ideas’ series.

literature with psychology and has worked
several smaller poetry and prose publications,
for many years as a journalist, education
in both Italian and English. He has also taught

PENNY WOOLLARD
magazine editor, book reviewer, and short-
first-year English literature modules at the
story competition judge. A former managing

University of East Anglia.

A theater studies administrator at the
editor at DK, she has written books for children

University of Essex, England, Penny Woollard
and now writes on a range of cultural subjects.

BRUNO VINCENT
has a doctorate in literature, from the same
university, titled “Derek Walcott’s Americas:

MEGAN TODD

As a former bookseller, then a book editor,
the USA and the Caribbean.” She has lectured
and now a freelance writer, Bruno Vincent
on Walcott and has also taught American

A senior lecturer in social science at the
has spent his entire working life around books
literature at Essex university.

University of Central Lancashire, England,
and the written word. He is the author of ten

Megan Todd has a degree in English literature
titles, including two Sunday Times top ten
from the University of Aberdeen, Scotland.

best sellers and two volumes of Dickensian

She taught English literature at a grammar

Gothic horror stories for children.

school in Cumbria and completed a Masters
in gender studies at Newcastle University,

with a focus on women’s writing.

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6

CONTENTS

10 INTRODUCTION

47 Real things in the darkness

72 Laughter’s the property of

seem no realer than dreams

man. Live joyfully

The Tale of Genji, Murasaki

Gargantua and Pantagruel,

Shikibu

François Rabelais

HEROES AND LEGENDS

3000 BCE–1300 CE

48 A man should suffer greatly

74 As it did to this flower, the

for his Lord

doom of age will blight

The Song of Roland

your beauty

20 Only the gods dwell forever

Les Amours de Cassandre,

in sunlight

49 Tandaradei, sweetly sang

Pierre de Ronsard

The Epic of Gilgamesh

the nightingale

“Under the Linden Tree,”

75 He that loves pleasure must

21 To nourish oneself on

Walther von der Vogelweide

for pleasure fall

ancient virtue induces

Doctor Faustus, Christopher

perseverance

50 He who dares not follow love’s

Marlowe

Book of Changes, attributed

command errs greatly

to King Wen of Zhou

Lancelot, the Knight of the Cart,

76 Every man is the child of

Chrétien de Troyes

his own deeds

22 What is this crime I am

Don Quixote, Miguel de

planning, O Krishna?

52 Let another’s wound be

Cervantes

Mahabharata, attributed

my warning

to Vyasa

Njal’s Saga

82 One man in his time plays

many parts

26 Sing, O goddess, the anger

54 Further reading

First Folio, William Shakespeare

of Achilles

Iliad, attributed to Homer

90 To esteem everything is to

esteem nothing

34 How dreadful knowledge

The Misanthrope, Molière

RENAISSANCE TO

of the truth can be when

ENLIGHTENMENT

there’s no help in truth!

91 But at my back I always hear

Oedipus the King, Sophocles

1300–1800

Time’s winged chariot

hurrying near

40 The gates of hell are open

62 I found myself within a

Miscellaneous Poems,

night and day; smooth the

shadowed forest

Andrew Marvell

descent, and easy is the way

The Divine Comedy, Dante

Aeneid, Virgil

Alighieri

92 Sadly, I part from you; like a

clam torn from its shell, I go,

42 Fate will unwind as it must

66 We three will swear

and autumn too

Beowulf

brotherhood and unity of

The Narrow Road to the Interior,

aims and sentiments

Matsuo Basho¯

44 So Scheherazade began…

Romance of the Three

One Thousand and One Nights

Kingdoms, Luo Guanzhong

93 None will hinder and none

be hindered on the journey

46 Since life is but a dream,

68 Turn over the leef and

to the mountain of death

why toil to no avail?

chese another tale

The Love Suicides at Sonezaki,

Quan Tangshi

The Canterbury Tales,

Chikamatsu Monzaemon

Geoffrey Chaucer

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94 I was born in the Year 1632,

in the City of York, of a

DEPICTING REAL LIFE

good family

1855–1900

Robinson Crusoe, Daniel Defoe

158 Boredom, quiet as the spider,

96 If this is the best of all

was spinning its web in the

possible worlds, what are

shadowy places of her heart

the others?

Madame Bovary, Gustave

Candide, Voltaire

Flaubert

120 Who shall conceive the

98 I have courage enough to walk
horrors of my secret toil

164 I too am a child of this

through hell barefoot

Frankenstein, Mary Shelley

land; I too grew up amid

The Robbers, Friedrich Schiller

this scenery

122 All for one, one for all

The Guarani, José de Alencar

100 There is nothing more difficult

The Three Musketeers,

in love than expressing in

Alexandre Dumas

165 The poet is a kinsman in

writing what one does not feel

the clouds

Les Liaisons dangereuses,

124 But happiness I never

Les Fleurs du mal, Charles

Pierre Choderlos de Laclos

aimed for, it is a stranger

Baudelaire

to my soul

102 Further reading

Eugene Onegin, Alexander

166 Not being heard is no reason

Pushkin

for silence

Les Misérables, Victor Hugo

125 Let your soul stand cool

ROMANTICISM AND THE

and composed before a

168 Curiouser and curiouser!

RISE OF THE NOVEL

million universes

Alice’s Adventures in

Leaves of Grass, Walt Whitman

Wonderland, Lewis Carroll

1800–1855

126 You have seen how a man

172 Pain and suffering are

110 Poetry is the breath and the

was made a slave; you shall

always inevitable for a large

finer spirit of all knowledge

see how a slave was made

intelligence and a deep heart

Lyrical Ballads, William

a man

Crime and Punishment, Fyodor

Wordsworth and Samuel

Narrative of the Life of Frederick

Dostoyevsky

Taylor Coleridge

Douglass, Frederick Douglass

178 To describe directly the life

111 Nothing is more wonderful,

128 I am no bird; and no net

of humanity or even of a

nothing more fantastic than

ensnares me

single nation, appears

real life

Jane Eyre, Charlotte Brontë

impossible

Nachtstücke, E. T. A. Hoffmann

War and Peace, Leo Tolstoy

132 I cannot live without my life!

112 Man errs, till he has ceased

I cannot live without my soul!

182 It is a narrow mind which

to strive

Wuthering Heights, Emily Brontë

cannot look at a subject

Faust, Johann Wolfgang

from various points of view

von Goethe

138 There is no folly of the beast

Middlemarch, George Eliot

of the Earth which is not

116 Once upon a time…

infinitely outdone by the

184 We may brave human laws,

Children’s and Household Tales,

madness of men

but we cannot resist

Brothers Grimm

Moby-Dick, Herman Melville

natural ones

Twenty Thousand Leagues

118 For what do we live, but

146 All partings foreshadow the

Under the Sea, Jules Verne

to make sport for our

great final one

neighbours, and laugh

Bleak House, Charles Dickens

at them in our turn?

Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen

150 Further reading

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185 In Sweden all we do is to

234 The old world must crumble.

celebrate jubilees

BREAKING WITH

Awake, wind of dawn!

The Red Room, August

Berlin Alexanderplatz,

TRADITION

Strindberg

Alfred Döblin

1900–1945

186 She is written in a foreign

235 Ships at a distance have

tongue

208 The world is full of obvious

every man’s wish on board

The Portrait of a Lady,

things which nobody by any

Their Eyes Were Watching God,

Henry James

chance ever observes

Zora Neale Hurston

The Hound of the Baskervilles,

188 Human beings can be awful

Arthur Conan Doyle

236 Dead men are heavier than

cruel to one another

broken hearts

The Adventures of Huckleberry

209 I am a cat. As yet I have no

The Big Sleep, Raymond Chandler

Finn, Mark Twain

name. I’ve no idea where I

was born

238 It is such a secret place,

190 He simply wanted to go

I Am a Cat, Natsume So¯seki

the land of tears

down the mine again, to

The Little Prince, Antoine de

suffer and to struggle

210 Gregor Samsa found himself,

Saint-Exupéry

Germinal, Émile Zola

in his bed, transformed into

a monstrous vermin

240 Further reading

192 The evening sun was now

Metamorphosis, Franz Kafka

ugly to her, like a great

inflamed wound in the sky

212 Dulce et decorum est pro

Tess of the d’Urbervilles,

patria mori

POSTWAR WRITING

Thomas Hardy

Poems, Wilfred Owen

1945–1970

194 The only way to get rid of a

213 Ragtime literature which

temptation is to yield to it

flouts traditional rhythms

250 BIG BROTHER IS

The Picture of Dorian Gray,

The Waste Land, T. S. Eliot

WATCHING YOU

Oscar Wilde

Nineteen Eighty-Four,

214 The heaventree of stars hung

George Orwell

195 There are things old and

with humid nightblue fruit

new which must not be

Ulysses, James Joyce

256 I’m seventeen now, and

contemplated by men’s eyes

sometimes I act like I’m

Dracula, Bram Stoker

222 When I was young I, too,

about thirteen

had many dreams

The Catcher in the Rye,

196 One of the dark places of

Call to Arms, Lu Xun

J. D. Salinger

the earth

Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad

223 Love gives naught but itself

258 Death is a gang-boss aus

and takes naught but

Deutschland

198 Further reading

from itself

Poppy and Memory, Paul Celan

The Prophet, Kahlil Gibran

259 I am invisible, understand,

224 Criticism marks the origin of

simply because people

progress and enlightenment

refuse to see me

The Magic Mountain,

Invisible Man, Ralph Ellison

Thomas Mann

260 Lolita, light of my life, fire

228 Like moths among the

of my loins. My sin, my soul

whisperings and the

Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov

champagne and the stars

The Great Gatsby, F. Scott

262 He leaves no stone unturned,

Fitzgerald

and no maggot lonely

Waiting for Godot, Samuel Beckett

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263 It is impossible to touch

eternity with one hand

CONTEMPORARY

and life with the other

LITERATURE

The Temple of the Golden Pavilion, 1970–PRESENT

Yukio Mishima

264 He was beat—the root,

296 Our history is an aggregate

the soul of beatific

of last moments

On the Road, Jack Kerouac

Gravity’s Rainbow, Thomas

319 What we see before us is just

Pynchon

one tiny part of the world

266 What is good among one

The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle,

people is an abomination

298 You are about to begin reading

Haruki Murakami

with others

Italo Calvino’s new novel

Things Fall Apart, Chinua

If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler,

320 Perhaps only in a world of

Achebe

Italo Calvino

the blind will things be

what they truly are

270 Even wallpaper has a better

300 To understand just one life

Blindness, José Saramago

memory than human beings

you have to swallow the world

The Tin Drum, Günter Grass

Midnight’s Children, Salman

322 English is an unfit medium

Rushdie

for the truth of South Africa

272 I think there’s just one kind

Disgrace, J. M. Coetzee

of folks. Folks.

306 Freeing yourself was one

To Kill a Mockingbird,

thing; claiming ownership

324 Every moment happens twice:

Harper Lee

of that freed self was another

inside and outside, and they

Beloved, Toni Morrison

are two different histories

274 Nothing is lost if one has the

White Teeth, Zadie Smith

courage to proclaim that all is

310 Heaven and Earth were

lost and we must begin anew

in turmoil

326 The best way of keeping

Hopscotch, Julio Cortázar

Red Sorghum, Mo Yan

a secret is to pretend there

isn’t one

276 He had decided to live forever

311 You could not tell a story like

The Blind Assassin, Margaret

or die in the attempt

this. A story like this you

Atwood

Catch-22, Joseph Heller

could only feel

Oscar and Lucinda, Peter Carey

328 There was something his

277 Everyday miracles and the

family wanted to forget

living past

312 A historical vision, the

The Corrections,

Death of a Naturalist,

outcome of a multicultural

Jonathan Franzen

Seamus Heaney

commitment

Omeros, Derek Walcott

330 It all stems from the same

278 There’s got to be something

nightmare, the one we

wrong with us. To do what

313 I felt lethal, on the verge

created together

we did

of frenzy

The Guest, Hwang Sok-yong

In Cold Blood, Truman Capote

American Psycho, Bret

Easton Ellis

331 I regret that it takes a life to

280 Ending at every moment but

learn how to live

never ending its ending

314 Quietly they moved down

Extremely Loud and Incredibly

One Hundred Years of Solitude,

the calm and sacred river

Close, Jonathan Safran Foer

Gabriel García Márquez

A Suitable Boy, Vikram Seth

332 Further reading

286 Further reading

318 It’s a very Greek idea, and a

profound one. Beauty is terror

The Secret History, Donna Tartt

340 GLOSSARY

344 INDEX

352 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

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INTRODUCTION

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INTRODUCTION

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12 INTRODUCTION

Storytelling is as old as nature of the written form by new novels that feel so fresh that humanity itself. The tradition 1500 BCE. Writing soon evolved they read as if words have only
of capturing the events and
from a means of providing trading
just been invented.

beliefs of communities reaches back information, to preserving the oral to a time when humans first sat by
histories that were integral to every Defining literature a fire and told tales. History was
culture and their customs, ideas,

Although the simple definition
preserved in the form of legends and morals, and social structures. This of “literature” is “anything that is
mythologies that were passed down led to the first examples of written written down,” the word has
from one generation to the next, and literature, in the epic stories of become primarily associated with
offered answers to the mysteries of

Mesopotamia, India, and ancient
works of fiction, drama, and poetry,
the universe and its creation.

Greece, and the more philosophical
and weighted with the impossible-

Written accounts emerged at the and historical texts of ancient China. to-quantify distinction of merit same time as ancient civilizations,

As John Steinbeck so succinctly put and superiority. These values are but at first the invention of writing
it in his Nobel Prize acceptance
intrinsic to the canon of literature
met simple, prosaic functions—
speech in 1962: “Literature is as old
drawn upon for academic study and
for example to record transactions
as speech. It grew out of human
appreciation that has been evolving
between traders or tally quantities of need for it, and it has not changed since the middle of the 19th century.

goods. The thousands of cuneiform
except to become more needed.”

The term “canon” was borrowed
clay tablets discovered at Ugarit in

Miss Bingley of Jane Austen’s
from the ecclesiastical canons

Syria reveal the already complex

Pride and Prejudice may have been
of authorized religious texts.

talking fatuously when she declared: The literary canon—a collection

“How much sooner one tires of
of works commonly agreed to be of
anything than of a book!” but
exceptional quality—was formed
this sentiment rings true for many
almost entirely from familiar works
of us. Despite the almost limitless
of Western European literature.

diversions that face readers today,

Since the mid-20th century,

I begin with writing
literature continues to satisfy a
cultural and literary theorists have
the first sentence—and
spiritual or psychological need,
done much to destabilize the canon
trusting to Almighty
and open readers’ minds to the
by disputing the authority of these

God for the second.

world and its extraordinary variety.

lists of the works of “dead, white

Laurence Sterne

There are works penned hundreds

Europeans.” The idea of a perceived
of years ago that continue to
canon of “great works” still stands
enchant and amuse to this day;
as a useful framework, but rather
complex postmodern texts that
than the term being used to define
can be challenging in the extreme,
the same set of titles, it evolves
yet still hold us in their grip; and
with each new generation, which

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INTRODUCTION 13
reexamines the ideology and power was then adopted by other took time to enter the mainstream,
structures that underpin the
contemporary writers or expanded
while others continued literary
selections of previous generations,
upon by future generations. The
traditions from previous eras.

and questions why certain other
works are arranged chronologically

Lists are always contentious;
works were excluded. Arguably,
to highlight the emergence of
arguably the hundred or so books
studying how literature is created
literary innovations against the
chosen here could be replaced
and testing its place in the canon
social and political backdrop of
with a hundred others, many
may help to make us better readers. their times. For example, during times over. They are not presented

In the same spirit, this book features the 17th and 18th century, French as a definitive list of “must reads,”

many titles that are traditionally
literature evolved from Molière’s
instead each work is framed by a
regarded as “great works,” but
neoclassical comedies of manners
focus or context that is supported
explores their place in the wider
into Voltaire’s satirical undermining by a timeline of related literary story of literature, and within a richer of Enlightenment optimism, and milestones and events. Cross-mix of writing drawn from around
later into a savage depiction of
references link to works of a similar
the globe. They sit alongside newer
decadent French aristocracy shown type, or that have influenced or texts that empower some of the
in Pierre Choderlos de Laclos’ Les
been influenced by the book under
voices that were silenced over the

Liaisons Dangereuses, published
discussion, while more than 200
centuries by social constructs such in the lead-up to the French titles are listed for further reading,
as colonialism and patriarchy, and

Revolution. These changes in
exploring the literary landscape

Europe’s dominance over literature.

literature inevitably overlap as
of each period in greater detail.

writers pioneered techniques that

Choosing books

The story of literature

This book takes a chronological

Around 4,000 years ago, the first
journey through literature, using
stories to be written down came
more than a hundred books as
in the form of poems such as
guideposts along the route. It

Mesopotamia’s The Epic of
also takes a global approach,

Gilgamesh and India’s Mahabharata,
exploring literary texts from a

Some books leave us
which were based on oral traditions.

wide range of different cultures
free and some books

Rhyme, rhythm, and meter
that many readers may not have
make us free.

were essential aids to memory in
encountered previously.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
songs and oral accounts, so it is

The Literature Book’s chosen
unsurprising that the first texts
works are either exemplars of a
made use of familiar poetic devices.

particular writing style or technique,

Many early written texts were
or represent a group or movement
religious, and sacred texts such
that took a new direction, which
as the Bible and the Koran tell ❯❯

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14 INTRODUCTION
the stories of early histories, and have
incorporated philosophy, grammar,
of the 18th century the novel
influenced writing for centuries.

history, and languages was built
had become a major form of

The form of literature that became
on the wisdom of the ancients. The
literary expression.

Greek drama used a narrative

Bible was translated into vernacular

Just as artists are described
balladlike form and introduced
speech, enabling Christians to
in terms of movements such as
characters with individual voices,
commune directly with their God.

Baroque and Rococo, so literary
choruses of commentary, and the

Gutenberg’s printing press brought
history is defined by authors united
distinct categories of comedy and
books into the lives of ordinary
by a particular style, technique, or
tragedy that continue to be used
people, and authors such as Geoffrey location. The Romantic movement, today. The collections of stories that Chaucer and Giovanni Boccaccio characterized by stories driven by
make up the Arabic One Thousand
made everyday life the subject of
the emotions of idiosyncratic heroes,
and One Nights have multiple
literature. By the early 17th century, rather than plot and action, had its origins, but this prose fiction, written Miguel de Cervantes and Daniel roots in the German Sturm und
in plain speech, makes use of

Defoe had given the world what

Drang movement. Meanwhile,
techniques that eventually became a many scholars consider to be the in England, the Romantic poets
mainstay in modern novels, such as first novels, and the First Folio of testified to the power of nature to
framing (which introduces stories

Shakespeare’s plays was published.

heal the human soul, and similar
within the framework of another
themes were taken up by the
story), foreshadowing, and the

The rise of the novel

New England Transcendentalists.

inclusion of repetitive themes.

Drama and poetry continued to

The word “genre” was increasingly

Although the vast medieval era
evolve as the novel rose inexorably
applied to fiction’s subsets—for
was studded with secular highlights in importance, and by the end example, novels in the gothic genre.

such as the Anglo-Saxon Beowulf

In the 19th century, Romanticism
and tales of chivalric romance, it was
was superseded by a new form of
dominated in the West by religious
social realism, played out in the
texts in Latin and Greek. During
drawing rooms of Jane Austen’s
the Renaissance, the joint energies

English middle and upper classes,
of new philosophical investigation
and Gustave Flaubert’s provincial
and sheer invention opened the door

A word after a word after

French towns, but used increasingly
to literary innovation. The driving
a word is power.

to depict the harsh lives of the poor.

force behind the Renaissance was

Margaret Atwood

Fyodor Dostoyevsky described his
the production of new translations
novel Crime and Punishment as
of ancient Greek and Roman texts

“fantasy realism,” and the dark
which freed scholars from the
interior monologues of the murderer
dogma of the church. A humanist

Raskolnikov have the elements of a
program of education which
psychological thriller. Over the years,

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INTRODUCTION 15
fiction has diversified into multiple
optimism and experimentation,
gay people, black and Native
genres and subgenres, which today
the world was again thrown into

Americans, and immigrants.

include everything from dystopian
turmoil as World War II began, and

There is a healthy meritocratic
novels to fictional autobiography
the production of literature slowed
blurring of distinction between
and Holocaust writing.

as many writers became involved
classic and popular fiction.

Alongside the growth of the
in the war effort, and produced

Global publishing, independent
novel, the vocabulary of literature
propaganda or reported from the
and internet publishing, global
expanded to describe styles of
front rather than writing literature.

literature courses, national and
writing: for example, “epistolary”

international book prizes, and
novels were written in the form of

The global explosion
the growing number of works
letters; and “Bildungsroman” and

After two brutal global wars,
published in translation are

“picaresque” denoted coming-of-age the world was ready for change, bringing Australian, Canadian,
tales. The language used within
and literature was central to the

South African, Indian, Caribbean,
literature was developing too, and
counterculture in the West of the
and modern Chinese novels, among
novels in the vernacular voice

1950s and ’60s. Postmodernist
others, to a world audience. This
broadened the scope of national
writers and theorists focused on
vast library of global literature has
literature with writers such as
the artifice of writing, demanding
become both a reminder of shared

Harriet Beecher Stowe and Mark
more of the reader than simply
connections worldwide and a

Twain capturing the diversity of
engaging with a realist narrative.

celebration of difference. ■
the people of the US.

Novels now had fractured or

In the early 20th century,
nonlinear time spans, unreliable

Western society was revolutionized
narrators, episodes of magical
by industrial and technological
realism, and multiple-choice
advances, new artistic movements,
endings. During this period, the
and scientific developments. Within West, and in particular writing two decades, a generation of young
in English, also loosened its grip

Reading is the sole
men had been wasted in World
on world culture. Postcolonial
means by which we slip,

War I. A perfect storm of literary
writing emerged in countries such
involuntarily, often helplessly,
experimentation followed, as
as Nigeria, South Africa, and India,
into another’s skin, another’s

Modernist writers searched for
and authors such as Gabriel García
voice, another’s soul.

inventive stylistic features such

Márquez helped raise the status of

Joyce Carol Oates
as stream-of-consciousness writing, a group of South American writers and wrote fragmented narratives
of extraordinary creativity.

representing the anguish and

Modern literature now sings with
alienation of their changing world.

the previously unheard voices of

After a brief period of literary
feminists, civil rights campaigners,

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HEROES AND

LEGENDS

3000 BCE–

1300 CE

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HEROES AND

LEGENDS

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18 INTRODUCTION

King Wen of Zhou
writes a commentary

The adoption

The earliest known texts,
on an ancient method
of a democratic
in the Sumerian language,
of divination, which is

The ancient Greek epic
constitution by
are written on tablets in
later expanded into the
poems Iliad and Odyssey,
the Greek city-state

Abu Salabikh, southern

Book of Changes (the
ascribed to Homer,
of Athens ushers in

Mesopotamia.

Yijing or I Ching).

are written.

the classical era.

C.2600 BCE

12TH–11TH CENTURY BCE

C.8TH CENTURY BCE

508 BCE

FROM 2100 BCE

9TH–4TH CENTURIES BCE

551–479 BCE

5TH CENTURY BCE

The Epic of Gilgamesh is

The great

The Chinese

The tragedians
one of the world’s earliest

Sanskrit epic poems
philosopher Kong

Aeschylus,
examples of written

Mahabharata and

Fuzi (Confucius) is

Euripides, and
literature.

Ramayana are
active teaching and

Sophocles compete
composed in
compiling the
for the title of greatest
ancient India.

Five Classics.

dramatist of Athens.

Systems of writing were events and mythical adventures, as noble warriors in the Trojan War first used as a means of
told in a metrical verse form,
that established ancient Greece
recording administrative
explained the people's cultural
as a great power, but also as very
and commercial transactions.

inheritance in an exciting and
human characters confronting both

Gradually, these systems became
memorable way.

fate and their own weaknesses.

more advanced, preserving ancient

Later, as Greek influence declined,
wisdom, historical records, and

Tales of gods and men

Roman poets developed their own
religious ceremonies, all of which

The first known epics, which

Latin version of the form, even
had previously been memorized
include the various versions of The
borrowing the story of the Trojan
and were passed down orally.

Epic of Gilgamesh, and the great

War, as Virgil did in the Aeneid,

Throughout the world's early

Sanskrit epics Mahabharata and
to produce an epic of the beginning
civilizations, in Mesopotamia,

Ramayana, often tell of the origin of of Rome. The scale and depth of China, India, and Greece, the
a civilization, or a defining moment

Homer’s epics, and their poetic
written canon of literature first
in its early history. Seen through
structure, provided the foundation
emerged as history and mythology.

the exploits of a heroic individual
on which Western literature is built.

The form that this earliest
or a ruling family, these epics also
literature took was a long narrative
explained the involvement of the

Greek drama
poem, known as an epic, which
gods, often contrasting their

Another product of the tradition
focuses on the legends surrounding powers with the frailties of human of storytelling in ancient Greece
a great warrior or leader, and his
heroes. This was a theme that also
was drama, which developed from
battles to protect his people from
appeared in the later epics ascribed recounting a narrative to acting out their enemies and the forces of
to Homer. His heroes Achilles and
the part of a character and thereby
evil. The combination of historical

Odysseus are depicted not only
bringing the tale to life. Gradually,

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HEROES AND LEGENDS 19

The shi tradition

In the “Golden Age”

In Lancelot, the Knight
of Chinese poetry

Nordic settlers on the
of Islamic culture,
of the Cart, Chrétien

Virgil writes his
reaches its high
island of Iceland
classical Arabic poetry
de Troyes introduces
masterpiece, and
point during the
establish a general
flourishes and the One
the idea of chivalric
probably the best

Tang dynasty, in
assembly known as

Thousand and One
romance in the
known Latin epic
works by poets such
the Althing for their

Nights are collected
context of the
poem, the Aeneid.

as Li Bai and Du Fu.

new commonwealth.

for the first time.

Arthurian legends.

29–19 BCE

618–907 CE

930

C.8TH–13TH CENTURIES

C.1175–81

5TH CENTURY CE

868

8TH–11TH CENTURY

11TH CENTURY

The poet Kalidasa writes

The earliest known

The Anglo-Saxon

Murasaki Shikibu’s
the Sanskrit epics
printed book—a
epic Beowulf is

The Tale of Genji and

Raghuvamsha and

Buddhist text, the
composed, the

Sei Sho¯nagon’s The

Kumarasambhava, and the

Diamond Sutra—is
oldest surviving

Pillow Book use life in
play Abhijnanashakuntala.

produced in China
epic poem in

Japan’s Heian Court
using block printing.

Old English.

as their backdrop.

this dramatic storytelling became
professional poets. Some poets
heroic legends were considered
more sophisticated, and by the
took their subject matter from the
more a form of folklore than
time Athens was established as a
mythology of ancient Greece and
literature, and the first written
democratic nation-state, the theater Rome, while the troubadours of texts to be accorded the status
was an integral part of its culture,
southern France chose stirring
of classics were those that
with dramatists such as Aeschylus, stories of Charlemagne and his preserved the history, customs,

Euripides, and Sophocles producing men in battle with the Islamic and philosophy of the culture.

tragedies and comedies which

Moors and Saracens. The trouvères

Along with these factual texts,
attracted audiences of thousands.

of northern France, in contrast,
however, was a collection of
recited lyrical and passionate tales
odes that provided a model for

From Europe to Asia
of chivalry and courtly love about

Chinese poetry for centuries,

In northern Europe oral storytelling
the reign of the legendary King
reaching its high point under the
prevailed, and the tales of these

Arthur of Britain.

emperors of the Tang dynasty.

cultures were not written down

Farther east, during the “Golden

In the 11th century, Japan,
until around the 8th century. The

Age” of Islamic culture in the late
which had been dominated by
earliest known complete Anglo-
medieval period when scholarship

Chinese culture, produced its

Saxon epic, Beowulf, relates history was held in high esteem, epic own distinctive literature in the
and mythology preserved by the
narrative tales such as those in

Japanese language. Fictional

Scandinavian ancestors of the
the One Thousand and One Nights
prose accounts of life in the Heian

English. The later Icelandic sagas
were valued for their capacity to
court developed from the ancient
also drew from the Norse legends.

entertain, although poetry was
chronicles of the ruling dynasties,

Meanwhile, in mainland Europe
considered to be the highest form
anticipating the emergence of the
the nobility were entertained by
of literature. In ancient China, too,
novel in Europe. ■

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20

ONLY THE GODS DWELL

FOREVER IN SUNLIGHT

THE EPIC OF GILGAMESH (FROM 2100 bce)

IN CONTEXT

FOCUS

Writing first appeared in Gilgamesh for his arrogance, the Mesopotamia at the
gods send the “wild man” Enkidu,
beginning of what is
formed from clay, to torment him.

now known as the Bronze Age

After a fight, however, they become

Bronze Age literature

(c.3300–1200 bce). Cuneiform
friends, and embark on a series

BEFORE
symbols, originally devised as a
of monster-slaying adventures.

30th century bce Systems
means of recording commercial

Angered by this turn of events,
of writing first emerge in
transactions, had evolved from
the gods sentence Enkidu to death.

numerals into representations of

Gilgamesh is distraught at the loss

Mesopotamia and Egypt.

sounds, which offered a means
of his companion, but also becomes
c.2600 bce The earliest known
of writing down the Sumerian
aware of his own mortality. The
texts—although not literary
and Akkadian languages.

second half of the tale tells of
ones—are written on tablets,

Among the fragments of texts

Gilgamesh’s quest for the secret
in the Sumerian language, at
discovered in 1853 by the Assyrian
of eternal life and of his return to

Abu Salabikh, Mesopotamia.

archaeologist Hormuzd Rassan are

Uruk—still a mortal, but a wiser
tablets inscribed with tales of the
man and more noble ruler. ■
c.2285–2250 bce The earliest
legendary King Gilgamesh of Uruk,
known author, Akkadian
which are some of the earliest
princess and priestess
examples of written literature.

Enheduanna, lives and works

The stories had probably been
in the Sumerian city of Ur.

passed down orally in a form that

AFTER
combined history and mythology.

c.1700–1100

The life that you seek
bce The Rig

From tyrant to hero

Veda, the first of the four
you never will find.

The Epic of Gilgamesh, as the

Hindu sacred texts known

The Epic of Gilgamesh
collected tales are known, tells
as Vedas, is written in
how the oppressive ruler of the
northwestern India.

Mesopotamian city of Uruk is
c.1550 bce The Egyptian Book
taught a lesson, and goes on to
of the Dead is the first of the
become a local hero. To punish

Egyptian funerary texts to be
written on papyrus rather than

See also: Mahabharata 22–25 ■ Iliad 26–33 ■ Beowulf 42–43 ■
the walls of tombs or coffins.

Njal’s Saga 52–53

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HEROES AND LEGENDS 21

TO NOURISH ONESELF

ON ANCIENT VIRTUE

INDUCES PERSEVERANCE

BOOK OF CHANGES (12TH–11TH CENTURY bce),

ATTRIBUTED TO KING WEN OF ZHOU

IN CONTEXT

FOCUS

T he Book of Changes is known in the West as Confucius.

about divination; it is a

Kong Fuzi’s moral and political
kind of oracle. The original
philosophy was adopted as the
method of divination from which
official ideology of China during

The Five Classics
it evolved is attributed to the
the 3rd century bce.

BEFORE
legendary emperor Fu Xi, and was

Much later, in around the 12th
c.29th century bce Fu Xi,
formalized by King Wen of Zhou
century, shorter writings—either

China’s mythical first emperor,

(1152–1056 bce) in a text known
ascribed to Confucius or said
as the Zhou yi. The “King Wen
to have been inspired by his
devises a method of divination
sequence” describes 64 hexagrams, teachings—were grouped into with trigrams, the basis for a
possible combinations of numbers
the Four Books of Confucianism.

Chinese writing system.

obtained by casting yarrow stalks

AFTER
or coins, each associated with a

A source of wisdom
c.500 bce The original Book
certain situation or circumstance,

The Five Classics and Four Books
of Rites, describing Chinese
to which Wen offered judgements.

were the main point of reference for
rituals and ceremonies, is

Later scholars added comments

Confucianism as a state ideology.

compiled, traditionally thought
in the “Ten Wings,” including the

The Book of Changes seems an
to be the work of Confucius.

Great Commentary, which together
odd fit for rational Confucianism,
with the Zhou yi became known
but it was thought to be a source of

2nd century bce A Confucian
as the Book of Changes ( Yijing or
great wisdom. It complemented the
canon of writing begins with

I Ching, as it is still often called).

volumes of Confucian philosophy,
the so-called Five Classics.

The book is often referred to
history, etiquette, and poetry
as one of the Five Classics, with
as a book to be consulted not

136 bce Emperor Wu of Han
the Book of Documents ( Shujing),
only for its prophetic ability, but
describes the Zhou yi as the

Spring and Autumn Annals
also as a model of wise counsel,
foremost of the classics, and

( Chunqiu), Book of Rites ( Liji),
describing what the “superior man”

titles it Book of Changes.

and Book of Odes ( Shijing). These
should do in various situations,

960–1279 ce During the Song

Classics are believed to have been
and it has remained a source of
era, scholar Zhu Xi includes
compiled by Kong Fuzi (traditional
wisdom in China (and beyond)

the Four Books, each of which
dates 551–479 bce), who is better
to the present day. ■
appeared before 300 bce, in the
canon of Confucian literature

See also: Quan Tangshi 46 ■ Romance of the Three Kingdoms 66–67 ■
alongside the Five Classics.

The Narrow Road to the Interior 92

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22

WHAT IS THIS IN CONTEXT

FOCUS

The great Sanskrit epics

CRIME I AM

BEFORE

3rd millennium bce Vyasa
writes the original version of
the Mahabharata, in which

PLANNING
he appears as a character.

c.1700–500 bce The Vedas

(the Rig Veda, Yajur Veda,

O KRISHNA?

Sama Veda and Atharva Veda)

are composed in Sanskrit, and
together constitute the first of
the Hindu scriptures.

MAHABHARATA (9TH–4TH CENTURIES bce),

AFTER

c.5th–4th century

ATTRIBUTED TO VYASA
bce

According to tradition, Valmiki
writes the Ramayana, using
the sloka (meaning “song”)

which becomes the standard

Sanskrit verse form.

c.250 bce–1000 ce A canon
of Hindu texts known as the

Puranas develops. It includes
the genealogy of the deities
and narratives of cosmology.

The epic poetry of the Indian
subcontinent is among the
oldest known literature,
and it emerged from a long oral
tradition of storytelling and reciting.

As with other ancient literature, the
tales are a mixture of mythology,
legends, and historical events,
which developed over centuries
and were eventually written down.

In addition to this epic poetry,
ancient Indian writing includes the

Vedas, which are the central sacred
texts of Brahminical Hinduism,
recorded from around the middle
of the 2nd millennium bce. The

Vedas and the poetry were written
in Sanskrit, which was regarded as
the common literary language of

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HEROES AND LEGENDS 23

See also: The Epic of Gilgamesh 20 ■ Iliad 26–33 ■ One Thousand and One Nights 44–45 ■ Ramayana 55 ■

The Canterbury Tales 68–71 ■ Midnight’s Children 300–05 ■ A Suitable Boy 314–17
the Adi Parva (“The Book of the
as described in the Adi Parva.

Beginning”), explains: “Whatever

This complicated nesting of frame
is here, is found elsewhere. But
narratives probably reflects the
what is not here, is nowhere else.”

existence of different historical

According to tradition, and as
versions of the story before it

Poets have told it before,
described in its opening section,
took the shape we know today.

poets are telling it now,
the Mahabharata was written by

It is also typical of the way in
other poets shall tell this
a poet and wise man called Vyasa.

which the historical, mythological,
history on earth in the future.

Said to have lived in the 3rd
and religious intertwine throughout

Mahabharata
millennium bce, Vyasa was an
the Mahabharata. Although the
avatar (incarnation) of the Hindu
central plot concerns the split in the
god Vishnu. The narrator of the
ruling Bharata family of northern
greater part of the epic is Vyasa’s

India, and the ensuing battle at
disciple Vaisampayana, but two

Kurukshetra and its aftermath, the
other people also narrate sections:

story is given a mythical dimension
a minstrel-sage, Ugrasrava Sauti,
by the introduction of the character
ancient India, and is the language
and a courtier, Sanjaya.

Krishna, another avatar of Vishnu.

from which many Indo-European

Vaisampayana explains how

There are also numerous subplots,
languages evolved.

Vyasa dictated the entire story to
and several philosophical and ❯❯

Up to the 1st century ce,
the elephant-headed god Ganesha

Sanskrit literature was dominated
in a single sitting. Subsequently,
by the Vedas and two great epic
many years later, Vaisampayana’s

The sage Vyasa dictates the epic

Mahabharata, which means “Great
poems: the Mahabharata and the
story takes its final form as the

Story of the Bharata,” referring to a

Ramayana. Although the Ramayana Mahabharata when it is retold by ruling family of northern India. The
contains historical narrative,

Sauti to a meeting of Hindu sages,
scribe is elephant-headed god Ganesha.

mythology, and folktales, it appears
to be an original work by a single
poet, and is traditionally attributed
to the sage Valmiki. In contrast,
the Mahabharata, the better known
and much longer of the two, has a
more complex provenance, which
suggests a long period of evolution.

A gift of Vishnu

The Mahabharata probably first
took shape in the 9th century bce
and only reached its final form in
around the 4th century bce. The
work is very long and comprises
more than 100,000 verse couplets,
known as shloka, divided into

18 books, or parva s. In addition to
recounting the story of two warring
families, it tells of their history,
and that of India and the Hindu
religion that is integral to it. At the
outset, the narrator of the first book,

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24 MAHABHARATA
religious digressions, one of which,
brother Pandu. The enmity begins
the Bhagavad Gita, has become
when Dhritarashtra is denied the
important in its own right. The epic throne because of his disability.

explores themes of family ties and

Pandu becomes king instead, but a
conflict, duty and courage, fate
curse prevents him from fathering
and choice, and presents them in
children. The gods, however,

Man is not the master of
a series of allegories to explain the
impregnate his wife and the line
destiny, but a wooden doll
elements of dharma, a complex
of Pandava seems safe. But the
that is strung on a string.

concept of “correct conduct.”

100 sons of Dhritarashtra feel that

Mahabharata
they have a claim to the kingdom,

Family divisions
and after Yudhishtira, the eldest

After its explanatory preamble, the

Pandava, is crowned, they trick

Mahabharata proper describes how him into losing everything in a the ruling clan of the Kuru becomes game of dice. In disgrace, the divided into two rival families, the

Pandavas are sent into exile.

Kaurava and the Pandava. These

Some years later, the five
of battles at Kurukshetra. The
are the descendants of two princes, Pandava brothers return to claim second son of Pandu, Arjuna,
the blind Dhritarashtra and his
the throne, and so starts the series
goes into war with his cousin and
close companion Krishna as his
charioteer, but only reluctantly joins

Arjuna’s desire to behave in accordance with dharma the fight after Krishna persuades
causes him to waver before acting, but his charioteer
him that it is his duty to fight for

Krishna guides him on the path of correct conduct.

what is right. The war turns out to

Arjuna

Krishna
be a bloodbath, in which almost all
the Kauravas are slaughtered; the
few who survive take their revenge
on the Pandava troops by murdering

War is wrong.

You have a duty to
them in their sleep. Only the five
fight a just war.

brothers survive the massacre, and
they ensure the Kauravas are wiped
out completely.

Yudhishtira becomes king again,
but the victory is hollow and the

Killing family

You have a duty to
poem goes on to detail the war’s
and friends is
protect your people
awful aftermath. Krishna, or at
abhorrent to me.

and their rights.

least this particular incarnation
of Vishnu, is accidentally killed,
and the Pandavas begin their long,
dangerous journey to heaven. Only
at the very end are the brothers

Violence runs counter

You must put aside
reunited, and reconciled with
to my moral code.

personal feelings
and attachments.

their cousins the Kauravas, in
the spiritual world.

Moral dilemmas

Dharma is a recurrent theme in the

Mahabharata, both in terms of how

These actions

It is a far greater sin to
this notion applies to each of us
will be sinful.

neglect your duty.

in every situation, and of how it is
a difficult path to follow, because
of human weaknesses and the

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HEROES AND LEGENDS 25

The Bhagavad Gita

At the heart of the epic

Mahabharata is the war at

Kurukshetra, beginning with
the sixth book, which includes
a section now known as the

Bhagavad Gita, the “Song of
the Blessed.” Prior to battle,

Arjuna, the Pandava prince,
recognizes members of
his family in the opposing

Kaurava army, and lays down
his bow. But his cousin and
companion Krishna reminds
him of his duty to fight this
just war. The philosophical
dialogue between them is
described in the 700-verse

Bhagavad Gita, which has
become an important Hindu
scripture in its own right,

Dhritarashtra reaches out blindly
them facing their spiritual fate. The
explaining such concepts as
for his wife Gandhari, who has bound
story ends, after much tragedy and
dharma (right conduct), karma
her eyes to share his darkened world.

conflict, with the protagonists

Bad actions in a previous life meant his

(intentions and outcomes), and
achieving eternal bliss, but also
disability was a consequence of karma.

moksha (liberation from the
with the warning that the human
cycle of death and rebirth).

struggles continue here on Earth.

Although Krishna’s counsel
force of fate. As Kripa—one of the
is specific to Arjuna’s duty

Kauravas—says in the tenth book,

Cultural touchstone
to fight, the battleground

Sauptika Parva (“The Book of the

The Mahabharata’s wide-ranging
setting can be interpreted as

Sleeping Warriors”), “There are two
plot and subject matter, built on
a metaphor for the opposing
forces: fate and human effort—all
favorite mythological and historical
forces of good and evil in
men depend on and are bound by
stories with a moral and religious
general, and Arjuna’s crisis
these, there is nothing else.” What
message, have ensured the epic’s
of conscience as representing
the choices we all must make.

is right and wrong is seldom clear,
popularity up to the present day.

and it is by reconciling conflicting

Such was its success that for
interests such as love and duty that several centuries only the we can achieve liberation from the

Ramayana could rival its claim to
cycle of life, death, and rebirth.

be the great Sanskrit epic. While it

In each of the Mahabharata’ s
cannot match the Mahabharata for
episodes human strengths and
sheer scope and excitement, the
weaknesses are contrasted, and

Ramayana is more consistent and
the battle between right and wrong, elegantly poetic, and together the When the Gods deal defeat
writ large in the devastating war
two inspired a school of Sanskrit
to a person, they first take
between the Kauravas and the
epic poetry that flourished from
his mind away, so that he

Pandavas, is shown to be complex,
the 1st to the 7th centuries ce.

sees things wrongly.

subtle, and ultimately destructive.

As sources of Hindu wisdom and

Mahabharata

While most of the poem shows

Indian history and mythology,
its characters dealing with moral
the great epics enjoy a cultural
dilemmas in their human affairs,
value in India comparable with
in the final sections, and especially

Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey in
after the death of Krishna, we see
the West. ■

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SING O GODDESS

THE ANGER OF

A

ILIA C

D (c.8 H

TH CE I

NTU LLE

RY bce),

S

ATTRIBUTED TO HOMER

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SING O GODDESS

ILIAD (c.8TH CENTURY bce),

ATTRIBUTED TO HOMER

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28 ILIAD

IN CONTEXT

FOCUS

Epics are narrative poems
that recount the story of
a hero who represents a
particular culture. They chronicle

The Greek epic
his quests and ordeals, and account

KEY DATES
for the hero’s choices and motives,

Drink deep of battle.

From 2100 bce Versions of the
so helping to establish and codify

Iliad
the moral principles of a society.

first known written literature,

Epics were among the earliest

The Epic of Gilgamesh, appear
forms of literature in many cultures
in the Sumerian language.

around the world. These popular

9th century bce The epic
stories were initially told orally,

Mahabharata emerges in India.

and over time were embellished,
reinterpreted, formalized, and

(an alliance of the Greek states) and

AFTER
finally written down, often laying
the city of Troy. The first and most
c.8th century bce Attributed
the foundation’s of a culture’s
famous of these accounts were the
to Homer, the epic Odyssey
literary history. Epics usually

Iliad and Odyssey, both attributed
continues the story of a leading
contained many characters and
to a single author, known as Homer.

figure in the Iliad, Odysseus.

genealogies, and were long and

Historians concede that these epics
c.700 bce At roughly the same
complex in structure. They were
were inspired by actual events—
time as the final versions of
probably learned by rote in a
sporadic wars between Greece and
the Homeric epics take shape,
repetitive poetic meter, or recited

Troy did occur some five centuries
to a musical accompaniment, since before the works were written—

Hesiod writes the Theogony
it is far easier to memorize verse
but their characters and plots are

(“Birth of the Gods”), a poem
than prose. Indeed, the word “epic”

works of the imagination. However,
that describes the creation of
itself is derived from the ancient
the Greeks of Homer’s era would
the world and the mythology

Greek word epos, meaning both
have believed these stories to be
of the ancient Greek gods.

“story” and “poem.”

true accounts of the heroism of

1st century bce The Greek
their ancestors.

epic poems provide a model

The Trojan War

The Greeks began to write
for Roman poets such as

In ancient Greece many epic tales
down their epics around the 8th

Horace, Virgil, and Ovid.

were told about the Trojan War—
century bce. Like the spoken tales
a conflict between the Achaeans
on which they were based, they

The Homeric question

The two great ancient Greek
the sole author of the epics, or
epics, the Iliad and the Odyssey,
one of a number of authors? Did
are traditionally ascribed to the
the author or authors of the work
poet Homer—yet little is known
originate them, or simply make
about him. Since the time of the
a written record of poems that

Greek historian Herodotus in the
had been passed down orally

5th century bce, widely differing
through the generations?

suggestions have been made for

Many scholars argue that

Homer’s dates of birth and death,
the epics evolved from an oral
place of origin, and other details
tradition and were refined and
of his life. Classical scholars refer
embroidered upon by multiple
to “the Homeric question,” which

Homer lived in a time
poets in several versions. Solid
before
realistic portraiture. This bust is
includes a number of related
evidence is lacking and the
based on images of the writer that
issues. Who is Homer—did he ever Homeric question is yet to appeared only in the 2nd century bce.

exist, and if so when? Was Homer
be answered definitively.

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HEROES AND LEGENDS 29

See also: The Epic of Gilgamesh 20 ■ Oedipus the King 34–39 ■ Aeneid 40–41 ■ Beowulf 42–43 ■ Odyssey 54 ■

Theogony 54 ■ Metamorphoses 55–56 ■ Digenis Akritas 56 ■ The Tale of Igor’s Campaign 57 ■ Ulysses 214–21

The Greeks and Trojans were helped or

The Gods
hindered by the gods, who used the conflict
to fight their own battles. Hera, Athena, and

Poseidon were aligned with the Greeks, while

Zeus

Apollo, Aphrodite, and Artemis supported the
king of

Trojans. Zeus remained largely neutral.

the gods

Hera

Athena

Poseidon

Apollo

Aphrodite

Artemis
queen of
goddess of
god of
god of
goddess
goddess of
the gods
wisdom
the sea
the sun
of love
the moon

The Achaeans (Greeks)

The Trojans

Agamemnon

Achilles

Patroclus

Priam

Hector

Paris
king of

Greece’s greatest
companion of
king of
son of
brother of

Mycenae
warrior

Achilles

Troy

Priam

Hector

Menelaus

Odysseus

Helen

Aeneas
king of
commander, and
wife of
a son of

Sparta
king of Ithaca

Menelaus

Aphrodite
took the form of narrative poems.

How much of this complexity can
or in media res (“the middle of the

These Greek epics have a regular
be credited to Homer, and how
thing”) as described by the Roman
meter—each line is comprised of
much is a result of refinement
poet, Horace. Homer’s account
six basic rhythmic units, and each
and embroidering over previous
starts in the final year of the
of these units contains one long
generations, is impossible to tell.

conflict, which has already been ❯❯
and two short syllables. This meter

The result is a work that combines
is known as dactylic hexameter,
history, legend, and mythology,
or more commonly, “epic meter.”

while offering the essential

Variations on this basic rhythmic
ingredients of good storytelling—
pattern give the flexibility needed
adventure and human drama—
for poetic composition.

that make it a compelling read.

The Iliad is massive, both in

A tale of gods and men
its length and its narrative scope

The Iliad is a sophisticated piece

(it is, after all, where we get the
of storytelling. It relates the tale
idea of things being on an “epic”

of the war in Ilium (Troy) from
scale), consisting of over 15,000
the perspective of one character
lines of verse, divided into 24
in particular—Achilles. Parts of
books. Rather than simply telling
the story of the war are told in
the tale chronologically, Homer

Troy was believed for many
flashback, or in prophecies of the
grabs the reader’s attention by
years to be a mythical city. However,
future. Woven into this plot
using a device common to many
archaeologists now agree that
are subplots and insights into the
epics. This is to drop the reader
excavations in Anatolia, Turkey, have
lives of the protagonists.

straight into the thick of the action,
revealed the Troy of Homer‘s Iliad.

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30 ILIAD
raging for nine years. Homer
digresses to explain some of the
background to the events he is
describing, but he assumes much
prior knowledge about the causes
of the conflict, which contemporary
readers would have known well.

Origins of the war

The roots of the Trojan War can be
found in events that occurred at the
wedding of the sea nymph Thetis
to the Greek hero Peleus, who was
a companion to the hero Hercules.

The celebrations were attended by
may gods and godesses, including

Hera, Athena, and Aphrodite. An
argument broke out between the
three goddesses, each of whom
claimed to be the most beautiful.

To resolve the dispute, Zeus asked

Paris, the son of King Priam of Troy, preparing the reader for a story of When Paris is asked who is the
to judge a beauty contest between
war, but also implies that this is a

“fairest” goddess, Hera tries to bribe
them. Aphrodite offered Paris a
tale of personal vengeance—and
him with empire, Athena with glory,
bribe—the hand of Helen of Troy,
alludes to the involvement of the
and Aphrodite promises him Helen,
the world’s most beautiful woman.

the most beautiful woman in the
gods. The history of the war runs in
world. Unfortunately, Helen was
parallel with Achilles’ story, and his
already married to Menelaus,
sense of honor and valor mirrors
inward as he struggles with the
brother of King Agamemnon
that of the Greek nation itself.

conflicts that arise between duty,
of Mycenae, a Greek state. The
destiny, ambition, and loyalty.

subsequent abduction of Helen

The power of anger

At the beginning of the Iliad,
by Paris triggered the conflict.

Anger is a predominant theme in

Achilles becomes enraged by

Readers join the narrative when
the Iliad, manifested in the war

King Agamemnon, the Greek

Agamemnon’s Achaean forces are
itself and as a motivation for the
commander, who has taken for
fighting to recapture Helen. The
actions of the individual characters. himself Briseis—a woman who had book’s opening, “Sing, O Goddess,

There is the righteous anger of
been given to Achilles as a prize
the anger of Achilles” sets the scene, Agamemnon and Menelaus over of war. Unable to vent his anger
the kidnapping of Helen, but also
toward the king directly, Achilles
the wrath that drives Achilles
withdraws to his tent, refusing to
and makes him such a fearsome
fight any more. Only the death in
warrior, provoked again and again
action of his close friend, Patroclus,
by events in the story. His anger is
at the hands of Hector, the eldest
not directed solely at the Trojans,
son of King Priam and the hero of

Victory passes back and
nor even restricted to human foes;
the Trojans, brings him back into
forth between men.

at one point he is so enraged he
battle, more violently than ever,

Iliad
fights the river god Xanthus.

by giving him a focus for his anger.

Underlying the wrath of Achilles
is a sense of honor and nobility

A tale of two heroes
which, like that of the Greek people, Hector is, like Achilles, a military is offended by disrespect and
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HEROES AND LEGENDS 31
warriors. But his character and
loyalty and love. Neither side is
motivation stand in contrast to
wholly right or wrong, but in this
those of Achilles, highlighting two
war one must emerge victorious.

very different attitudes to war.

Even though both heroes ultimately

Achilles is driven by an inner
die in the conflict—Achilles slays
rage, but also the nobler motives

Hector, and is himself killed by a

Among all creatures
of defending the honor of his
fatal arrow in his heel—it is the
that breathe on earth
king and country, and ultimately
heroism personified by Achilles
and crawl on it there
avenging the killing of Patroclus,
that wins out over Hector’s bonds
is not anywhere a
his comrade-in-arms. Hector fights
of kinship. Ultimately, the Iliad
thing more dismal
out of loyalty—to Troy, of course,
affirms that there is glory in
than man is.

but also to his family. In addition to
warfare, and that honorable reasons

Iliad
being protective of his younger
exist for fighting.

brother, Paris, whose abduction
of Helen has caused the war, he

Destiny and the gods
is loyal to his father, Priam, who is

Homer knew that his readers—
portrayed as a wise and benevolent the Greeks—were aware of the king. Achilles is the professional
outcome of the story because if
soldier, with few family ties, and

Troy had won the war, there would
certain powers; they were not the

Hector the reluctant but fierce
have been no Greek civilization.

omnipotent deities of later beliefs.

fighter, defending home and family

The Greeks were destined to win,

Occasionally they interacted with
rather than honor.

and to reinforce this inevitability,
humans, but generally left them

Homer portrays both men as

Homer makes reference to many
to their own devices. In the Iliad,
noble, but not without their flaws.

prophecies throughout the Iliad,
however, several of the gods had

Their characteristics and situations and to the role of fate and the gods vested interests that led them to
are metaphors for the contrasting
in deciding the war’s outcome.

become involved in the Trojan War
values of society and those of the

To the ancient Greeks, the gods
from time to time. The war had,
individual, and those of duty and
were immortals who had dominion
after all, been triggered by the
responsibility compared with
over certain realms or possessed
abduction of Helen, the daughter ❯❯

Community-minded, Hector

Individualistic, Achilles is
is a family man who tries to
absorbed in his own thirst
avert wider bloodshed.

for glory.

Dependable, Hector leads

Unpredictable, Achilles is
his men bravely, bonded by
indifferent to others and
ancestral loyalty.

obsessed with honor.

Hector

Achilles

Moderate in mood, Hector is

Hot tempered and prone to
fallible and weakens in the

The warriors Hector and Achilles have
rage, Achilles thrives in the
final confrontation.

contrasting personalities and motivations,
violence of battle.

which provide recurrent themes in Homer’s
examination of the heroic ideal.

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32 ILIAD
harm, and making life difficult for
an end one day. Homer sometimes
their enemies. Apollo in particular
overtly states this fact by citing
is fiercely anti-Greek, and causes
prophecies of the future for both
them trouble on several occasions.

the Iliad’s main characters and for

For example, when Patroclus goes

Troy, but it is implicit that this is

I have gone through
into battle disguised as Achilles,
the common fate of mankind—the
what no other mortal on
by wearing Achilles’ famously
destiny of every society. What
earth has gone through;
protective armor, Apollo contrives
lives on, however, is the glory of

I put my lips to the hands
to dislodge it, allowing Hector to
the heroes and their great deeds,
of the man who has
kill him. Incensed by the death
recounted in the stories passed
killed my children.

of his best friend, Achilles vows
down through the ages.

Iliad
vengeance. And again the gods
intervene: his immortal mother

Beyond the conflict

Thetis presents him with a new

After war, bloodshed, and fury,
suit of divine armor, specially

Homer’s epic ends with peace and
forged by the god Hephaestus.

reconciliation. In perhaps the most

The need humans have for
memorably moving scene of the
such protection underlines the
poem, the elderly King Priam visits
of Zeus and Leda. Paris had seized
difference between them and

Achilles and pleads for the return

Helen in collusion with Aphrodite,
the gods—their mortality. Heroes
of the body of Hector, his son.

so sides had already been taken
go to war knowing they face death,

Achilles is moved by the old man’s
on Mount Olympus, the home of
but reconcile themselves with the
plea, and a temporary truce is
the gods. There were also other
knowledge that all humans must
called to give the Trojans time for
connections between the gods and
eventually die. The characters are
an appropriate funeral, and this
the mortals: Thetis, for example,
not only mortal, but their creations
was not only a sea nymph but also
are impermanent. They know that
the mother of Achilles.

the war will have more than human Priam kisses Achilles’ hand, and asks him to take pity and surrender the

Such allegiances prompted the
casualties, because one nation
body of his son Hector, whom Achilles
gods to intervene in human affairs,
must be destroyed—and even the
has killed in battle. Achilles displays
protecting their favorites from
victorious civilization will come to
empathy with Priam’s grief.

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HEROES AND LEGENDS 33
also lays Achilles’ rage to rest. But
despite this apparently peaceful
ending, we know that this calm
will be short-lived. The battle will
resume, Troy will fall, and at some
point Achilles will die. The story
is not over yet.

Indeed, Homer’s second epic
poem, the Odyssey, ties up some
of the loose ends by following the
fortunes of another of the Greek
heroes, Odysseus (known to the

Romans as Ulysses), as he makes
his way home to Ithaca from Troy
after the war. In the Odyssey,
the hero recounts the eventual
destruction of Troy, and the death
of Achilles, but this is very much
background to the story of his
own arduous journey.

Western cornerstone
multiple interweaving or episodic

The Odyssey details the death of

It is almost impossible to overstate
plots. Homer also set the standard
the hero Achilles. He is killed by an
arrow fired by Paris, which is guided
the impact of the Iliad and the
for the subtext of the epic, where
to the one vulnerable spot of Achilles’

Odyssey on the literature of ancient personal and social values often body—his heel—by the god Apollo.

Greece and Rome, and therefore the stand in opposition.

whole of Western literature. They

The Iliad and the Odyssey
were not simply the first literary
inspired a number of Greek poets
inspiring poets to develop a
works in Europe, but monumental
to write epics on similar themes,
distinctive Latin epic poetry.

examples that firmly laid the
but they also influenced the new

This reached its height in Virgil’s
foundations of the epic genre.

form of drama that developed in

Aeneid, which in addition to being

Homer’s expert use of complex
the classical period. While Homer
a homage to Homer took as its
and highly visual similies gave his
was popular reading in ancient
starting point the fall of Troy.

poetry unprecedented depth, and

Greece, the Iliad and Odyssey were
his mastery of dactylic hexameter
standard texts in ancient Rome,

Eternally influential
provided an inspirational musicality

Reverence for the Homeric epics
to his verse. The meter used by
did not end in classical times.

Homer was adopted for subsequent

Homer’s works were widely read
epic poetry in Greek as well as
and studied in the Middle Ages
in Latin, and the hybrid dialect
and their stories have been retold
he used became the recognized
countless times in different forms.

Greek of literature.

Zeus knows, no doubt,

Homer’s ancient poems can

Perhaps most significantly of
and every immortal too
be considered the antecedents of
all, Homer turned an oral tradition
which fighter is doomed
medieval sagas, as well as the
of stories about folk heroes into a
to end all this in death.

novel. Since the beginning of the
literary form—the epic. He also set

Iliad

20th century, other forms of mass-
out the characteristics of that form;
audience storytelling—from movies
for example, that the main narrative
to television series—have followed
should follow the hero’s quest or
the epic model, and are deeply
journey, and that this should be set
indebted to Homer for their
against a historical backdrop, with
structure and cultural relevance. ■

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HOW DREADFUL

KNOWLEDGE

OF THE TRUTH CAN BE

WHEN THERE’S NO HELP IN

TRUTH!

OEDIPUS THE KING (c.429 bce),

SOPHOCLES

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36 OEDIPUS THE KING

IN CONTEXT

FOCUS

With the revolt that
overthrew the last
tyrant king in 510 bce,
and the establishment of a form of

Classical Greek drama
democracy, the city-state of Athens

BEFORE
ushered in the era of classical
c.7th century bce

Greece. For two centuries, Athens
was not only a center of political

Dithyrambs, song and dance
power in the region, but also a
entertainments by a chorus,
hotbed of intellectual activity that
are performed in honor of
fostered an extraordinary flowering

Dionysus in Delos and Athens.

of philosophy, literary culture, and
c.532 bce Thespis, considered
art, which was to have a profound
to be the first actor, appears on
influence on the development of
stage playing a role in a drama.

Western civilization.

Classical Greek culture was

Delphi’s theater has three spaces:

c.500 bce Pratinas introduces
dominated by the achievements
the stage, the orchestra or chorus
satyr plays—a satirical genre.

of Athenian thinkers, artists, and

(in front), and the amphitheater.

458 bce Aeschylus’s Oresteia,
writers, who developed aesthetic

It was built in the 4th century bce
the only trilogy of the classical
values of clarity, form, and
and could seat about 5,000 people.

period to have survived intact,
balance—principles that were
is first performed in Athens.

epitomized by classical architecture. ceremonies to something more like A human-centered view also
drama as we know it today, with

431 bce Euripides’ Medea
influenced the development of a
the addition of actors to play the
introduces a realism that
comparatively new literary art
parts of the characters in a story,
shocks audiences.

form, drama, which evolved from
rather than simply narrating.

AFTER
religious performances by a chorus

This new form of entertainment
in honor of the god Dionysus.

was enormously popular, and

423 bce Aristophanes’ comedy
formed the focal point of an annual

The Clouds satirizes the social

The birth of drama
festival of Dionysia, which was held
scene in Athens, and in

By the beginning of the classical
over several days in a custom-built
particular Socrates.

era, religious performances had
open-air theater that attracted
changed from essentially musical
audiences of up to 15,000 people.

Sophocles

Sophocles was born (c.496 bce) in
was appointed as a treasurer in

Colonus, near Athens. He showed

Pericles’ government and later
an early aptitude for music, and
as a military commander. He
through this became interested in
married twice, and both his son
the art of drama, encouraged and

Iophon and grandson Sophocles
perhaps trained by the innovative
followed in his footsteps as
tragedian Aeschylus. With his first playwrights. Shortly before his entry in the Dionysia theater
death in 406 bce, he finished
contest in 468 bce, he won first
his final play, Oedipus at
prize from the reigning champion

Colonus, which was produced

Aeschylus, and he soon became
posthumously by his grandson.

the most celebrated tragedian of
his generation. In all, he wrote

Other key works
more than 120 plays, of which only
a handful have survived intact.

c.441 bce Antigone

Sophocles was also a respected
c.429 bce Oedipus the King
member of Athens society, and
c.409 bce Electra

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HEROES AND LEGENDS 37

See also: Iliad 26–33 ■ Aeneid 40–41 ■ Odyssey 54 ■ Oresteia 54–55 ■ Medea 55 ■ Wasps 55 ■

First Folio 82–89 ■ The Misanthrope 90

Writers submitted work to be
performed at the festival, in the

The development of Greek tragedy
form of a trilogy of tragedies
followed by a comic play, and
competed for prestigious prizes.

Three dramatists dominated
the prizewinners’ list for much
of the 5th century bce: Aeschylus

(c.525/524–c.456/455 bce), Euripides

(c.484–406 bce), and Sophocles

(c.496–406 bce). Their contribution,
which amounted to several
hundred plays, set a definitive
standard for the art of tragedy.

The chorus presented the tragedies,

The protagonist, introduced by

Aeschylus, as the earliest of the
narrating the action; even in later

Thespis, performed the part of
times, the chorus always set the
the main tragic character, thus
three great tragedians, is generally
scene and gave the characters’

initiating the birth of acting.

considered the innovator, initiating
internal thoughts, which could
many of the conventions associated
not be acted on stage.

with the form. He is credited with
expanding the number of actors in
his plays, and having them interact
in dialogue, which introduced the
idea of dramatic conflict. Where
formerly the chorus had presented
the action of the drama, the actors
now took center stage, and the
chorus took on the role of setting
the scene and commenting on the
actions of the characters.

The move toward a greater
realism was sustained by Euripides,
who further reduced the role of the
chorus, and presented more three-

The tritagonist, a third actor

The deuteragonist, a second actor
dimensional characters with more
introduced by Sophocles, took on
introduced by Aeschylus, usually
the role of adversary, while the
performed the role of the antagonist
complex interaction.

deuteragonist became a support
in the drama. Characters could now
role for the protagonist, such
interact in dialogue, introducing

Breaking with convention
as an aide or advisor.

the idea of dramatic conflict.

Of the three great dramatists, it is

Sophocles whose tragedies have
being Oedipus at Colonus and

In Oedipus the King (often referred
come to be regarded as the high

Antigone), known collectively
to instead by its Latinized title
point of classical Greek drama.

as the Theban plays. Breaking

Oedipus Rex), Sophocles created

Sadly, only seven of the 123
with the convention of presenting
what is now regarded as the
tragedies he wrote have survived,
tragedies in trilogies established
epitome of classical Athenian
but of these perhaps the finest is
by Aeschylus, Sophocles conceived
tragedy. The play follows the

Oedipus the King.

each of these as a separate entity,
established formal structure:

The play was one of three
and they were written and
a prologue, followed by the
written by Sophocles about the
produced several years apart
introduction of characters and
mythical king of Thebes (the others and out of chronological order.

the unfolding of plot through ❯❯

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38 OEDIPUS THE KING
a series of episodes interspersed
years before, which both Oedipus
with commentary from the chorus,
and his wife Jocasta have ignored.

leading to a choral exodus, or

The story is not so much about
conclusion. Within this framework,
the events that lead to Oedipus’s

Sophocles uses his own innovation
downfall, as about the events
of a third actor to widen the variety

The greatest griefs are those
that prompt revelations of the
of character interaction and enable
we cause ourselves.

significance of his past actions.

a more complex plot, creating the

Oedipus the King
psychological tensions synonymous

Tragedy foretold
with the word “drama” today.

The chain of events begins with

Typically, a tragedy of this sort

Thebes stricken by plague. When
was the story of a hero suffering
consulted, the oracle at Delphi says
a misfortune that leads to his
that the plague will abate when the
undoing, traditionally at the hands
murderer of Laius, the former king
of the gods or fate. As classical

This revelation contributes to the
of Thebes and previous husband of
tragedy developed, however,
atmosphere of foreboding that was

Jocasta, is found. Oedipus seeks
the hero’s reversal of fortune was
a characteristic of the best classical the advice of the blind prophet increasingly portrayed as the result
tragedies. The sense of doom arose

Tiresias to find the killer. This
of a frailty or fault in the character
from the fact that many of these
puts Tiresias in a difficult position
of the protagonist—the “fatal flaw.”

stories were already well known,
because, although blind, he can see

In Oedipus the King both fate and
as that of Oedipus must have been. what Oedipus cannot: that Oedipus character play their part in the

Such a situation creates tragic
himself is the unwitting murderer,
tragic events. The character of
irony, when the audience is aware
and advises him to let the matter

Oedipus is also far from black and
of a character’s fate and witnesses
rest. But Oedipus demands the
white. At the beginning of the play
his unsuspecting progress toward
truth, and then furiously refuses
he appears as the respected ruler of inevitable doom. In Oedipus the to believe the prophet’s accusation,

Thebes, to whom the people turn to King, Sophocles ratchets up this while Tiresias further reveals that
rid them of a curse, but as the plot
atmosphere of inevitability by
the killer will turn out to be the son
unfolds his unwitting involvement
introducing various references to
of his own wife. A rattled Oedipus
in the curse is revealed.

prophecies that were made many
recalls a visit to Delphi as a youth,
where he had gone to determine his
true parentage, having overheard
that he had been adopted. Instead,
the oracle told him that he would
murder his father and marry his
mother—so he had fled, journeying
toward Thebes. On his way to the
city, he had met and killed an older
man who barred his way.

The significance of this is not
lost on the audience, especially
when Sophocles introduces Jocasta,

Oedipus’s wife and the widow of

Laius, who comforts Oedipus by
arguing that prophecies are untrue;

An ancient house mosaic depicts
masks used in tragedies. Actors often
wore masks, some with exaggerated
expressions, to help convey the
character they were representing.

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HEROES AND LEGENDS 39

Aristophanes’ comedy Wealth

( Ploutus in Greek), performed
here by modern actors, is a gentle
satire that focuses on life—and the
distribution of wealth—in Athens.

Following their deaths, there were
no Greek tragedians of the same
stature as Aeschylus, Euripides,
and Sophocles. Drama continued
to be a central part of Athenian
cultural life, but the plaudits were
more often given to the producer
or actors than the writer himself.

there was a prophecy that Laius
themselves, closes the drama by

The comedies of Aristophanes
would be killed by his son, she
repeating to an empty stage that

(c.450–c.388 bce) also helped to fill
says, when he was slain by bandits.

“no man should be considered
the void left by the absence of great

This information makes clear
fortunate until he is dead.”

tragedy, and gradually popular
to the audience that the prophecy
taste grew for less serious drama.

given to Oedipus has been self-

The Western tradition

Even today, however, the
fulfilling; it prompted him to leave

Oedipus the King gained
tragedies of the classical Greek
home and set in motion the events
immediate approval with Athenian
period remain significant, not least
that led to his unconsciously killing audiences, and was hailed by for their psychological exploration
his own father Laius and becoming Aristotle as probably the finest of character, which Freud and
king of Thebes in his place, with
of all classical Greek tragedies.

Jung used in their theories of the
his own mother Jocasta as his wife.

Sophocles’ skillful handling of a
unconscious, drives, and repressed

The climax is reached as things
complex plot, dealing with themes
emotion. The surviving works of the
become clear to Oedipus. He reacts of free will and determinacy, and Athenian tragedians, and Oedipus
by blinding himself. The chorus,
the fatal flaw of a noble character,
the King in particular, were revived
which has throughout the tragedy
not only set a benchmark for
during the Enlightenment, and
expressed the inner thoughts
classical drama, but also formed
have been performed regularly ever
and feelings that could not be
the basis of the subsequent
since, with their themes and stories
expressed by the characters

Western tradition of drama.

reinterpreted by many writers. ■

Aristotle’s Poetics c.335 bce

Aristotle (384–322 bce) held the

At least one of the characters
tragedians in high regard, and
should undergo a change in
his Poetics is a treatise on the
fortune, through fate, a flaw in

Why should anyone in
art of tragedy. He saw tragedy
character, or a blend of the two.

this world be afraid,
as a mimesis (an imitation) of an

Next in importance is thought,

Since Fate rules us and
action, one that should arouse
by which he means the themes,
nothing can be foreseen?

pity and fear. These emotions
and the moral message, of the

A man should live only
are given a katharsis, a purging,
play. This is followed by diction,
by the unfolding of the drama.

the language, such as the use of
for the present day.

The quality of such a tragedy metaphors, and the actor’s

Oedipus the King
is determined by six elements:

delivery. The spectacle (scenery
plot, character, thought, diction,
and stage effects) and melody
spectacle, and melody. The plot

(from the chorus) should be
must be a “unity of action,” with integral to the plot and enhance a beginning, middle, and end.

the portrayal of character.

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40

THE GATES OF HELL ARE

OPEN NIGHT AND DAY

SMOOTH THE DESCENT,

AND EASY IS THE WAY

AENEID (29–19 bce), VIRGIL

IN CONTEXT

FOCUS

Rome began to replace Cicero inspired the beginning of Greece as the dominant
a “Golden Age” of Latin literature,

Mediterranean power from
which established the style and
around the 3rd century bce, and
forms of a distinct Roman tradition.

Literature of the
it is from that time that the first

Roman world
literature in Latin appeared.

Roots of empire

BEFORE

The influence of Greek culture

The so-called Golden Age straddled

3rd century bce Gnaeus
on ancient Rome was enormous

Rome’s evolution from Republic to
to begin with, and a recognizable

Empire. This transformation, which

Naevius writes epic poems

Roman literary culture emerged
involved the turmoil of civil wars,
and dramas based on Greek
only slowly. Although Roman
was reflected in a shift from the
models, but in Latin and about
writers were writing in Latin,
historical and rhetorical writings

Roman mythology and history.

they produced poetry, drama,
of Cicero, Sallust, and Varro, to the
c.200 bce Quintus Ennius’s
and histories firmly in the Greek
poetic works of Horace, Ovid, and
epic Annals tells the history of
mold until around 80 bce when the

Virgil, especially during the reign

Rome following the fall of Troy.

statesman, orator, writer, and poet
of Emperor Augustus from 27 bce.

c.80 bce Cicero’s oratory as a
lawyer marks the beginning

Virgil
magnum opus, the Aeneid, in
of the “Golden Age” of Latin
around 29 bce, encouraged by
literature, which lasts until the

Publius Vergilius Maro was born Octavian, and continued writing death of Ovid in 17 or 18
in 70 bce in Mantua, northern
and revising it until his death
ce.

Italy. He spent much of his early
from fever in 19 bce. It is said

AFTER
life in this part of the Roman
that on his deathbed Virgil

1st century
asked that the Aeneid be
bce Horace’s

Republic, and wrote his poems
poetry includes the Odes,
of rustic life, the Eclogues, there. destroyed, possibly because of his disappointment with
the Satires, and the Epodes.

Virgil’s next major work, the

Georgics, was dedicated to his

Augustus’s reign, but it was
c.8 ce Ovid’s narrative poem
patron, the statesman Gaius
published posthumously

Metamorphoses is published.

Maecenas. Virgil also befriended on the orders of the emperor.

Octavian, who was to become

2nd century Apuleius writes

Emperor Augustus, and

Other key works
the irreverent Metamorphoses,
established himself in Rome
also known as The Golden Ass.

as a poet alongside Horace and
c.44–38 bce Eclogues

Ovid. He began work on his

29 bce Georgics

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HEROES AND LEGENDS 41

See also: Iliad 26–33 ■ Metamorphoses 55–56 ■ The Golden Ass 56 ■ The Divine Comedy 62–65 ■ Paradise Lost 103

Aeneas’s travels in the Mediterranean

1 Troy: Flees the city with

4 Crete: Has a dream in

5 Strophades islands:

others, including his father
which the gods appear

Survives attack when taken

King Anchises, and his
to him and reveal that the
off course to the home of the

Endure the hardships
wife’s ghost tells him to find
land of his forefathers that

Harpies, who prophesy that
of your present state,
the land of the Tiber.

he seeks is in distant Italy.

a famine lies ahead in Italy.

Live, and reserve
yourselves for better fate.

12

Aeneid

Latium

Thrace 2

11

Cumae

Buthrotum

6

1 Troy

Eryx 10

3 Delos

7

Acknowledged during his lifetime

Etna
as Rome’s leading literary figure,

8

Strophades 5

Virgil wrote a number of poetic

4 Crete

9

Off western Sicily
islands
works, but it is for his epic Aeneid

Carthage
that he achieved lasting respect.

1

His story of the ancestry of Rome

The numbers in the map plot Aeneas’s
route through the Mediterranean
was possibly commissioned by

Emperor Augustus, and the rising

9 Carthage: Meets and falls

11 Cumae: Is guided by

12 Latium: Welcomed here
in love with Queen Dido,
the prophetic Sibyl to the
at the mouth of the River
tide of pride in the new imperial
and only leaves her because
underworld, where he talks

Tiber by King Latinus who
era no doubt played some part in
the gods persuade him he
to spirits and the future
offers his daughter Princess
the patriotic poem’s success.

must resume his journey.

Rome is revealed to him.

Lavinia in marriage.

Despite its nationalistic theme,
the Aeneid has its roots in Greek

Virgil begins the poem “Arma

Throughout the epic, Virgil
literature, and especially Homer’s
virumque cano …” (“I sing of arms
emphasizes Aenas’s pietas, his

Iliad and Odyssey, on which it is
and a man …”), stating his themes
virtue and duty, which is steered
largely modeled, sharing the same
in a similar way to the Iliad (“Sing,
by fate and the intervention of the
regular poetic meter, or classical

O goddess, the anger of Achilles,
gods, taking him from his home

“epic meter.” The 12 books of
son of Peleus …”), and takes up
to his destiny in Latium.

the Aeneid recount the journey

Aeneas’s story on his way to Italy

The Aeneid not only secured
of Aeneas from his home in Troy
as he is forced by a storm to land in Virgil’s reputation as a distinctly to Italy, and the war in Latium (the

Carthage. Here, he tells Queen Dido Roman writer, but went on to land of the Latins), which ultimately of the sack of Troy. Feigning retreat, become probably the most led to the foundation of Rome.

the Greeks had hidden offshore and
respected work in Latin. Virgil was
left behind a vast, wheeled wooden revered as a writer throughout the A Homeric achievement
horse. The Trojans were persuaded

Middle Ages, and appears as the

Aeneas was already known as a
by a Greek agent that the horse was guide in Dante’s Divine Comedy.

character in the Iliad, but Virgil’s
under Athene’s protection and

Stories from the Aeneid have been
continuation of his story neatly
would make Troy impregnable. At
retold continuously since it first
connects the legends of Troy with
night, after the Trojans had taken
appeared, and the idea of danger
those of Rome, and in particular
it within the walls, a select band of
represented by the “Trojan horse”—
the virtues of the hero with
warriors emerged and opened the

“Beware of Greeks bearing gifts”—
traditional Roman values.

gates for the returned Greek army.

has entered popular culture. ■

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42

FATE WILL

UNWIND AS

IT MUST

BEOWULF (8TH–11TH CENTURY)

IN CONTEXT

FOCUS

Although academic opinions emerged gradually. During the differ about the exact date

7th century, Britain underwent

Beowulf was written, it
conversion to Christianity. Latin
is the earliest Anglo-Saxon epic
was the language of the literate

Anglo-Saxon literature
poem to survive in its entirety. It is
classes, and used in the Christian

BEFORE
told in the language now known as
monasteries and abbeys where

7th century ce Caedmon,

Old English, or Anglo-Saxon, which manuscripts were created. But by a shepherd-turned-monk at
developed from the Germanic
the reign of King Alfred (reigned
languages brought over to Britain

871–899), Old English translations

Whitby Abbey, writes a hymn
by Scandinavian invaders, and
of Christian Latin texts were
that is the first-known example
remained the common language
appearing alongside original texts.

of a poem in Old English.

until the Norman Conquest in 1066.

c.8th century ce Fragments

Old English was widely spoken

An oral tradition
of runic inscription carved on
in England and southern Scotland

It is likely that Beowulf dates from
the Ruthwell Cross—now in
from the 5th century, but written
between the 8th and early 11th

Scotland but once part of the
literature in the vernacular only
centuries, because it appears to
kingdom of Northumbria—are
have been written from a Christian
lines from a poem now known
perspective, in spite of its pagan
as “The Dream of the Rood,”

subject matter. It is not clear
which blends warrior imagery
whether Beowulf was composed
with the Crucifixion story.

by the person or persons who wrote
the original manuscript, or whether

AFTER

Each of us must
this was a transcription of an older
c.1000 The epic poem Waldere
expect an end of living in
poem. There was an Anglo-Saxon
is transcribed. Only two
this world; let him who may
oral tradition of storytelling by
fragments have survived, but
win glory before death:

reciters of poetry known as “scops,”

they offer insights into the
for that is best at last for
mentioned in several Old English

Anglo-Saxon warrior ideal.

the departed warrior.

texts including Beowulf, and it is

Beowulf
possible that the poem had been

10th century Benedictine
passed down orally many years
monks compile an anthology
before it was recorded.

of Anglo-Saxon poetry now

Like its language, the poem’s
known as the Exeter Book.

story has its roots in Scandinavia,
and deals with the legends of the

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HEROES AND LEGENDS 43

See also: The Epic of Gilgamesh 20 ■ Mahabharata 22–25 ■ Iliad 26–33 ■ Aeneid 40–41 ■ Lancelot, the Knight of the Cart 50–51 ■ Njal’s Saga 52–53 ■ Cantar de Mio Cid 56–57 ■ The Divine Comedy 62–65 ■ The Lord of the Rings 287
people there, including several
historical figures from around

500 ce. It tells of the life and exploits
of a Geatish warrior, Beowulf, who
comes to the aid of Hrothgar, king
of the Danes, to rid the land of the
wægflota
hronraˉd
monster Grendel and then Grendel’s

“wave-floater”

“whale-road”

mother. Beowulf progresses from a

= ship

= sea
brash young adventurer to become
a respected king of the Geats,
following Hrothgar’s advice to

Old English

“Incline not to arrogance, famous
kennings
hildewulf
weorðmyndum
warrior!” His final battle is to save

Derived from the Old Norse

“battle-wolf”

“mind-worth”

his own people from a dragon.

word kenna (“to know” or “to

= warrior

= honor
perceive”), a kenning is a type
of metaphor that uses a

Both epic and elegy
compound or figurative phrase

In addition to the story of a
to replace a common noun—
monster-slaying hero, and the battle
for example, resulting in
of good and evil, the poem deals

“battle-sweat” instead
with themes of loyalty and brotherly
of “blood.”

love, the ephemeral quality of
life, and the danger of pride and
hildeswat
heofoneswynne
arrogance in the face of humanity’s

“battle-sweat”

“sky-joy”

inevitable doom. The English writer

= blood

= the dawn
and scholar J. R. R. Tolkien argued
that Beowulf is as much an elegy
as an epic, mournful as well as
heroic; not just a lament for the
death of the eponymous hero,
sólarborð
uhtsceaða

“sun-table”

“twilight-scather”

but also a nostalgic elegy for

= sky

= dragon
a dying way of life, and of our
struggles against fate.

Poetry in Old English

Although the manuscript of

Beowulf was preserved in the late

Beowulf is in the form of an
syllables. The two halves of

10th- or early 11th-century Nowell
epic poem—3,182 lines long—
each line are often divided by

Codex, it was regarded as simply
in a declamatory (forcefully
a caesura, or pause, effectively
a historical artifact until the 19th
expressed) style and using
marking them as an alliterative
century, when the first translations
idiosyncratic Anglo-Saxon
couplet. Another feature is a
into modern English were made.

poetic devices.

metaphorical device known as a

Not until the 20th century, largely

Most strikingly, unlike the
kenning: a figurative compound
due to Tolkien’s championing of
rhyme schemes of modern verse, word in place of a less poetic the work, was its literary merit

Old English poetry is typically
single word, such as hildenaedre
recognized. Beowulf has now been
written in a form of alliterative

(“battle-serpent”) for “arrow.”

translated countless times into
verse. Each line is divided into

Devices such as these pose
two halves, which are linked not problems for the translator into many languages, and in addition to
by the rhyming of the ends of
modern languages, especially
its popularity in its own right, the
words, but by the similar sounds given the richness of allusion poem has influenced much recent
of the beginnings of words or
in Old English.

fantasy literature. ■

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44

SO SCHEHERAZADE

BEGAN…

ONE THOUSAND AND ONE NIGHTS

(c.8TH–15TH CENTURY)

IN CONTEXT

FOCUS

Across the Arab world folktales—fell out of favor with there is a long tradition of
the educated elite, and writers of
storytelling, with folktales

Arabic literature turned away from
passed down orally through many
composing works of imaginative

Early Arabic literature
generations. However, from the 8th
prose to focus instead on poetry

BEFORE
century onward, with the rise of
and nonfiction.

610–632 According to Islamic
flourishing urban centers and a
belief, the Koran (Arabic for
sophisticated Arabian culture that

The appeal of stories
prospered under the guidance of

Yet despite the emphasis placed on

“Recitation”) is revealed to

Islam, a widening distinction was
the “high art” of poetry, there was

Muhammad by God.

made between al-fus’ha (the refined a continuing public appetite for a 8th century A collection of
language taught at educational
good yarn. Although not highly
seven pre-Islamic poems, some
centers) and al-ammiyyah (the
regarded by Arabic scholars, the
dating to the 6th century, are
language of the common people).

collection of tales that appeared
written in gold on linen, and

Pre-Islamic literature written in the
under various titles over the next
are said to have been put up
vernacular—including traditional
few centuries, but which are now
on the walls of the Kaaba at

Mecca. They are known as

A Golden Age of Islamic literature

Al-Mu’allaqat (“hung poems”).

AFTER

By the mid-8th century, the
in science, philosophy, and the
territory controlled by Muslims
arts—as well as scholars of the
c.990–1008 Badi’ al-Zama¯ n
stretched from the Middle East

Islamic holy book, the Koran.

al-Hamada¯ ni writes Maqamat
across Persia into the Indian

The Koran is the word of

(“assemblies”), a collection of
subcontinent, and from North

God, revealed to Muhammad,
stories in rhymed prose that

Africa into Iberia. Sophisticated
so it is considered not only a
relate the encounters of the
urban societies throughout the
source of religious knowledge,
witty Abul-Fath al-Iskanderi.

Islamic world became cultural
but also the model for Arabic
as well as political centers.

literature. Its style and language

13th century The Story of

This was the beginning of
greatly influenced the classical

Bayad and Riyad, a romance
an Islamic golden age, which

Arabic literature that flourished
about the love of a merchant’s
lasted for about 500 years.

from the 8th century onward,
son for a foreign court lady, is

Centers of learning, such as the
mostly in the form of poetry,
written in Islamic Andalusia.

House of Wisdom in Baghdad,
which was held in much higher
attracted polymaths—proficient
regard than narrative fiction.

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HEROES AND LEGENDS 45

See also: Mahabharata 22–25 ■ The Canterbury Tales 68–71 ■ The Decameron 102 ■ Children’s and Household Tales 116–17 ■ Fairy Tales (Andersen) 151 ■ Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque 152 ■ The Prophet 223

The nights of Scheherazade

As night falls, Scheherazade

After concluding the tale,

Having reached a
enthralls her husband by
she starts another, often
cliff-hanger at daybreak,
continuing the previous
with a character telling
her life is spared so that
night's story.

their own story.

the ending can be heard.

known as the One Thousand and
of a story she tells on her wedding
collection, from adventure,

One Nights or the Arabian Nights,
night, leading Shahryar to delay her romance, and fairy tale, to horror was perennially popular.

execution. After 1,001 such nights,
and even science fiction.

The collection came together
he confesses that she has changed
in a chaotic fashion over several
his soul and he pardons her.

Influence in the West
centuries, and no canonical version

The tales told by Scheherazade

It was not until the 18th century
of the tales exists. Storytellers
intermingle fantastic tales set in
that the stories became known in
combined ancient Indian, Persian,
legendary locations with stories

Europe, thanks to a retelling by
and Arabic tales, with more stories
involving historical figures—such

French scholar Antoine Galland
being added over the centuries.

as Haroun al Rashid (c.766–809),
in Les Mille et Une Nuits (1704–17).

The oldest Arabic manuscript still
ruler of the Abbasid Caliphate

The manuscript from which Galland
in existence is believed to have
during the Islamic Golden Age.

translated was incomplete, falling
been put together in Syria in the

The diverse nature of the tales is
well short of 1,001 nights worth
late 15th century. It is written in
responsible for the wide variety
of stories, so he added the Arabic
everyday language that offers a
of genres to be found within the
tales of “Ali Baba," “Aladdin," and
strong contrast to the classical

“Sinbad." These were never part

Arabic of poetry and the Koran.

of the original One Thousand and

One Nights, but have since become

Tales within tales
some of the most well-known stories

The structure of the One Thousand
from the collection in the West.

and One Nights takes the form of

Galland’s book derived much
a frame narrative, where one story

O my sister, recite to
of its popularity from its exoticism,
contains all the others within it.

us some new story,
with its tales of genies and flying

The framing device is the tale of
delightsome and delectable,
carpets, and was an important

Princess Scheherazade, who faces
wherewith to while away
influence on the folktale-collecting
execution by her husband, Prince
the waking hours of
movement taken up by the Brothers

Shahryar. After his previous wife’s
our latter night.

Grimm and others in the early
adultery, the prince believes that all

One Thousand

19th century. A translation of the
women are deceitful; he has vowed
and One Nights
original stories by Sir Richard
to marry a new bride every day,

Burton in 1885 inspired a more

“abate her maidenhead at night and
serious interest in Islamic culture—
slay her next morning to make sure
but in the Arab world the tales
of his honor." The princess averts
are still regarded as entertaining
her fate by withholding the ending
fantasies rather than literature. ■

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46

SINCE LIFE IS BUT A DREAM,

WHY TOIL TO NO AVAIL?

QUAN TANGSHI (8TH CENTURY),

A COLLECTION INCLUDING POEMS BY

LI BAI (LI PO), DU FU, AND WANG WEI

IN CONTEXT

FOCUS

China has a tradition of In 1705, the Kangxi emperor poetry that can be traced

(reigned 1661–1722) commissioned
back to the 11th century bce. the scholar Cao Yin to compile a While some early poetry was in
definitive collection to be known

Imperial Chinese poetry
a lyric style— ci—in the shape
as the Quan Tangshi (“Complete

BEFORE
of songs and love poems, a

Tang Poems”) with almost 50,000
c.4th century bce A
more formal style— shi—tackled
poems by more than 2,000 poets.

collection of lyric poems,
reflective themes and used stricter

A shorter anthology was compiled
structures. During the early Han
in around 1763 by Sun Zhu, Three

Songs of Chu ( Chu Ci), is
dynasty, in the 3rd century bce,

Hundred Tang Poems ( Tangshi
compiled, attributed to Qu
a collection of 305 shi poems
sanbai shou), which, like the Book

Yuan, Song Yu, and others.

was compiled, the Book of Odes
of Odes, was accorded classic

2nd and 3rd centuries ce

( Shijing). Considered one of the
status, and has remained essential

Cao Cao, later the Emperor

Five Classics of Chinese literature,
reading in China to the present. ■

Wu of Wei, and his sons Cao
it set the standard for subsequent

Pi and Cao Zhi, establish the
classical Chinese poetry.

jian’an style of poetry of the
later Han dynasty.

Poetic traditions

This shi tradition reached its apex

AFTER
in the Tang era (618–907 ce). In the

960–1368 During the Song

We sit together, the mountain

8th century in particular a number
and Yuan dynasties, the lyric
and me, until only the
of brilliant poets emerged. Foremost
ci style becomes more popular
mountain remains.

among them were Li Bai (701–762),
than the Tang formal shi style.

“Alone Looking at
also known as Li Po, whose poems
the Mountain”

included nostalgic meditations on

1368–1644 Ming dynasty

Li Bai
friendship; his friend Du Fu (712–
poetry is dominated by Gao

770), known as the “poet-historian”;

Qi, Li Dongyang, and Yuan
and the polymath Wang Wei (699–

Hongdao.

759), whose nature portraits seldom

1644 Manchu rulers establish
mentioned any human interference.

the Qing dynasty, opening a
period of scholarship in and

See also: Book of Changes 21 ■ Romance of the Three Kingdoms 66–67 ■
publication of Tang literature.

The Narrow Road to the Interior 92

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HEROES AND LEGENDS 47

REAL THINGS IN THE

DARKNESS SEEM NO

REALER THAN DREAMS

THE TALE OF GENJI (c.1000–1012),

MURASAKI SHIKIBU

IN CONTEXT

FOCUS

Japanese art and culture More significantly, Murasaki flourished in the Heian

Shikibu (973–1014 or 1025), a lady-
period (794–1185), when
in-waiting at the court, wrote
the imperial court was located
what is considered to be the first

Literature of the
in Heian-kyo¯ (present-day Kyoto).

Japanese novel (and what some

Heian court

It was during this period that
consider the first ever novel)—

BEFORE
classical Japanese literature

The Tale of Genji. In its 54 chapters,
c.920 ce The first anthology
began to emerge, distinct from
it recounts the lives and loves of

Chinese language and culture.

“Shining Genji”—the disinherited
of waka (classical Japanese

And although Chinese remained
son of a Japanese emperor—
poetry) is published, known
the language of both officialdom
and his descendants. Although
as Kokinshu¯ ( A Collection of
and the nobility, the simpler form
presented as a sequence of

Poems Ancient and Modern).

of the Japanese kana syllabic
events rather than a true plot, the

Late 10th century The
script increasingly became the
character portrayals are compelling,
fairy tale The Tale of the
national language of literature.

giving not only an insight into the

Lady Ochikubo is written.

life of courtiers at the time, but also

Imperial patronage
their thoughts and motivations,
c.1000 Sei Shoˉnagon completes

Poetry was highly regarded
making this arguably a precursor

The Pillow Book, observations
and encouraged by the Heian
of the modern psychological novel.

on life in the court of the
emperors, who commissioned

Murasaki probably intended

Empress Consort Teishi.

eight major anthologies of poems

The Tale of Genji for a readership

AFTER
in Japanese. At the end of the
of noblewomen, but it won a wider

Early 12th century

10th century, however, works in
audience and became a classic,
prose also began to appear,
appearing in many editions from

Konjaku monogatari ( Tales of
including histories and folktales,
the 12th century onward. Despite

Times Now Past) is compiled,
such as The Tale of the Bamboo
its status, its complex style meant
containing stories from India,

Cutter, and an original story,
it was not translated into modern

China, and Japan.

The Tale of the Lady Ochikubo,

Japanese until the 20th century;

1187 Senzaishu¯ ( Collection
thought to have been written by a
the text is usually annotated to
of a Thousand Years), the final
member of the Heian court.

explain its cultural references. ■
imperial anthology of waka

(classical poetry), is completed

See also: The Pillow Book 56 ■ The Narrow Road to the Interior 92 ■
by Fujiwara no Shunzei.

The Love Suicides at Sonezaki 93

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48

A MAN SHOULD

SUFFER GREATLY

FOR HIS LORD

THE SONG OF ROLAND (c.1098)

IN CONTEXT

FOCUS

Although some religious One of the earliest chansons from texts appeared in the
the Matter of France was The Song
vernacular Old French as
of Roland, a version of which was
early as the 9th century, literature
by a poet known as Turold. In some

Chansons de geste
in French is generally considered

4,000 lines of verse, it tells of the

BEFORE
to have its beginnings in the epic
legendary Battle of Roncevaux

5th–11th century In Anglo-
poems known as chansons de

(modern Roncesvalles) in 778,

Saxon Britain poets known as
geste (“songs of heroic deeds”) that
during Charlemagne’s reign. In
were recited or sung at court by
the fight for the Muslim stronghold
scops entertain the courts by
minstrels or jongleurs. Originally,
of Saragossa in Spain, Roland is
singing or reciting epics of
these narrative poems in verse were betrayed by his stepfather and mainly Scandinavian history.

part of an oral tradition, but from
ambushed. Refusing to call for help

880 The Canticle of Saint
the end of the 11th century they
he puts up a valiant fight, but as

Eulalia is one of the early texts
were increasingly written down.

his men are massacred he blows a
in the northern vernacular
call for revenge on his oliphant (an
langue d’oïl (Old French).

Legendary exploits
elephant-tusk horn) with such force

The chansons de geste formed the
that he dies. Charlemagne answers,

AFTER
basis for the Matter of France, one
arriving and defeating the Muslims.

Late 11th or early 12th
of three parts of a wider literary

The chansons de geste inspired
century Early poems of the
cycle of medieval works, mainly in
a tradition of cantar de gesta poetry

Matter of France appear, such

Old French. The Matter of France
in Spain, including the Castilian
as the Chanson de Guillaume
featured the exploits of historical
epic Cantar de mio Cid, and many
and Gormont et Isembart.

figures such as the Frankish king
of the poems were retold in German

Charlemagne. Neither of the other
and as the Old Norse Karlamagnús
c.1200 Cantar de mio Cid,
two literary cycles—the Matter of
saga. Even after poets from the 12th
the first known Spanish epic

Rome (the history and mythology of century developed a preference for poem, is written.

the classical world) and the Matter
writing courtly lyric poetry, the

14th–15th century The great
of Britain (tales of King Arthur and
finest chansons de geste, such
age of medieval French poetry
his knights)—was the subject of
as The Song of Roland, remained
is ended by the upheaval of
chansons de geste.

popular until the 15th century. ■
the Hundred Years’ War (1337–

1453) and the devastation of

See also: Beowulf 42–43 ■ “Under the Linden Tree” 49 ■
the Black Death (c.1346–53).

Lancelot, the Knight of the Cart 50–51 ■ The Canterbury Tales 68–71

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HEROES AND LEGENDS 49

TANDARADEI

SWEETLY SANG

THE NIGHTINGALE

“UNDER THE LINDEN TREE” (LATE 12TH CENTURY),

WALTHER VON DER VOGELWEIDE

IN CONTEXT

FOCUS

Entertainment in the early of the troubadours but distinct in medieval courts of Europe
key respects. With its memorable
was provided by minstrels,
refrain of the nightingale singing
who recited or sang epic poems.

“Tandaradei,” he references the

Troubadours and

But in the 11th century, a number
choruses of folk song, and more
minnesingers
of more aristocratic poets, at first
significantly, some of the poem’s

BEFORE
in Occitania, southern France,
most beautiful words are not those

Late 11th century The
became traveling minstrels. In
of a noble lady, but a simple girl.

order to distinguish them from

These features anticipated the
troubadour tradition of courtly
the jongleurs, or the common
eventual end of the age of courtly
love poetry, written in the
entertainers, they became known
lyric poetry, which in Gemany was
southern French Occitan
as troubadours, and their poetry
marked by the emergence of new,
dialect ( langue d’oc), spreads
moved from a focus on historical
professional, poet-composers, the
to Spain and Italy.

narrative to songs of courtly love—

Meistersinger, or mastersingers. ■

12th century Poets known as
the chivalrous exploits of knights
trouvères, including Chrétien
and their noble lady loves.

de Troyes, begin to compose
lyric poems in the northern

Noble entertainers

French dialect ( langue d’oïl).

Lyric poetry caught on first in
northern France, and later in Italy

Late 12th century Der von
and Spain. In the next century,

Still you may find there,

Kürenberg and Dietmar von
the noble entertainers emerged

Lovely together,

Aist pioneer the German
in Germany as Minnesänger, or

Flowers crushed and

Minnesänger tradition.

minnesingers. Foremost among
grass down-pressed.

these was Walther von der

AFTER

“Under the Linden Tree”

Vogelweide (c.1170–c.1230), who

Late 13th century Heinrich
also wrote political and satirical

Frauenlob, one of the last of the
poetry. He is best known for his

Minnesänger, sets up a school
charming “Under the Linden Tree,”

for Meistersinger.

a love poem in the courtly tradition
c.1330s Troubadour numbers
wane before they vanish with

See also: The Song of Roland 48 ■ Lancelot, the Knight of the Cart 50–51 ■
the Black Death (c.1346–53).

The Canterbury Tales 68–71

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50

HE WHO DARES NOT

FOLLOW LOVE’S COMMAND

ERRS GREATLY

LANCELOT, THE KNIGHT OF THE CART

(c.1175–1181), CHRÉTIEN DE TROYES

IN CONTEXT

FOCUS

The tradition of epic poetry, different tone, as the idea of courtly which had its roots in
love began to replace military

Homer and Virgil, lived
exploits as the predominant theme,
on throughout the Middle Ages in
and the emphasis shifted from

Arthurian chivalric
the form of the chansons de geste
heroism to noble deeds.

romance

(“songs of heroic deeds”), written

BEFORE
and performed by the troubadours

Arthurian legend

1138 Welsh cleric and
of southern France and their peers

The poet credited with introducing
in other Mediterranean countries.

this change was Chrétien de
chronicler Geoffrey of

These medieval epics conformed to Troyes, a trouvère (the northern Monmouth’s Historia Regum
the genre by telling tales of valiant

French equivalent of a troubadour)

Britanniae popularizes the
acts and the battles of classical
who took his inspiration from the
legend of King Arthur.

antiquity, or the wars against
legends of King Arthur and his

12th century The Old French
the Saracens and Moors. But in the
knights of the Round Table. In

(northern vernacular langue

12th century, these tales of knights

Chrétien’s time there were two
d’oïl) poem Tristan, by Thomas
and their adventures assumed a
distinct cultures in France,
of Britain, tells the legend of
the knight of the Round Table

Chrétien de Troyes
clergy. Chrétien’s major works

Tristan and his lover Iseult.

were the four romances he wrote

AFTER

Little is known about Chrétien
on Arthurian stories, and he is
de Troyes, a trouvère who, in
credited with introducing into

13th century The five-volume
the late 12th century, served
the tales the new idea of courtly

Lancelot-Grail cycle (also called
in the court of Marie of France.

love, in the affair between

Prose Lancelot or the Vulgate

His adoption of the name “de

Lancelot and Guinevere. A fifth

Cycle), written in Old French

Troyes” suggests that he may
poem, Perceval, the Story of the
by anonymous clerics, gives an
have been from Troyes, in the

Grail, was unfinished when he
account of Lancelot’s quest for

Champagne region of France,
died, in around 1190.

the Holy Grail.

southeast of Paris, but may
instead refer to his patron,

Other key works

1485 In Le Morte d’Arthur,

Marie, Countess of Champagne,

English writer Sir Thomas
whose court was in Troyes. His
c.1170 Erec and Enide

Malory reinterprets the
poems, which date from the
c.1176 Cligès
traditional Arthurian legends.

period 1160–1180, suggest that

1177–81 Yvain, the Knight
he was a minor member of the
of the Lion

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HEROES AND LEGENDS 51

See also: The Song of Roland 48 ■ “Under the Linden Tree” 49 ■ Don Quixote 76–81 ■

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight 102 ■ Le Morte d’Arthur 102
inevitably involve fights with

Three distinct types of epic poetry
had evolved by the medieval period

Méléagant, in which he eventually
in Western Europe. Mainly recorded in
emerges victorious, but they also

Old French, each of these collections
involve his wooing of Guinevere.

was distinguished by its theme or

However, not everything goes his
subject matter.

way: a series of misunderstandings
and deceits means that Guinevere
blows hot and cold along the way,
and Lancelot suffers the indignity
of being made to ride in a common
cart normally used to transport
convicts, and at one point ends up

The Matter of Rome
a prisoner himself. But in the end,

The myths and legends of the

When Lancelot is asked to ride in a
he and his love are triumphant,
classical world, including Greek
cart, like a common convict, he does
and both Guinevere’s honor and
and especially Roman mythology,
so very reluctantly. However, he later

Lancelot’s nobility survive intact.

as well as stories from history,
redeems himself for his hesitation by
including Alexander the
his chivalric deeds.

Great and Julius Caesar.

An age of chivalry

Chrétien’s innovative approach
recognizable by their dialects: in
to epic poetry chimed with the
the south the troubadours used the
mood of the time, and although the
langue d’oc, while the language
old chansons de geste remained
of the trouvères was the northern
popular with readers, poets across
langue d’oïl. It is no surprise then

Europe adopted the new style, often
that Chrétien should turn his
on the themes of the Arthurian
attention away from the classical
legends. Many chose to tell the

The Matter of France

Mediterranean and southern
story of lovers such as Lancelot and

French heroes, turning it instead

Guinevere, or Tristan and Iseult;

Legends of Charlemagne and his
toward the so-called Matter
others took up the story of the noble
paladins, and the wars with the

Moors and Saracens, including
of Britain, the legends of Britain
quest for the Holy Grail. During the
the stories of Roland, Guillaume
and Brittany.

13th century, however, the idea of
d’Orange, and Doon de Mayence.

epic poetry was on the wane, and

Love conquers all
the Arthurian romances were more

In addition to introducing the
frequently told in prose, reaching

Arthurian legends to a French
their high point with Sir Thomas
audience, Chrétien reinterpreted

Malory’s Le Morte d’Arthur.

the idea of the chivalric (“knightly”)

The genre of Arthurian chivalric
romance. In the tale of Lancelot, the romance fell out of favor with the Knight of the Cart, he focused on
arrival of the Renaissance period.

a hitherto lesser-known character,

The portrayal of noble knights,
whose quest was largely romantic
damsels in distress, and mannered

The Matter of Britain
in nature, and who demonstrated
courtly love had already become a

The legends of Britain and Brittany:

his nobility by defending the honor
familiar cliché by the time Miguel

Arthurian legends, the quest for
of Queen Guinevere.

de Cervantes wrote his Don
the Holy Grail, and the stories
of Brutus of Britain, King Cole,

Lancelot’s mission is to rescue

Quixote in 1605, although the

King Lear, and Gogmagog.

Guinevere from the evil clutches
words “chivalry” and “romance”

of Méléagant, and he embarks
still retain their association with
on a series of adventures. These
that mythical medieval world. ■

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52

LET ANOTHER’S

WOUND BE

MY WARNING

NJAL’S SAGA (LATE 13TH CENTURY)

IN CONTEXT

FOCUS

Rich in heroic exploits, The sagas divide into five main family feuds, love affairs,
classes: sagas of the kings, mainly
legends, and historical
about the early rulers of Norway,
detail, the Nordic sagas were
but including Orkney and Sweden;

The Nordic sagas
written between the 12th and
contemporary sagas, concerning

BEFORE

14th centuries. By and large their
the secular matters of Icelandic

12th century The first Old
authorship is unknown. Until the
chieftains (and sometimes named

Norse sagas, Konungasogur

12th century, most belonged to
after the important Sturlung family);
the oral storytelling tradition, and
the Fornaldsogur, which have

(“Kings’ Sagas”), are written
were only written down by scribes
little historical basis and relate to
in Norway and Iceland.

some years later. However, unlike
legendary and mythological times;
c.1220 Icelandic scholar Snorri
most medieval literature, which
chivalric romantic sagas, such as

Sturluson is believed to have
was recorded in Latin, the sagas

Alexander’s Saga, which started
either written or compiled
were transcribed in the vernacular
as translations of French chansons
the collection of myths known
languages of ordinary people, in
de geste (“songs of heroic deeds”);
as the Prose Edda.

Old Norse or Old Icelandic.

and the Icelanders’ sagas.

Mid–late 1200s An
anonymous verse collection

The Eddur
is compiled of Scandinavian
myths. It is later known as

The Eddur (singular Edda) refers a guide to mythological subjects the Poetic Edda.

to a body of ancient Icelandic
in early poetry. It consists of
literature found in two 13th-
a prologue and three parts:

AFTER
century books: the Prose Edda

Skáldskaparmál (“The Language

13th century Translations
and the Poetic Edda. Together
of Poetry”); Háttatal (“A Catalog
of French chansons de geste
these two works form the
of Meters”); and Gylfaginning

(“songs of heroic deeds”)

most comprehensive source

(“The Beguiling of Gylfi”), which
of Scandinavian mythology.

tells of the visit of King Gylfi to
inspire a genre of Icelandic

The Prose Edda, or Younger

Asgard, the citadel of the gods.

chivalric sagas.

Edda, was written or compiled

The Poetic Edda, or the Elder
c.1300 Stories about the
by Icelandic scholar Snorri

Edda, is a later collection that

Sturlung family in 12th-

Sturluson (1179–1241) in around
contains much older material

1220. It is a textbook on poetry

(800–1100). It consists of heroic
century Iceland are collected
that explains the meters of early and mythological poems
as the Sturlunga Saga.

skalds (court poets) and provides composed by unknown authors.

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HEROES AND LEGENDS 53

See also: Iliad 26–33 ■ Beowulf 42–43 ■ The Song of Roland 48 ■ Lancelot, the Knight of the Cart 50–51 ■

Cantar de Mio Cid 56–57 ■ Ivanhoe 150 ■ Kalevala 151 ■ The Lord of the Rings 287

Written in the early 13th century,
the Icelanders’ sagas, also known

Literature of the Northmen
as family sagas, are heroic prose
narratives that focus especially on

The Konungasogur tell of the deeds of the kings
genealogical (family) history, and

Sagas of
of Scandinavia and are the highest form of saga
describe the various struggles
the kings
writing. Snorri Sturluson’s Heimskringla, c.1230,
about the kings of Norway, is the best known.

and conflicts that took place.

The realism, starkly beautiful
writing, and vivid description of

The Sturlungasogur deal with internal struggles in character in the family sagas mark

Contemporary

Iceland in the 12th and 13th centuries. Rich in
sagas
social history, they were written—unlike the family
them as the highpoint of classical
sagas—not long after the events took place.

Icelandic saga writing. Among
the better known are Egil’s Saga,

Laxdæla Saga, Grettis Saga, and

The Fornaldarsogur deal with events before the

Sagas of

Njal’s Saga. Some scholars believe
settlement of Iceland and include the Volsung Saga, antiquity
c.1270. In addition to mythology and Germanic hero
that Snorri Sturluson may have
legends, there are adventures in far-off lands.

written Egil’s Saga, but the other
authors are unknown.

The Riddarasogur contain translated Norse

Chivalric
versions of the Romance language tales aimed

A tragic blood feud
sagas
at a popular readership. One of the earliest,

Njal’s Saga, or “The Story of Burnt
c.1226, is the story of Tristan.

Njal,” is one of the longest of the

Icelanders’ sagas and is generally

The Islendingasogur is a class of prose
considered to be the finest. The

Family
genealogical histories about the early
saga is written in prose, with some
sagas
generations of settler families in c.930–c.1030.

verse embedded in the narrative,

Their authorship is unknown.

and recreates Icelandic life during
its heroic period, describing events
that occurred among the great
familiar and believable. The issue
influence on later writers, notably
families between the 10th and 11th
of honor and the consequences of

Sir Walter Scott, the 19th-century
centuries. Episodic and bleak, Njal’s vengeance are the key themes, but Scottish poet and playwright, and

Saga is essentially the account of
the saga also explores the role of

J. R R. Tolkein, the 20th-century
a 50-year blood feud that touches
law in settling disputes.

English fantasy writer. ■
the lives of a wide range of complex
and vividly drawn characters.

A powerful influence

Much of the narrative focuses

The Icelandic sagas portray
on the two heroes: Njal, a wise,
warriors, kings, strong men, and
prudent lawyer, and his friend
powerful matriarchs. Calling on

Gunnar, a powerful but reluctant
historical events and tumultous
warrior. Both are peaceful men,
times but containing older myths

Never break the peace which
but the demands of honor and
and legends, they present a
good men and true make
kinship ties draw them and their
realistic picture of a vanished
between thee and others.

families into bloodthirsty feuds
society, as well as fantastic tales

Njal’s Saga
with tragic consequences. In some
and romances.

way—in its length, content, and

The collection of stories
psychological themes— Njal’s Saga
represents some of the greatest
is similar to a modern novel. The
writing in European medieval
relationships and characters are
literature. They also had a powerful

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54

FURTHER READING

EGYPTIAN BOOK

Odyssey is traditionally attributed
the earliest mythic accounts of the
to Homer (see p.28). The poem is in
origins of the cosmos and of the

OF THE DEAD
part a sequel to Homer’s other great gods. Beginning with the formation (16TH CENTURY BCE)

work, the Iliad. Its hero is Odysseus, of the Earth ( Gaia) out of Chaos (the king of Ithaca, who is described
primordial abyss), the poem goes

Illustrated and written on papyrus,
wandering the seas, homeward
on to detail the birth and overthrow
the Egyptian Book of the Dead is a
bound after the end of the 10-year
of successive generations of gods,
compilation of around 200 chapters

Trojan War. He has vivid adventures, ending with the triumph of Zeus.

of magic spells and formulas that
which include encounters with

At its center, Theogony engages
were written by various authors for
supernatural creatures and
with some of the core themes that
use in the afterlife. Scribes made
temptations of the flesh. Both his
haunt the human imagination,
copies, which were buried with
son Telemachus and wife Penelope
including creation, the struggle
the mummy and believed to be read despair for Odysseus’s return—he between fathers and sons, and
by the deceased on their journey
has been absent for two decades.

humanity’s place in the universe.

to the underworld, as a source of

Penelope has to deal with a series of
protection and a guide through the
suitors, whose fate at the hands of
hazards that lay ahead. A famous
the disguised Odysseus forms the

TAO TE CHING
example is The Papyrus of Ani,
dramatic denoument of the tale.

(6TH–3RD CENTURY BCE), LAOZI
now in the British Museum, London.

Traditionally attributed to the

THEOGONY

ODYSSEY
legendary Chinese sage Laozi, the

(c.700 BCE), HESIOD

Tao Te Ching ( Classic of the Way

(c.725–675 BCE), HOMER
and Virtue), the main sacred text of

The 1,022-line epic poem Theogony, Taoism, is a compilation of 81 verse An epic ancient Greek poem in
or “Birth of the Gods,” was written
chapters giving enigmatic advice

24 books (more than 12,000 lines),
by the ancient Greek poet Hesiod
on how to live harmoniously by
composed for oral performance, the

(8th–7th century bce), and is one of
following the Tao (“Way”). Its
compelling, mysterious, poetic
aphorisms—such as “Do nothing,

Aeschylus

Both genres were presented in
and there is nothing that will not
competitions at the foremost

The seven complete tragedies
dramatical contest in Athens,
be done”—illustrate the practice
that remain to us of the work of
the annual festival of Dionysus,
of wu wei, or nonaction.

Aeschylus—who is estimated to
and Aeschylus was a regular
have written between 70 and 90 winner. One exceptional year plays—attest to his mastery of
he lost to the younger tragedian,

ORESTEIA
the genre. Thought to have been Sophocles. He died at Gela in (458 BCE), AESCHYLUS
born in Eleusis near Athens

Sicily in 456 or 455 bce.

in 525 or 524 bce, he lived in the

Written by Aeschylus, the first of the
early period of the Athenian

Key works
great dramatists of classical Athens,
democracy, and played a part in
the Oresteia is a trilogy (the only
the fight against the invading

458 bce Oresteia (see right)

classical Greek example to survive)

Persians—specifically at the

472 bce The Persians
telling the tragic story of the house
battle of Marathon. In addition

467 bce Seven Against Thebes
of Atreus. The first play portrays
to tragedies he wrote “satyr

5th century bce Prometheus
the return of King Agamemnon from
plays” in a light, burlesque style. Bound
war and the plot upon his life by his

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HEROES AND LEGENDS 55
unfaithful spouse, Clytemnestra.

the legal system in ancient Athens

The second play deals with revenge by demonstrating how it could be Valmiki
by the king’s daughter Electra and
exploited by a corrupt demogogue.

his son Orestes; the third concerns

The play’s action centers around

Known as the “first poet” of
its consequences. The cycle of
an ill-tempered old man who is

Sanskrit poetry thanks to his
bloodshed is finally supplanted by
addicted to serving on juries. The
invention of the classic sloka

(“song”) verse form, Valmiki
the rule of law, under the influence
play is a classic of the Old Comedy,
was a sage who, according to
of the goddess Athena.

which is characterized by the use

Hindu belief, lived in India at
of a chorus, scathing inventive,
some point between the 6th

MEDEA
ribald humor, outspoken social
and the 1st century bce. Once
criticism, and elements of fantasy.

a murderous highway robber

(431 BCE), EURIPIDES

The play takes its title from the
named Ratnakara, he became
chorus, a swarm of jurors.

a holy man after meditating

A tragedy by the Greek dramatist

for many years as penance

Euripides (c.484–406 bce), Medea
after attempting to rob
is a compelling play about injustice, RAMAYANA

Narada, a divine sage. During
jealousy, and revenge. With only

(5TH–4TH CENTURIES BCE), VALMIKI
his meditation, an ant hill
two actors on stage at any time, it
grew up around him, from
is based on the legendary tale of

One of the great works of Indian
which he gained his name

Princess Medea and her ruthless
literature and rivaling even the

“Valmiki” (Sanskrit for “one
born out of ant hills”). He
persecution of her husband Jason

Mahabharata, the Ramayana
reportedly composed the

(hero of the Argonauts myth), after

(meaning “Rama’s journey”) is a

Ramayana at the command
he abandons her for the daughter of Sanskrit epic of 24,000 couplets in of the Hindu god Brahma.

the king of Corinth. Despite Medea’s seven books. Its moral purpose is the cruelty, and in particular her savage presentation of ideal role models—

Key works
treatment of her own children with
for a king, brother, wife, servant, and

Jason, Euripides nevertheless elicits so on—within a narrative 5th–4th century bce
the audience’s sympathy for her.

framework. The story describes the

Ramayana (see left)

actions of the god Rama, with the

WASPS
help of the monkey general

Hanuman, against a demon king

Encountering Sorrow,” is a long,

(422 BCE), ARISTOPHANES
who has abducted his wife, Sita.

melancholic reflection that helped to

The Hindu sage and poet Valmiki,
establish a tradition of romanticism

One of the world’s great comedies,
the reputed author, makes an
in Chinese literature.

by Greek dramatist Aristophanes
appearance in the work.

(c.450–c.388 bce), Wasps satirizes

METAMORPHOSES

SONGS OF CHU

(c.8 CE), OVID

(4TH CENTURY BCE)

Roman poet Ovid (43 bce–18 ce)

A compilation of verse from the
brought together an array of lively
southern Chinese state of Chu,
mythological tales in his verse epic,

No, I know no more how to

Songs of Chu contains many pieces Metamorphoses. The work marks acquit than to play the lyre.

attributed to exiled minister Qu
a shift in popular taste from war to

Wasps

Yuan (c.339–c.278 bce), a literary
love as an appropriate subject for

Aristophanes
innovator who introduced greater
poetry. The stories are linked by
formal variety into poetry. Many
the theme of transformation, often
of the poems here are influenced
resulting from love or desire. Their
by shamanistic folk rites and by
subjects include some of the best-
local legends. The first piece, “On
known legends of ancient Greece

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56 FURTHER READING
the goddess Isis breaks the spell

Sei Sho¯nagon
and frees him. The tale’s principal

THE PILLOW BOOK
ingredients include satire, slapstick, (c.1000), SEI SHO¯NAGON

Diarist-essayist Sei Sho¯nagon
bawdiness, allegory, moral reflection,
was born c.966 ce, the daughter
and, above all, humor. The idea

In the Japanese tradition, a pillow
of the scholar and waka poet
of the transformation of humans
book was a collection of personal

Kiyohara Motosuke. She joined
into animals has remained a major
musings supposedly written in the
the Japanese court to serve
theme in world literature.

bedroom. The best-known example

Empress Teishi (Sadako) in the
is that of Sei Sho¯nagon, a lady of
city that was later known as

Kyoto. Her The Pillow Book is
an engaging picture of court

HILDEBRANDSLIED
the Heian-kyo¯ court. The entries,
which were arranged thematically
life in the Heian dynasty

(c.800 ce)

rather than in chronological order
around 991–1000 ce. Partly due
by scribes for circulation among the
to her wit and intelligence, she

An anonymous work in Old High

Japanese court, offer observations
was disliked by a number of

German verse, the Hildebrandslied
on people and nature, ranging from
her contemporaries. Her rivals

(“Song of Hildebrand”) was found
caustic wit to appreciation of the
included Murasaki Shikibu,
on the flyleaves of a theological
finer things in life. The reader gains
who wrote The Tale of Genji.

codex, and copied by scribes
glimpses into the minutiae of court

After her patroness died, Sei
between 830 and 840 ce. Only 68
life, such as flutes, disobedient dogs,

Sho¯nagon is reported to have
lines have survived; the alliterative
and ladies betting on how long it
left the court and married,
poem (probably intended for oral
would take a mound of snow to melt.

becoming a Buddhist monk in
transmission) is likely to have been
her widowhood. She is thought
no more than 100 lines originally.

to have died around 1025 ce.

The subject is an occasion when

MABINOGION

Key works
the warrior Hildebrand comes face

(11TH–14TH CENTURIES)

to face with his son in combat and
c.1000 ce The Pillow Book
seeks to hide who he is, while

The earliest example of prose

(see far right)

ensuring the youth is not harmed.

literature in Britain, Mabinogion is

a collection of 11 anonymous Welsh
prose tales, some of which reveal
and Rome. Metamorphoses has had DIGENIS AKRITAS

Celtic and French influences. Its
a huge impact on both literature

(c.10TH CENTURY)

two source manuscripts date from

(including Shakespeare and Dante)

the late 14th century. There are
and the visual arts, notably painting.

The Byzantine epic hero Basil,
elements of supernatural fantasy,
known by his epithet Digenis
probably deriving from an ancient

THE GOLDEN ASS

Akritas (meaning “two-blood border-
oral storytelling tradition. Diverse in
lord”), is the protagonist of the most
form and content, some of the tales

(2ND CENTURY CE), APULEIUS
famous of the so-called Akritic folk
feature the legendary king Arthur.

ballads, which were celebrated in

The most sophisticated stories are

Written by Apuleius (c.124–c.170 ce),
vernacular Greek. Digenis Akritas is
the “Four Branches,” which include
a Numidian Berber who benefited
also the name of an anonymous,
giants, magical white horses, and
from the opportunities offered by
blank-verse epic that describes
incest, betrayal, and redemption.

Roman rule, The Golden Ass is the

Basil’s lineage, boyhood, and heroic
only work of fiction in Latin to have
later life. The son of a Saracen emir
survived in its entirety. It tells of
who converted to Christianity, Basil CANTAR DE MIO CID
the adventures of a young man
shows great strength and courage

(c.1140)

whose fascination with magic
and valiantly defends the Byzantine
results in his transformation into

Empire from its enemies. The epic

The earliest surviving epic poem
a donkey. In this new guise, he
was further developed between the in Spanish literature, Cantar passes from owner to owner until

12th and 17th centuries.

de Mio Cid ( Song/Poem of the

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HEROES AND LEGENDS 57

Cid) tells of the exploits of the
real-life Castilian hero El Cid

NIBELUNGENLIED

CANTIGAS DE SANTA MARÍA

(1043–99) in the attempt to

(c.1200)

(1252–1284), ALFONSO X
recapture Spain from the Moors.

The poem focuses on military

The main characters of this work

One of the largest collections of
and diplomatic prowess as well
have become internationally known medieval solo songs, the Cantigas as El Cid’s relationship with King
through Wagner’s Ring cycle of
de Santa María (“Canticles of Holy

Alfonso VI, using a realist tone
operas. The Nibelungenlied, or

Mary”) were written in medieval
to describe the hero’s efforts to

“Song of the Nibelungs,” is a richly

Galician-Portuguese, probably
regain lost honor. The authorship of
imagined anonymous epic poem

(at least in part) by Alfonso X,
the epic, which may have been
in Middle High German. Medieval
king of Castile, León, and Galicia.

intended for public recital, has

German literature had turned

Every song, or canticle, refers to
never been established—the only
to courtly refinement, but the
the Virgin Mary, whose miracles—
surviving manuscript is signed

Nibelungenlied looked back to
including local events prompted by

Per Abbas, but the identity of the
older, more visceral notions of honor her intercession—provide narrative writer has never been verified.

and vengeance. It tells of stolen
content; every 10th song is a hymn
treasure (Rhine gold) and magic
in her honor. The songs—written
powers (including invisibility); of the with musical notation—have great THE TALE OF IGOR’S
dragon-slayer Siegfried
metrical variety, with lines ranging
and his wooing of the princess
from two to 24 syllables.

CAMPAIGN

Kriemhild; and of Kriemhild’s

(LATE 12TH CENTURY)

revenge against the Nibelungen

Alfonso X

An anonymous epic poem in the

(Burgundians) after the murder

Old East Slavic language, The Tale
of Siegfried by one of their most

Born in 1221 in Burgos, the
of Igor’s Campaign describes an
prominent warriors, the king’s
capital of Castile (in the north
unsuccessful raid by a prince of
brother Hagen. Some characters—
of modern-day Spain), Alfonso
the “land of the Rus,” named Igor
including the powerful queen

X was a scholarly and wise

Svyatoslavich. Igor’s heroic pride

Brunhild—and some of the narrative
king who encouraged learning
leads him to face overwhelming
are rooted in Old Norse sagas.

and the arts. His reign began in
odds, and he is taken captive by

1252 following the death of his
his enemies, but escapes. The tale
father Ferdinand III, who had
has elements of both epic and lyric,

ROMANCE OF THE ROSE
greatly expanded Castile and
with political overtones too. It has

(
fought the most successful
c.1225–1280), GUILLAUME DE
become a Russian national classic.

LORRIS AND JEAN DE MEUN
campaigns of the Reconquista
against the Moors. Inheriting
a wealthy and stable land,

Frenchman Guillaume de Lorris

Alfonso commissioned and

(c.1200–c.1240) wrote 4,058 lines of
personally oversaw a range of
the Romance of the Rose; Jean de
texts, from law and astronomy

Meun (c.1240–c.1305) took it to more
to music and history, ensuring
than 21,000 lines. Based on Ovid’s

…lives are laid out on the
that Castilian would be the

Ars Amatoria ( Art of Love), the
forerunner of modern Spanish.

threshing floor, souls are
poem is one of the most popular

He died in Seville in 1284.

winnowed from bodies.

French examples of the late Middle

The Tale of Igor’s

Ages. It is a dream allegory of the

Key works

Campaign
wooing of a young lady, symbolized
by a rosebud, within courtly society,

1252–84 Cantigas de
represented by the garden. De Meun

Santa María (see above)

gives opinions on topics of the day.

c.1255–65 Siete partidas

The first 1,705 lines were rendered

1264 Premera crónica general
into English by Geoffrey Chaucer.

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ENLIGHTENMENT

1300–1800

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RENAISSANCE TO

ENLIGHTENMENT

1300–1800

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60 INTRODUCTION

Luo Guanzhong’s

In Germany Johannes

A scientific, humanist

Dante Alighieri

Romance of the Three

Gutenberg invents a
revolution begins
writes The Divine

Kingdom s and Shi Nai’an’s
printing process using
with Nicolaus Copernicus’s

Comedy, describing

The Water Margin are
movable type, enabling

On the Revolutions of the
a journey through
written, the first two of
the mass publication

Heavenly Spheres and
hell, purgatory,

Chinese literature’s four
of printed materials

Andreas Vesalius’s On the
and heaven.

great classical novels.

for the first time.

Fabric of the Human Body.

C.1308–20

14TH CENTURY

C.1439

1543

1346–53

C.1387–1400

1532–64

1604

The Black Death causes massive

In The Canterbury

A series of satirical

Christopher Marlowe’s
social and economic disruption,

Tales, Geoffrey
novels by François

Elizabethan drama
accelerating the end of Europe’s

Chaucer recounts

Rabelais is published;

Doctor Faustus is
medieval era. Culturally, it brings
stories told by a
it tells the adventures of
published after his
to an end the great age of French
socially mixed
the giants Gargantua
death, a decade after
poetry and troubadours.

group of pilgrims.

and Pantagruel .

it was first performed.

From the early 14th century, the past. Among the first to write accounts of licentiousness, and the cultural movement
in this way was the Florentine poet
bawdy practical jokes, they soon
known as the Renaissance

Dante Alighieri, whose The Divine
became popular reading.

began to spread across Europe from Comedy was not only an epic the Italian city of Florence. It was
poetic journey through the afterlife

The birth of the novel
marked by a change from medieval
but also served as an allegory for

In the 15th century, the invention
attitudes—which were dominated
the contemporary world.

of Gutenberg’s printing press
by the dogma of the Christian

At the same time, other writers
hastened the spread of ideas, and

Church—to a far more humanist
chose to turn away from the realm
this technology also made it easier
perspective that was inspired by
of epics and legends altogether,
to cater to audiences in vernacular
a rediscovery of ancient Greek and
and focus on the lives, autonomy,
languages. Popular demand for

Roman philosophy and culture. But
and ingenuity of ordinary people.

books had been stimulated in
this was more than a simple rebirth In The Decameron, published in particular by the prose storytelling
of classical ideas—the period was

1353, Giovanni Boccaccio presented of Boccaccio and Chaucer. From also a time of innovation.

a collection of 100 “novellas” in
these early stories emerged a
prose in the Florentine vernacular.

form of literature as a long, prose

The epic and the everyday

Shortly afterward Geoffrey Chaucer narrative that is now ubiquitous, In literature, although inspiration
wrote a similar collection of stories, but was then very much “novel.”

came from classical style and forms, The Canterbury Tales. Both works During the 16th century, prose
writers chose to work in vernacular
contained a variety of tales of
narratives gradually replaced the
languages, as opposed to Latin
everyday life—from love stories to
epic poem as the predominant
or Greek, and to create their own
moral parables. With their
literary form in most of Europe, and
stories rather than retell those of
discussions of human vices,
readers particularly responded to

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RENAISSANCE TO ENLIGHTENMENT 61

The first volume of

The first volume of the

Friedrich Schiller’s

Miguel de Cervantes’

In The Narrow Road to

Encyclopédie, edited by

Sturm und Drang

Don Quixote is
the Interior, Matsuo

Denis Diderot and Jean le
drama The Robbers
published, marking

Basho¯ uses haiku in

Rond d’Alembert, offers a
portrays the violent
the high point of
a prose narrative to
comprehensive reference
and emotional
a golden age of
describe his spiritual
to Enlightenment
relationship between

Spanish literature.

journey through Japan.

ideas and sciences.

two brothers.

1605

1702

1751

1781

1623

1719

1759

1789

A collection of

Daniel Defoe’s best-known

Voltaire pokes fun at the

The fall of the Bastille
comedies, histories,
book, Robinson Crusoe, is
optimism of the modern
in Paris, on July 14, sparks
and tragedies by
published in the form of a

Enlightenment movement
the French Revolution, and

William Shakespeare is
fictional autobiography of
in his satirical,
the Enlightenment ideas of
published, known today
the eponymous hero, the lone
philosophical, fantasy
liberty and equality result
as the First Folio.

survivor of a shipwreck.

novel Candide.

in a secular, republican era.

humorous stories, such as François
theater that most attracted the

Shandy and Jonathan Swift’s

Rabelais’ satirical adventures of
public. The plays of Christopher
fantastical Gulliver’s Travels also

Gargantua and Pantagruel. Miguel

Marlowe and Ben Jonson built
use the autobiographical voice, but
de Cervantes of Spain continued in
on the ideas of Greek tragedy
do so in ways that test the reader’s
this tradition, albeit with a gentler
and comedy with their dramas,
willingness to believe the narrator.

wit, in Don Quixote. However,
but even they were eclipsed by

In 17th-century France, the

Cervantes’ satire about chivalry has Shakespeare’s mastery of the form, theater was also at the heart of
a more serious undercurrent, and
which allowed him to depict very
literature, and was even more
rather than a hero, the eponymous
human characters in a catalogue of
indebted to classical models than
knight is depicted as all too human.

comedies, histories, and tragedies.

in England, with Jean Racine

Don Quixote is often considered to

Novels began to appear in
and Pierre Corneille striving to
be the first modern novel, or at least England soon after Shakespeare, follow the “rules” of Greek drama.

the first European novel—China’s
and rapidly overtook the theater in

However, the public tended to
four great classical novels and
popularity. From the beginning,
call the tune, and it was Molière’s

Japan’s The Tale of Genji were

English novelists such as Daniel
comedies of manners that seemed
all written much earlier.

Defoe and Henry Fielding presented more in keeping with the times.

believable characters in their novels, Poking fun at the contemporary Life on stage and page
which contain vivid descriptions of
mores continued to be a part of

In England, the prose narrative took time and place that give the works the French literary scene in the
longer to capture popular attention.

a degree of realism. Defoe’s Robinson 18th century, with Enlightenment Poets such as Edmund Spenser and Crusoe professes to be a “true”

philosophers such as Voltaire

John Milton continued to reinterpret autobiographical account. Both wittily satirizing the conventions
the epic poem, but it was the

Laurence Sterne’s comic Tristram
of the establishment. ■

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62

I FOUND MYSELF IN CONTEXT

FOCUS

Postclassical epic

WITHIN A

BEFORE

800 bce Ancient Greek
poet Homer writes his epic

Odyssey, which influences

SHADOWED
much of Western literature.

29–19 bce The Aeneid is
written in Latin by the Roman

FOREST
poet Virgil. It will become a
model for Latin epics of the
medieval period.

AFTER

THE DIVINE COMEDY (c.1308–1320),

1572 Luís de Camões’s

Portuguese epic poem The

DANTE ALIGHIERI

Lusiads (Os Lusíadas) follows
in Dante’s tradition, weaving
together fiction, history, and
politics in a story of Portugal’s
voyages of discovery.

1667 The last great epic
poem to be written in English,

Paradise Lost by John Milton,
reflects Britain’s emerging role
as a world power.

The epic was the literary
form of choice for some of
antiquity’s greatest poets.

Epics were written to celebrate the
achievements of a hero—often
partly divine or possessed of
exceptional strength and valor—
and the stories were often
allegories of transitional moments
in history, such as the birth of a
nation or the conquest of an enemy.

For example, while Homer’s Iliad is
the story of the hero Achilles, it is
also, more importantly, about the
defeat of Troy by the great armies
of Greece. Such poems often weave
together the contemporary with the
mythic, and their heroes play key
roles in building civilization.

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RENAISSANCE TO ENLIGHTENMENT 63

See also: Aeneid 40–41 ■ Odyssey 54 ■ The Faerie Queene 103 ■ The Lusiads 103 ■ Paradise Lost 103 ■

The Red Room 185 ■ The Waste Land 213

The Vestibule:

the Uncommitted

The Dark Forest

Jerusalem

The Unbaptized and the Virtuous Pagans

The Carnal

The Gluttonous

Sins of
wantonness

The Greedy

Wall of Dis separates

Upper Hell from

Lower Hell

The Wrathful

The Heretical

Sins of violence

The Violent

Dante’s Hell is situated below the
city of Jerusalem and is shaped like a

The Fraudulent
gigantic funnel that leads to the very
center of the Earth. Outside Hell is a

“vestibule” containing the souls of those

The Treacherous
who in life did neither good nor evil. Hell
itself is made up of nine circles, which contain

Sins of malice
the souls of sinners, from the least offensive (the
unbaptized) to the most offensive (the treacherous).

A wall, guarded by devils, impedes Dante’s progress
to Lower Hell, where violent and malicious sinners

Satan
are punished. At Hell’s core, trapped in ice, is a
winged, three-faced Satan.

Long after the fall of classical

However, it is also unusual and
detail, evoking an almost physical
civilizations, the epic poem
innovative in a variety of ways.

reality. The work recalls many
remained the favored literary form

Whereas in earlier epics the
classical epics that describe
through which to celebrate national omniscient narrator remained journeys to the underworld and,
power. For example, English poet

“outside” the story, Dante sets
like earlier epics, it is an allegory:

Edmund Spenser’s 1590 epic The
the narrator within the text; the
the journey through the underworld

Faerie Queene is a paean to the
book audaciously uses Tuscan
is symbolic of Dante’s search for
ascendancy of Elizabeth I and her

(Italian) vernacular language
personal meaning.

country, while Italian Ludovico
rather than traditional Latin; and

Originally, Dante called this

Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso, written

Dante stretches the form of the epic poem simply the Commedia, or in 1516, applauds the increasingly
by combining classical thought

“Comedy,” which at the time was
influential House of Este.

and mythological motifs with
a term used for works in which the
contemporary European philosophy difficulties or challenges faced by A divine epic
and Christian symbolism.

the protagonist were resolved in a

Dante’s The Divine Comedy fits into

Dante takes the reader on a
broadly happy ending (in contrast
the postclassical epic tradition—it
journey through hell, purgatory, and to the classical tragedies, which is long, heroic, allegorical, and often heaven—from sin and despair to focused on loss and suffering). It
nationalistic, reflecting Dante’s
ultimate salvation—mapping out
was the 14th-century poet Giovanni
active role in Florentine politics.

the geography of each realm in

Boccaccio who first called the ❯❯

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64 THE DIVINE COMEDY

Purgatory is a mountain of stepped
terraces where the souls of the penitent
undergo a different kind of suffering on
each level to purge themselves of sin
and enter the Earthly Paradise.

terza rima, an interlocking three-
line rhyme scheme, which was
developed by Dante.

Told from a first-person
perspective, the work is in the
form of an eschatological journey

(one about death and the afterlife).

The story begins in a dark forest, a
symbol of sinful life on Earth. Dante
attempts to climb a mountain to
find his way out of the forest, but
his path is blocked by wild animals

(which represent sins). Hopeless,
poem “Divine,” a reflection on its
pained him, his removal from
weak, and in need of spiritual
spiritual content as well as the
public affairs allowed him the
guidance, he meets the Roman
extreme beauty of its style.

distance to produce his celebrated
poet Virgil, who has been sent to
allegory of the philosophy, morals,
guide him by Beatrice, the lost

Politics and poetry
and beliefs of his medieval world.

love of his past. For Dante, Virgil

When Dante began The Divine

The Divine Comedy is
represents classical thinking,

Comedy—a work that was to take
structured in thirds, reflecting
reason, and poetry. Virgil assures
him 12 years to complete—he
the significance of the number

Dante he will achieve salvation—
was already established as a poet,
three in Christian theology (where
but only after he has journeyed
working in the dolce stil novo
it symbolizes the trinity of the
through the afterlife. The two then

(“sweet new style”), a movement

Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit). begin their journey, starting with characterized by its introspection,

The journey comprises three books
the descent into Hell.

and liberal use of metaphor and

(”Hell,” ”Purgatory,” and “Heaven”),
symbolism. Politics and personal
each with 33 cantos, or chapters,

Journey to the afterlife
passions were the subjects of his
plus one introductory chapter, to

The first book of The Divine

Ninth Sphere (Primum Mobile): The Nine Orders of Angels poetry, and late 13th-century Italy
make 100 cantos in total. It is

Comedy describes the levels

Eighth Sphere (Fixed Stars): The Triumph of Christ
provided plenty of inspiration.

written in a verse style called
of hell, and the ways in which

Seventh Sphere (Saturn): The Contemplatives

Dante himself was embroiled
punishments are tailored to the

Sixth Sphere (Jupiter): The Just Rulers
in the political life of his beloved
sins of individuals. The souls of

Florence, which was involved, along
flatterers, for example, spend

Fifth Sphere (Mars): The Warriors of the Faith
with the rest of Italy, in struggles
eternity buried in excrement, a
for power between the church
reminder of the excrement that

(the Pope) and the state (the Holy
they spoke on Earth. Seducers are

Roman Emperor). Key figures from

There is no greater sorrow
tormented by horned devils who
these conflicts were portrayed in
than to recall happiness in
crack their whips over them until

The Divine Comedy, and the
times of misery.

they become lumps of well-beaten
inclusion of real people provided

The Divine Comedy
flesh. In his visceral descriptions
a degree of sensationalism that
of the punishments and layout of
contributed to the poem’s success.

hell, Dante invites readers to reflect

Dante was eventually exiled
on their own failings, to change
from Florence for his political
direction, and to live in harmony
allegiances and, although it greatly
with other people and with God.

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RENAISSANCE TO ENLIGHTENMENT 65

When their journey to the bottom-

Christ and therefore could not
most reaches of hell is complete,
enter the “Blessed Realms.”

Dante and Virgil begin the ascent

Beatrice can be seen as the eternal
of Mount Purgatory, with its
feminine guide, the heart and soul
circular terraces. Purgatory is a
of humankind. It is she who
place for sinners who lived selfishly
intervenes for Dante’s salvation,
on Earth, but showed enough
and through her, Dante comes to
remorse to offer hope for salvation.

understand the love of God.

In purgatory, they may purge
themselves in preparation for

Dante’s legacy
entering heaven. As they climb

Dante adapted the form of the
the mountain, passing through
classical epic, with its adventurer-
seven levels representing the seven
heroes and multiple gods, to express
deadly sins, Dante and Virgil meet
a profound vision of Christian

Dante Alighieri
individuals painfully working to
destiny, incorporating both
overcome the flaws that led to their
personal and historical events into

A politician, writer, and
sins. Proud souls, for example, carry the story. Innumerable artists and philosopher, Durante degli
huge stones on their backs while
writers have been inspired by The

Alighieri (known as Dante)

was born in Florence, Italy, in
they learn humility.

Divine Comedy, and American-born

1265 to a wealthy family with

Once out of Purgatory, Beatrice
writer T. S. Eliot described it as
a long history of involvement
takes over as Dante’s guide: this

“the highest point that poetry has
in Florentine politics. Dante
is because Virgil was born before
ever reached or ever can reach.” ■
was betrothed to be married
in 1277 but he had already
fallen in love with another

Dante journeys through Heaven’s nine spheres, each of which is girl, Beatrice “Bice” Portinari,
linked with a celestial body, in line with medieval Earth-centric ideas about who became his muse and to
the structure of the universe, and with the hierarchy of angels. Beyond the whom he dedicated many love
spheres is God in the Empyrean—a heaven beyond time and space.

poems. Tragically, she died
suddenly in 1290. So grief

The Empyrean
stricken was Dante that he
immersed himself in political
life, becoming a priore (a high
official) in 1300 and acting as

Ninth Sphere (Primum Mobile): The Nine Orders of Angels envoy to Pope Boniface VIII
during upheavals in Florence.

Eighth Sphere (Fixed Stars): The Triumph of Christ

While he was in Rome, his

Seventh Sphere (Saturn): The Contemplatives
enemies gained power and

Sixth Sphere (Jupiter): The Just Rulers

Dante was exiled from

Florence, never to return. It

Fifth Sphere (Mars): The Warriors of the Faith
is not known exactly when

Fourth Sphere (Sun): The Wise
he began work on The Divine

Comedy, but it may have been

Third Sphere (Venus): The Lovers
as early as 1304. Dante died in

Ravenna, Italy, in 1321.

Second Sphere (Mercury): The Ambitious

Other key works

First Sphere (Moon): The Inconstant

The Earthly

Paradise

1294 La Vita Nuova ( The

New Life)

1303 On the Eloquence

Purgatory
of Vernacular

Earth

1308 Convivio ( The Banquet)

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66

WE THREE WILL SWEAR

BROTHERHOOD AND UNITY

OF AIMS AND SENTIMENTS

ROMANCE OF THE THREE KINGDOMS

(14TH CENTURY), LUO GUANZHONG

IN CONTEXT

FOCUS

As the first of China’s four the reader directly. Despite being great classical novels,
heavily based on historical texts,

Romance of the Three

Romance of the Three Kingdoms

Kingdoms is a hugely significant

(like the other three classic Chinese

China’s four great
and influential work of literature.

texts) is recognizably a novel.

classical novels

As with the other three works—

It is a feat of imaginative writing

AFTER

The Water Margin, Journey to
sustained over 800,000 words in

14th century The second
the West, and Dream of the Red
translation, and featuring more

Chamber—it marked a radical
than a thousand characters.

great classical novel, The
departure from the “high style” of

Water Margin by Shi Nai’an, is

Chinese poetic and philosophical

The first novel?

the story of a band of outlaws
literature. Aimed at an audience

The book describes the collapse
who oppose a corrupt ruler.

of common people, it employed
of China’s Han dynasty into three

16th century The third great
techniques akin to oral storytelling, kingdoms in the 3rd century ce, classical novel, Journey to the
such as the use of vernacular
and the 111 years of warfare that

West, by Wu Cheng’en, tells of
language and songs, and addressed followed. Written over a thousand a Buddhist monk’s pilgrimage
from China to India.

Luo Guanzhong

But in 14th-century China,
c.1618 Some scholars consider
attributing authorship to one

The Plum in the Golden Vase,

Although his existence is not in
person may in fact denote that
its author unknown, to be the
question, very little else can be
they were the chief compiler and
confirmed about the life of Luo
editor of a large number of texts
fourth Chinese classical novel.

Guanzhong (c.1330–c.1400). He
by earlier storytellers.

Although hugely popular, it
is traditionally regarded as the
was suppressed because of
author of the first of China’s four Other key works
its overt sensual realism.

great classical novels, Romance
c.1791 The generally accepted
of the Three Kingdoms, and

The Water Margin (as editor)

coauthor or editor of the second,

The Three Sui Quash the
fourth great classical novel,

The Water Margin. He is also

Demons’ Revolt

Dream of the Red Chamber
thought to have written story

The End of the Tang Dynasty
by Cao Xueqin, focuses
collections that deal with
and the Period of the Five
on the rise and fall of an

China’s dynastic past, including

Dynasties
aristocratic family.

the fantastical tale The Three

Chronicle of the Sui and Tang

Sui Quash the Demon’s Revolt.

Dynasties

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RENAISSANCE TO ENLIGHTENMENT 67

See also: The Tale of Genji 47

History of the text

169–280 ce: the historical

4th century ce: the story

4th–14th centuries: many
events—the breakup of the
is written down by Chen
of the hundreds of stories

Han dynasty and its eventual

Shou as History of the
become mythologized, told
reunification—take place.

Three Kingdoms.

and retold by oral storytellers.

14th century: Luo

14th–16th centuries:

1522: the earliest surviving

Guanzhong “authors” the
the novel is copied and
text of Romance of the Three
huge collection of stories,
republished many times

Kingdoms is published.

both historical and fictional,
by anonymous hands.

editing and collating the text.

years after the events it describes,
partly assured by its conventional,

It is a powerful scene that has been
it takes as its historical inspiration
conservative narrative: villains
invoked by Chinese societies and
the History of the Three Kingdoms,
always get their comeuppance,
fraternities of all kinds ever since.

written in the 4th century ce.

and order is always restored.

Despite the popularity of

Scholars believe that Romance

One of the major themes of

Romance of the Three Kingdoms,
of the Three Kingdoms was
the book is loyalty. In perhaps the
the other classics have not been
written nearly 250 years before Don most famous scene, the Oath in quite so widely read. Nevertheless,

Quixote, which is often regarded
the Peach Garden, future ruler
all four have continued to be
as the first great European novel.

Liu Bei persuades two men to
enjoyed and studied ( Journey

But, perhaps surprisingly, this
join him in an oath of fraternity,
to the West has been widely
early Chinese classic did not spark
thereby going against what was at
acclaimed outside China), and
a profusion of prose literature—
the time society’s strongest bond:

are regarded as the pinnacles
indeed, the “four great classics”

unquestioning loyalty to family.

of popular Chinese literature. ■
were published over a period of

400 years. However, Romance of
the Three Kingdoms has enduring
appeal: it has never been out of
print, and its scenes are so well
known that they are familiar to

Chinese speakers who have not
even read the book. Its success is

Many editions of Romance of the

Three Kingdoms were richly illustrated,
which helped to make the text and
stories accessible to ordinary Chinese
people, not just the elite.

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68

TURN OVER THE IN CONTEXT

FOCUS

The frame narrative

LEEF AND CHESE BEFORE
c.8th–13th century One

Thousand and One Nights, a
collection of tales by different

ANOTHER TALE authors from across the Islamic
world, is framed within the
story of Scheherazade.

1348–53 The Decameron, by

THE CANTERBURY TALES (c.1387–1400),

Italian Giovanni Boccaccio,

GEOFFREY CHAUCER
contains 100 stories set within
a tale of people fleeing the

Black Death.

AFTER

1558 The Heptameron, by

French author Marguerite
de Navarre, contains 72 short
stories, framed within a story
of 10 stranded travelers.

2004 English writer David

Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas follows
the frame-narrative tradition,
including stories within stories
that travel over centuries.

The use of an outer narrative
that envelops within it a
story (or a collection of
stories, or even stories inside
other stories) is a long-established
literary device. “Frame narratives”

provide context and structure for a
tale and often include a narrator, or
narrators, who can help engage the
reader directly. One Thousand and

One Nights successfully employed
this technnique, as did Giovanni

Boccaccio in his Decameron.

Although most earlier works used
the frame narrative to hold stories
around a single theme—often
religion—Geoffrey Chaucer used
it to far more colorful effect in

The Canterbury Tales, opening up

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RENAISSANCE TO ENLIGHTENMENT 69

See also: One Thousand and One Nights 44–45 ■ The Decameron 102 ■ Wuthering Heights 132–37 ■

The Hound of the Baskervilles 208 ■ If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler 298–99 ■ The Blind Assassin 326–27

Tales, however, was written for
a far wider audience, who were

Chaucer’s characters:

probably intended to read the
class and occupation
work rather than just listen to it.

The text is written in Middle

English, as opposed to the Latin or

Aristocrats or nobles

French that was commonly used for

• The Knight

• The Prioress
courtly poetry of the time. Chaucer

• The Monk
was not the first to do this, but it

• The Friar
has been argued that he played a
major role in popularizing the use of

Early editions of The Canterbury
the vernacular in English literature.

Tales contained woodcuts to help

Significantly, too, The Canterbury

Those with commercial
make the text more accessible to a

Tales paints a remarkable picture
wealth
wide range of readers. Shown here
of late medieval English society,

• The Merchant
are the pilgrims sharing a meal.

• The Man of Law
depicting men and women of all

• The Clerk
classes, from the nobility through

• The Franklin (landowner)

the narrative to include a range
to the laboring classes.

of personalities, whose stories
encompassed diverse themes.

Sondry folk

Later works of the genre

The Canterbury Tales opens with

Guildsmen
include Emily Brontë’s Wuthering
a General Prologue that sets the

• The Haberdasher

Heights and Arthur Conan Doyle’s
scene and creates a framework for

• The Dyer

Sherlock Holmes detective stories.

the tales that follow. The frame

• The Carpenter

• The Weaver

The technique is still in use and
story concerns a group of 29

• The Tapestry Maker
many works of Modernist and
pilgrims on their way to the shrine
postmodernist fiction play with
of St. Thomas Becket in Canterbury
framing narratives, for example

Cathedral, in southern England. The

Italo Calvino’s If on a Winter’s
pilgrims meet at the Tabard Inn, in

Night a Traveler. The device is also

Southwark, near London, where the

The middle class
often used in plays and movies.

narrator, Geoffrey Chaucer, joins

• The Cook

❯❯

• The Shipman

• The Physician

Literary innovation

• The Wife of Bath

Chaucer probably began writing

The Canterbury Tales in about

1387, during a brief absence from
his official court duties and career

The virtuous poor
as a civil servant. It marked a

At nyght was come

• The Parson
significant change in his literary
into that hostelrye

• The Plowman
direction: his other poems—

Wel nyne and twenty
including his first major work (an
in a compaignye
elegy in the form of a dream vision)

Of sondry folk…

and Troilus and Criseyde, his

The Canterbury Tales

The lower class
retelling of the love story set during

• The Manciple
the siege of Troy—were mainly

• The Miller

• The Reeve
concerned with courtly themes and

• The Summoner
written primarily to he heard by

• The Pardoner
court audiences. The Canterbury

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70 THE CANTERBURY TALES
them. Pilgrimages were an
written in rhyming couplets, a few
everyday occurrence in medieval
in prose. They vary enormously

Europe, and Chaucer describes the because Chaucer made use of a pilgrims as “sondry folk,” people of
wide range of themes and literary
all social classes and occupations. styles. These include animal and Most of the General Prologue,
other fables, fabliaux (ribald and

This world nys but a
which consists of 858 lines of verse, satiric tales), romantic verse, pious thurghfare full of wo...

describes the pilgrims, their social
homilies, sermons, allegories, and

The Canterbury Tales
class, clothing, and personalities
exempla (moral narratives). Where

(including the narrator himself).

the Knight’s Tale is a romance,

Having introduced the pilgrims,
which tells of a love rivalry between
or most of them, the Prologue ends
two brothers, the Miller’s Tale is
with the innkeeper, or Host, a man
bawdy and comic, taking as its
called Harry Bailly, suggesting a
theme the cuckolding of an Oxford
competition. He proposes that
carpenter. The raucous and vulgar
continuing with her account of
each of the pilgrims should tell four Summoner’s Tale includes a her eventful life with five husbands,
tales, two on the outward journey
description of a friar being tricked
the theme being women’s mastery
and two on their return. The teller
into accepting a fart as payment,
over men.

of the best tale will be rewarded
while, in contrast, the Second
with a free meal, paid for by the

Nun’s Tale is the story of St.

A colorful picture
other pilgrims, when they return

Cecilia, a deeply spiritual woman

Chaucer brings each story to life
to the inn. The pilgrims draw lots
martyred for her faith.

by ensuring that the tone and style
and it is decided that the Knight

The tales vary considerably
are appropriate to each respective
will tell the first story.

in length; one of the longest, and
storyteller, reflecting his or her own
perhaps the best known, is the
status, occupation, and character.

The tales

Wife of Bath’s Tale. This begins

The vividness is enhanced by the

The 24 tales within the framework
with a prologue developing the
use of the framing devices, which
include two related by the narrator, Wife’s character—domineering link the stories to one another
or Chaucer himself. Most are
and pleasure seeking—before
through dialogue and interactions
among the characters. The
storytellers frequently interrupt
each other with arguments, insults,
or sometimes even praise. The

Prioress’s Tale, for example, begins
after the Host has politely invited
the Prioress to tell her story, while
on another occasion, the Knight
interrupts the Monk because he
finds his tale too miserable. The
wider framing story adds another
dimension to the individual tales.

The Canterbury Tales presents
a colorful picture of late medieval

England, its people and events.

Chaucer was living and writing

The Ellesmere manuscript (c.1410)

is a beautiful, exquisitely illuminated
copy of The Canterbury Tales and is
the basis for most modern versions
of Chaucer’s text.

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RENAISSANCE TO ENLIGHTENMENT 71
during a particularly turbulent

Scholars do not know what
period. The Black Death of 1348–49

Chaucer’s final intention was for
had killed a third of the population,

The Canterbury Tales, nor even the
the Peasant’s Revolt of 1381 had
order in which he wished the tales
demonstrated cracks in the feudal
to appear, or whether the work was
system, and the authority of the
finished. The only clue is in the
church was being questioned,

General Prologue, with its plan
not least for its corrupt practices.

for the pilgrims to tell four stories

Chaucer’s tales reflect many
each. However, there are only 24
of these events, often mocking
tales, so not all the pilgrims tell
and satirizing the hypocrisy of the
even one tale. Nor do any of the
church. In the Pardoner’s Tale,
storytellers or the Host indicate the
the Pardoner is shown to be guilty
sequence or numbering of any tale.

of the very sins he is preaching

Geoffrey Chaucer
against, while the Friar’s Tale is

Enduring masterpiece
a satirical attack on summoners—

Evidence indicates that Chaucer

Not just a great English poet
ecclesiastical officers whose role
was still working on the Tales
but also a courtier, civil
was to summon to court sinful
when he died. There is no original
servant, and diplomat,

Chaucer was probably born
members of the diocese. It is not
manuscript in his own hand;
in London around 1343. His
surprising that the Summoner’s
instead there are fragments that
father, a wine merchant, was

Tale is an attack on friars.

would have been scribed by
eager to advance his son’s
someone else. The earliest is the
career and secured a place for

Unfinished work

Hengwrt manuscript, produced
him as a page in the Countess

Chaucer borrowed from numerous
shortly after Chaucer’s death. The
of Ulster’s household. From
sources when writing The
sequence most commonly used
there, Chaucer entered the

Canterbury Tales. The Knight’s
today, however, is based on the
service of Edward III, first as

Tale is based on Boccaccio’s epic

15th-century Ellesmere manuscript,
a soldier, then as a diplomat,
poem Teseida, and there are other
which divides the text into 10
traveling to France and Italy,
references within the Tales to
fragments, containing varying
where he would have read the

Boccaccio’s work. Chaucer’s
numbers of tales. The tales are
works of Dante and Boccaccio.

other sources included Ovid, the
grouped according to clues or links

From 1374 to 1386 he held a

Bible, chivalric works such as Sir
within the text, and end with the
post as controller of customs.

Gawain and the Green Knight,

Parson’s Tale, a long prose sermon

Chaucer married in 1366,
and gained a patron—John of
and, possibly, works by his friend
on the Seven Deadly Sins. This is

Gaunt, the king’s fourth son.

the English poet John Gower.

followed by Chaucer’s Retraction, a

Chaucer wrote his first major
curious apology in which the author
poem, Book of the Duchess
asks forgiveness for the vulgar,

(1369) as an elegy to Gaunt’s
secular elements of his works. The
first wife, Blanche. He fell on
exact significance of this apology is
hard times during Richard II’s
unclear, although some have seen it
reign; however, in 1389 was
as a deathbed repentance.

appointed clerk of the king’s

For though we sleep

Despite the uncertainties
royal building projects. He
or wake, or roam, or ride,
surrounding its structure and plot,
died in 1400 and was buried

Ay fleeth the time;

The Canterbury Tales is recognized
in Westminster Abbey.

it nyl no man abyde.

as a masterpiece, and one of the

The Canterbury Tales
most important literary works in

Other key works
the English language. Its humor,

1379 The House of Fame
bawdiness, pathos, and satirical
c.1385 Troilus and Criseyde
observations remain unequaled
c.1388 The Legend of
today, more than 600 years after

Good Women
it was written. ■

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72

LAUGHTER’S THE

PROPERTY OF MAN.

LIVE JOYFULLY

GARGANTUA AND PANTAGRUEL (1532–1564),

FRANÇOIS RABELAIS

IN CONTEXT

FOCUS

In the five-volume Histories with a resurgence of interest in the of Gargantua and Pantagruel,
wisdom of the classical world. Until

François Rabelais builds
this point, education had involved
a fantasy world around two giants
blindly following the church’s

Renaissance humanism
and their companions. The text
narrow scholastic tradition; the

BEFORE
includes all the elements of
major humanist impetus was to

1304–74 Italian scholar and
medieval folk humor that would
build a complete program of
poet Petrarch translates Greek
have been familiar to contemporary education that included philosophy, readers—bodily functions, gross
grammar, poetry, history, and
and Roman scrolls, which are
sexual behavior, birth, and
ancient Greek and Latin.

the springboard for humanism
death. Rich in satire, the tales
and the Italian Renaissance.

are also fueled by the energy of

Scholarly and satirical

1353 The 100 stories told by

Renaissance humanism, which

Poised at the threshold of this

10 young Florentines fleeing
spread into northern Europe from
rapidly changing world, Rabelais
from the plague in Boccaccio’s

Italy. “Humanism” at this time
finds ways to weave a humanist

The Decameron set a standard
had a different meaning from the
agenda into his giant adventures –
for Renaissance literature,
modern-day term, being concerned
but he first engages his reader’s
and influence authors from
attention with scatological humor

Chaucer to Shakespeare.

and absurd fantasy. At the very
beginning, the text presents a

1460 Ploughman of Bohemia,
midwife’s-eye view of the mother
a dialogue between Death
in labor, as the baby Gargantua
and a plowman, by Johannes
struggles up through her body to be
von Tepl, is one of Germany’s

Time, which diminishes
born out of her left ear. The exploits,
earliest humanist poems.

and erodes all things,
battles, and quests of Gargantua

1522–35 Dutch humanist
increases and augments
and his son Pantagruel rattle
generous deeds …

on, liberally embellished with

Erasmus publishes his own

Gargantua and
descriptions of meat feasts and

Greek and Latin translations

Pantagruel
shovelfuls of mustard tossed
of the New Testament; they
into cavernous mouths; pilgrims
are the basis for Martin
consumed in a salad; massive

Luther’s German and William
codpieces; armies washed away by

Tyndale’s English translations.

urination; and cannonballs that fall
out of Gargantua’s hair after battle.

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See also: The Decameron 102 ■ The Canterbury Tales 68–71 ■

Don Quixote 76–81 ■ Tristram Shandy 104–05

Although Rabelais wrote Pantagruel first, the series is usually published in the order of the story, starting with Gargantua. The first two books are characterized by satire and bawdy humor, the third is more serious, and the fourth and fifth are darkly mocking.

Gargantua: Pantagruel’s

Pantagruel: Pantagruel
father drowns 260,418
creates a race of tiny people

Parisians in urine and steals
by farting, and drowns an
the bells of Notre Dame.

enemy army in urine.

François Rabelais

Writer, medic, scholar of

Greek, and priest, François

The Third Book:

Rabelais was an intellectual

Pantagruel’s friend Panurge
giant of 16th-century France.

wants to get married, and

Born in the Touraine region
many philosophical
discussions ensue.

probably around 1494, he
studied law before taking holy
orders with the Franciscans.

He then transferred to a

Benedictine order, where he

The Fifth Book:

studied medicine and Greek.

The Fourth Book: A
battle with the half-sausage

Pantagruel and his friends

In 1530, breaking his vows,

Chitterlings is stopped by a
come across Hearsay, a
he left the Benedictines to
divine pig who excretes
blind man with seven
tongues, whose head is
study medicine at Montpellier
mustard on the battlefield.

covered with ears.

University. After graduating,
he lectured on the works of
ancient Greek physicians such
as Hippocrates and Galen,

Yet despite such crude and extreme he was a priest, Rabelais seized whose work he translated, and
worked as a physician in Lyon.

behavior, Rabelais ensures that his
his chance to satirize religious

Using the pseudonym
giant creations will pass easily in
dogmatism. Gargantua’s mighty

Alcofribas Nasier (an anagram
the new world of Renaissance
warrior, Friar John, is given the
of his name), in 1532 Rabelais
humanism by making them fully
sumptuous Abbey of Thélème
published Pantagruel, the first
conversant in the finer points of
filled with finely dressed nuns and
of the five books that would
learning, including medicine, law,
monks who consort freely. “Do what
make up Gargantua and
and science. In a letter to his son,
thou wilt” is the rule of the order, as

Pantagruel, although Rabelais’

the old giant Gargantua contrasts

“we all engage in things forbidden,
authorship of the fifth book is
his own upbringing in “dark” times
and yearn for things denied.”

doubtful. All five books were
with the current age, where “light

Witty, irreverent, and stuffed
condemned by the Sorbonne
and dignity have been restored.”

with intellectual marrow, no other
and the church, and despite

After the arrival of the printing
novel is quite like Gargantua and
being protected by powerful
press in the mid-15th century,

Pantagruel. It has been celebrated
patrons, Rabelais was forced
ordinary people could read the
by authors across the centuries,
to live abroad from 1545 to

1547, fearing persecution. He

Bible in translation—for the first
and most recently by postmodern
later received a papal pardon.

time they had direct access to the
writers, who have found much to

He died in Paris in 1553.

word of God, unmediated by the
admire in the narrative freedom
agenda of the church. Although
of Rabelais’ great work. ■

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74

AS IT DID TO THIS

FLOWER THE DOOM

OF AGE WILL BLIGHT

YOUR BEAUTY

LES AMOURS DE CASSANDRE (1552),

PIERRE DE RONSARD

IN CONTEXT

FOCUS

Pierre Ronsard (1524–1585) collection Les Amours de was the leading light of a

Cassandre, Ronsard set out to rival
group of French humanist
the Italian poet Petrarch. His
poets named for the bright Pleiades devotion to Cassandre is described The Pléiade
star cluster and also for a group
with imagery of piercing arrows,

BEFORE
of Alexandrian poets from the 3rd
love potions, and poisons, which

1549 Joachim Du Bellay
century bce. The Pléiade sought to

Petrarch had also deployed. But in
sets out the principles of
create a French literature equal

Ronsard’s hands this imagery is
to that of Renaissance Italy. They
imbued with sensuality. He often
the Pléiade, promoting the
imitated the genres and forms
refers to a desire to be transformed –
imitation of classical models
of the ancients, and spent much
for example, into golden droplets, so
and the revival of archaic and
time refining and defending their
that he may fall into his beloved’s
dialect words, as well as the
controversial poetic beliefs.

lap, and then into a bull so that he
invention of new words.

can carry her away on his back. ■

AFTER

A sublime art

1555 Taking inspiration from

Ronsard saw poetry as a sublime
the Greek poet Callimachus,
art, rather than merely a courtly

Ronsard’s Hymns eloquently
pastime. He was versatile and
innovative, and his poems were
celebrate natural phenomena,
melodious, sensual, and pagan,
such as the sky, as well as
despite the fact that he was a cleric

I’d like to turn the deepest
gods and heroes.

in minor orders. He made important
of yellows, / Falling, drop by

1576 Jean Antoine de Baïf,
contributions to the ode (inspired
drop, in a golden shower, /
the most learned poet of the
by the Latin poet Horace and the

Into her lap...

Pléiade and a skilled poetic

Greek Pindar), the sonnet, and

Les Amours de Cassandre
experimenter, publishes a
the elegy, and in 1558 became the
highly original work: Mimes,
official poet in the court of Charles

Lessons, and Proverbs.

IX, the king of France. He is best
remembered today for his skillful,

1578 Ronsard’s Sonnets for
tender love poetry. In the poetry

Hélène are full of references to
the suffering of lovers, as well

See also: Gargantua and Pantagruel 72–73 ■ Miscellaneous Poems (Marvell) 91 ■
as to classical myth and fate.

Les Fleurs du mal 165 ■ A Season in Hell 198–203

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RENAISSANCE TO ENLIGHTENMENT 75

HE THAT LOVES

PLEASURE MUST

FOR PLEASURE FALL

DOCTOR FAUSTUS (1604),

CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE

IN CONTEXT

FOCUS

The drama produced in

England during the reigns
of Elizabeth I (1558–1603)

and James I (1603–1625)—the

Jacobethan theater

Elizabethan and Jacobean eras,

BEFORE
respectively—often depicted a

The reward of sin is death?

1592 Elements of Thomas
murky world of murder, politics, and

That’s hard.

Kyd’s Elizabethan-period
revenge, coupled with humor and

Doctor Faustus
pastiche. The term “Jacobethan”

The Spanish Tragedy—such
is used to denote the continuity
as its theme of revenge and
of English literature between these
the play-within-a-play—are
two periods. The Elizabethan era
continued in subsequent
saw the rise of comedies and

Jacobean dramas.

tragedies, then took on elements

1598–1600 William
of psychology and the supernatural
highly respected as an intellect but

Shakespeare’s Henry IV
under James, whose court was a
nevertheless weary of the limits

Parts 1 and 2 reflect ongoing
place of loose sexual morals.

of conventional science. His thirst

Jacobethan interests in
for knowledge is so great that he
raucous comedy, history,

A pact with the devil
turns to magic and summons the
violence, and honor.

Born in 1564, in the Elizabethan
devil Mephistopheles, who makes
age, Christopher “Kit” Marlowe

Faustus false promises about

AFTER
lived wildly and died at 29,
omnipotence and pleasure.

1610 The first performance of
reportedly stabbed in a brawl. His

The two make a deadly pact:

The Alchemist by Ben Jonson,
work is a harbinger of Jacobean

Faustus agrees to give up his soul
indulges the Jacobean thirst
drama’s interest in darker themes.

to the devil in exchange for the
for harsh satire.

Based on a German story of a
devil’s service for 24 years. A good
legendary alchemist, Marlowe’s
man driven by pride and corrupted

1614 John Webster’s five-act

Doctor Faustus (originally titled
by power, Faustus realizes too
revenge tragedy The Duchess

The Tragicall History of Dr. Faustus) late that he has brought great evil of Malfi is truly Jacobethan in
recounts the tale of an academic,
upon himself. ■
its consideration of incest,
torture, and madness.

See also: First Folio 82–89 ■ The Fairie Queene 103

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EVERY MAN IS THE

CHILD OF HIS

OWN DEEDS

DON QUIXOTE (1605–1615),

MIGUEL DE CERVANTES

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78 DON QUIXOTE

IN CONTEXT

FOCUS

Straddling the 16th and defining literary achievement of the 17th centuries, Spain’s

Golden Century. Like Lope de Vega,

Golden Century refers to
he was writing near the end of an
an extraordinary flourishing of the
era, as Spain began to decline due to

Spain’s Golden Century
arts that began with the nation’s
a combination of despotic rule,

BEFORE
rise to superpower status via the
religious fanaticism, and dwindling

1499 The story of a procuress
wealth of its colonies in America.

fortunes after the English defeat of

Under the Holy Roman Emperor
the Armada. Out of this climate of
told in a series of dialogues,

Charles V (reigned 1519–56), there
flux leapt Don Quixote, an eccentric

La Celestina, by Fernando de
was a free flow of ideas across
hero who bestrides a romantic

Rojas, marks the beginning of

Europe, with Spain’s writers
past and an unstable present in a
a literary renaissance in Spain.

responding to the excitement of
chivalric adventure that continues

1554 The anonymously
the Renaissance. New techniques
to enchant and inspire.

published novella The Life
in storytelling, verse, and drama
of Lazarillo de Tormes and of
produced defining prose, poetry,

Engagement with reality

His Fortunes and Adversities
and plays. The anonymously

Just as the plays of Cervantes’

invents a new form—the
authored Lazarillo de Tormes
contemporary William Shakespeare
picaresque.

featured a picaro (young rascal)

are at the origin of modern drama,
narrator of mixed fortunes, giving
so Don Quixote is at the origin of

AFTER
the world a new literary genre—the modern fiction. Both writers delved 1609 Lope de Vega, Spain’s
picaresque novel. Experimentation
into the motivations, actions, and
most prolific playwright and
with verse forms as well as meter
emotions of their protagonists in
a major poet, publishes his
characterized the work of poet
a way that had not been attempted
artistic manifesto New Rules

Garcilaso de la Vega. And the
before, lending such characters as
for Writing Plays at this Time
dramatist Lope de Vega produced

Hamlet, Macbeth, and Don Quixote
to justify his writing style.

a vast and dazzling oeuvre of 1,800
a psychological complexity that
plays—rich in character, plot, and
made them seem real.

1635 Pedro Calderón de la
history—together with sonnets,

Don Quixote engages with

Barca’s philosophical allegory
novellas, and lyric poetry.

reality on two main levels. The

Life is a Dream is one of the

In the same period, Miguel de
main character of Cervantes’ novel

Golden Century’s most widely

Cervantes produced Don Quixote
is enthralled by the knightly heroes
translated works.

(originally titled The Ingenious
of earlier chivalric romances, and

Gentleman Don Quixote), the
renames himself “Don Quixote” in

Miguel de Cervantes

Miguel de Cervantes was born
returned to Madrid. Cervantes’

near Madrid, Spain, in 1547.

first major work, La Galatea,

His mother was the daughter
was published in 1585. He
of a nobleman, his father was
struggled financially but
a medical practitioner. Little is
kept writing, finding success
known of Cervantes’ early life,

(though not wealth) with Don
but it is likely that he lived and

Quixote. He died in 1616, in
worked in Rome around 1569,

Madrid, but his coffin was later
before enlisting in the Spanish
lost. In 2015, scientists claimed

Navy. Badly wounded in the Battle to have unearthed his remains of Lepanto (in which an alliance of in a convent in Madrid.

southern European Catholic states
defeated Ottoman forces), he was

Other key works
captured by the Turks in 1575
and spent five years in prison in

1613 Exemplary Novels

Algiers; his ransom was paid by

1617 Persiles and
a Catholic religious order, and he

Sigismunda (unfinished)

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RENAISSANCE TO ENLIGHTENMENT 79

See also: The Canterbury Tales 68–71 ■ First Folio 82–89 ■ The Decameron 102 ■ Amadis of Gaul 102 ■

The Tin Drum 270–71 ■ Hopscotch 274–75 ■ If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler 298–99

Don Quixote thinks he is able to choose

Quixote’s madness transforms
his own identity, taking on the role of a
the mundane into the extraordinary –
questing knight.

windmills become giants, for example.

The characters know that

The book is grounded
they are written about in a story,
in the humdrum realities
keeping the reader aware that they are
of everyday life—the inns, roads,
engaging with a fictional tale.

and windmills of La Mancha.

imitation of them. Yet unlike these
contemporary with the time it was
chivalrous quests that might be
romantic heroes, the characters of
written, it adheres to a specifc
undertaken by the knight Amadis

Don Quixote worry about everyday
geographical region, and is broadly
of Gaul, in the romances that bear
concerns, such as food and sleep.

chronological), without magical or
his name. Donning his rusty armor,

They travel through a world of
mythical intervention.

mounting the ancient horse he
taverns and windmills, along fairly
renames Rocinante, and enlisting
nondescript roads and paths. The

Giants of the imagination
the simple laborer Sancho Panza
characters occupy an ordinary

Despite this realism, illusion has
as his “squire,” Don Quixote—in
setting that resembles our world.

its place in the novel—but only in
the best tradition of chivalric

On another level of engagement, the mind of its central character.

romances—announces his love for
the novel also operates according

Don Quixote’s encounters with
the peasant girl he calls Dulcinea.

to the literary approach known
innkeepers, prostitutes, goatherds,

In his realm of fantasy the everyday
as “realism”: everything happens
soldiers, priests, escaped convicts,
is transformed into the extraordinary,
within the unities of time and
and scorned lovers are magnified
the lasting symbol of which are the
place (the action in the book is
by his imagination into the kind of
windmills of La Mancha, elevated ❯❯

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80 DON QUIXOTE
by his imagination into fearsome
enemies, with whom he sees fit
to engage in combat.

Further complexity

The gap between reality and
illusion is the source of the book’s
comedy (and no less its tragedy),
and is a theme that has nourished
fiction across the world in the
subsequent four centuries.

Yet, having established his
theme, Cervantes deepens and
complicates it in the second part
of his novel, which was published

In the second part of Don Quixote,

10 years after the first part.

Cervantes himself appears as a character,
and other versions of Quixote are introduced.

In Cervantes’ Part Two, the

Reality is reflected by these various mirrors,
characters—including Don Quixote
deliberately confusing life and literature.

himself—have read, or at least
heard of, the first part of the
novel in which they appear. When

While Cervantes was writing Part
ostensibly in his own voice or often
strangers encounter Don Quixote

Two, a spurious Second Volume
in the guise of a narrator called
and Sancho Panza in person, they
of the Ingenious Gentleman Don

Cide Hamete Benengeli, a Moorish
already know their famous history.

Quixote of La Mancha by the
storyteller. The first words of the

A duke and duchess, for example,

Licenciado Alonso Fernández de
novel—“In some village in La
are excited when they meet Don

Avellaneda, of Tordesillas appeared.

Mancha, whose name I do not care

Quixote, having read all about his

Cervantes’ literary creation had
to recall”—exhibit the narrator’s
adventures. They think it amusing
been stolen, inciting his comment,
willfulness as well as the author’s
to deceive him for entertainment,
at the end of Part Two: “For me
control over his material.

setting in play a string of imagined
alone was Don Quixote born, and

The novel is written in episodic
adventures, which result in a series I for him; it was his to act, mine to form, laying the groundwork for the
of sadistic practical jokes. Honor—
write.” In literary revenge, Cervantes many road novels and films that Cervantes suggests—clearly has
sends his knight and squire off to
would follow. Most of the characters
nothing to do with social position.

Barcelona, to kidnap a character
whom Don Quixote and Sancho

Readers begin to laugh less.

from the Avellaneda book.

Panza encounter have a story
to tell, providing the novel with

Stories within stories
a format familiar to readers of

Literature is itself also a theme

Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales
in the novel. We are told that Don
and Boccaccio’s Decameron, and

Quixote’s delusions result from
of the canon of tales from the East
reading too much—an interesting
that entered southern Spain in the

Finally, from so little sleeping proposition to present to a reader long centuries of Arab rule.

and so much reading, his
of Don Quixote. But even when Don

For example, one of the novel’s
brain dried up and he went

Quixote’s books are burned by the
minor characters, Ricote, a Morisco
completely out of his mind.

priest, housekeeper, and barber,

(a Muslim forcibly converted to

Don Quixote
his improbable quest for glory

Christianity), recounts his exile
continues. The role of the book’s
from Spain—a story within a story
narrator is also questioned. Far
that introduces historical facts to
from disappearing behind his
the fictional narrative. The expulsion
characters and story, Cervantes
of the Moriscos in 1609 was highly
makes frequent appearances,
topical, and whereas the earlier

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RENAISSANCE TO ENLIGHTENMENT 81
romances of chivalry dwelled in
be seen as a 19th-century Quixote
a world of myth, Cervantes’ novel
in her bid to escape the tedium
was ready to engage with gritty,
of life by imitating fiction. In the
present-day issues.

20th century, Cervantes’ playful
and metafictional side inspired

Illusion and disillusion

‘Tell me, Senor Don Alvaro,’

Jorge Luis Borges to write “Pierre

Stories proliferate at every turn,
said Don Quixote, ‘am I

Menard, Author of the Quixote”

offering further opportunities for
at all like that Don Quixote

(about a writer who recreates
illusion and disillusion. Quixote
you talk of?’

Cervantes’ novel), which Borges
and Sancho hear of a young man

Don Quixote
described, mischieviously, as “more
who became a shepherd after
subtle than Cervantes’ [story].” Don
having studied pastoral literature,

Quixote is also immortalized as
but died for the love of a beautiful
an English adjective for erratic if
shepherdess, Marcella. Accused
idealistic behavior—quixotic.

of being the cause of his death,

Marcella delivers a fiery speech at

Interpretations
the funeral defending her right to
before his death. By killing him off,

Standing at the junction between
live as she wants and refusing to be Cervantes clearly wanted to prevent medieval chivalric tales and the object of male fantasy. Literature any more unauthorized sequels.

the modern novel, Don Quixote
is seemingly condemned for its

Despite Cervantes’ claims of
bequeathed a rich cultural legacy
capacity to encourage its readers
ownership, Don Quixote illustrates
to generations of readers, and the
to live in a dream world, while the
the way great fictional characters
work has been subject to shifting
book achieves precisely this goal.

ultimately escape their authors,
interpretations over the centuries.

Cervantes makes clear that as
seeming to move away from the

Upon publication in Spain’s Golden
an author he will do exactly what
pages in which they first appear.

Century, it was widely perceived as
he wants. Slowly, Don Quixote is

He inspired English comic novelists a satire—with Don Quixote as the brought back home, exhausted and
such as Henry Fielding and French
butt of the jokes; but with much of
disenchanted. “I was mad, now I
realists such as Gustave Flaubert,

Spain’s history woven into the tale,
am in my senses,” he says, shortly
whose character Emma Bovary can it was also seen as a critique of the country’s imperial ambitions. Don

Quixote’s delusions of heroism can
be read as a symbol of his nation’s
wasteful expansionism in the face
of decline. For revolutionaries, Don

Quixote was an inspiration—a man
who was right when the system
was wrong; and the Romantics
transformed him into a tragic
character—a man with noble
intentions, defeated by the second
rate. This reevaluation of the work
over time points to the enduring
power of its story and its writing,
and guarantees the text a central
place in literary history. ■

La Mancha in central Spain is a dry
but agriculturally important area,
lacking in literary resonance and
therefore an unlikely (and amusing)

home for a would-be chivalric hero.

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ONE MAN IN HIS TIME

PLAYS MANY

PA

FIRST FOLIO ( R

1623), TS

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

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PARTS

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84 FIRST FOLIO

IN CONTEXT

FOCUS

When William

Shakespeare died,
his friend and rival
playwright Ben Jonson wrote that

The Bard
his works would prove “not of an

BEFORE
age, but for all time.” The prediction

Some are born great,

1560 Published in an English
proved true: Shakespeare’s name
some achieve greatness,
is known across the globe, and he
translation, the Geneva Bible
and some have greatness
continues to be regarded as one of
is one of the major reference
thrust upon ’em.

the most iconic writers of all time.

sources used by Shakespeare.

Twelfth Night

His works have been translated

1565 The Roman poet Ovid’s
into more than 80 languages; his

Metamorphoses, translated by
dramas have been transformed

Arthur Golding, is published
into movies, animations, and
and is a major literary source
musicals; and his words have
for Shakespeare.

inspired politicians, artists, and
advertisers around the world.

appeal lies in his ability to capture

1616 Works, by English
in words what it feels like to be
writer Ben Jonson, is the

Enduring appeal
human. His mastery of language
first published collection of

In 1999 Shakespeare was voted
allowed him to convey complex
a popular dramatist’s plays.

“Man of the Millennium” in the UK, emotions with great impact AFTER
and speeches from The Tempest
and economy. The fact that

1709
were used in the opening ceremony Shakespeare’s audiences English writer Nicholas
for the 2012 Olympic Games. He is
represented a cross section of

Rowe’s edition of Shakespeare’s
one of the UK’s greatest cultural
society, from cobblers to courtiers,

Complete Works is published
exports, and each year aboutt
encouraged the playwright to
by Jacob Tonson. This is the

800,000 visitors make the trip to
develop a poetic voice that spoke
first major attempt to reedit

Stratford-upon-Avon to visit the
across social rank, education, and

Shakespeare’s plays since the
houses where his life story began.

age. His plays had to appeal to

First Folio. Rowe modernized

Why should Shakespeare, a
those who had paid one penny to
spelling and punctuation, and
man who died in 1616, continue
stand in the yard, while also on
added scene divisions.

to be so relevant for readers and
occasion satisfying the tastes of
theatergoers today? Much of his
the monarch and the court. It is

William Shakespeare

William Shakespeare was born
in 1598 Francis Meres described
in Stratford-upon-Avon in April
the “mellifluous and honey-

1564. At 18 he married Anne
tongued Shakespeare.”

Hathaway, already pregnant with

The preeminent writer for
the first of their three children.

the King’s Men acting troupe

Records reveal that Shakespeare
and a shareholder in the Globe
was in London in the early 1590s,

Theatre on Bankside, he was
working as an actor. The first
able to buy a house in Stratford-
reference to him as a playwright
upon-Avon, to which he returned
in 1592 is somewhat unflattering:

in his later years. He died on St.

fellow dramatist Robert Greene

George’s Day, April 23, 1616.

labeled him an “Upstart crow,
beautified in our feathers.”

Other key works

Shakespeare’s history plays
about King Henry VI had proved

1593 Venus and Adonis
very popular by the late 1590s,

1594 The Rape of Lucrece
and his reputation was such that

1609 Shakespeare’s Sonnets

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RENAISSANCE TO ENLIGHTENMENT 85

See also: Oedipus the King 34–39 ■ Metamorphoses 55 ■ The Canterbury Tales 68–71 ■ Doctor Faustus 75 ■

Moby-Dick 138–45 ■ Ulysses 214–21

Shakespeare was born in the market
town of Stratford-upon-Avon. He lived
in this house on Henley Street into
adulthood, including the first five years
of marriage to Anne Hathaway.

little wonder then that the works of

Shakespeare remain accessible to
a broad audience; Shakespeare’s
imaginative tales have the capacity
to delight schoolchildren as well as
veteran playgoers.

A writer for all worlds

Shakespeare’s genius lies in his
talent for holding a mirror up to
nature and reflecting his audience
in it; people recognize themselves
and others in his works. His most
effective technique for engaging
his audience was through use of
soliloquy. It is in these moments
they can also be revealed to be
completely had it not been for the
when a character is left alone on
duplicitous and villainous. By
publication in 1623 of Mr. William
stage, and begins to reveal the
allowing them to speak in private

Shakespeares Comedies, Histories,
core of their being, that a strong
to the audience, Shakespeare

& Tragedies, otherwise known as
connection is built between the
created the illusion that the
the First Folio.

world of the play and that of
spectators were privy to every
the onlookers. Soliloquy allows
thought. His characters moved

The First Folio
characters to share their innermost
beyond being mere vehicles for

There are only some 240 copies of
fears, disappointments, dreams,
plot development, and appeared
the First Folio still in existence and
and ambitions. In moments of
to be individuals living in the
it has become one of the world’s
privacy, Shakespeare’s characters
moment, making decisions from
most valuable books, with a price
can appear fragile and vulnerable;
scene to scene.

of around US $6 million at auction.

Shakespeare’s plays were

Were it not for this book, many of
designed to be enjoyed in the

Shakespeare’s masterpieces would
theater, but readers could also
have been lost forever.

experience some of them in print

In the Elizabethan and Jacobean
after they had appeared on stage:

periods there was no guarantee that

Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet, A
a play would be published simply

All the world’s a stage,

Midsummer Night’s Dream, and
because it had been performed.

And all the men and

Henry V were printed as individual

Publishers tended to think that
women merely players.

works (known as quartos) during
dramas had a “fashionable” rather

As You Like It

Shakespeare’s lifetime. However,
than “enduring” appeal, and they
other plays such as Julius Caesar,
preferred to put their energies (and

Macbeth, As You Like It, and
finances) into publishing Bibles,

Twelfth Night do not seem to have
sermons, and chronicles of English
been printed before the dramatist
history. Ben Jonson was the first
died, and would have disappeared
dramatist to have his works ❯❯

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86 FIRST FOLIO

Plays included in the First Folio

Comedies

Histories

Tragedies

The Tempest

King John

Troilus and Cressida

The Two Gentlemen of Verona

Richard II

Coriolanus

The Merry Wives of Windsor

Henry IV Part 1

Titus Andronicus

Measure for Measure

Henry IV Part 2

Romeo and Juliet

The Comedy of Errors

Henry V

Timon of Athens

Much Ado About Nothing

Henry VI Part 1

Julius Caesar

Love’s Labour’s Lost

Henry VI Part 2

Macbeth

A Midsummer Night’s Dream

Henry VI Part 3

Hamlet

The Merchant of Venice

Richard III

King Lear

As You Like It

Henry VIII

Othello

The Taming of the Shrew

Antony and Cleopatra

All’s Well That Ends Well

Cymbeline

Twelfth Night

The Winter’s Tale
collected together and published
the text from which “cue scripts”

years later, and it has continued to
as a whole. His Works appeared
were created: each actor would
be republished in differing formats
in 1616, the year of Shakespeare’s
have their own lines transcribed
ever since. It is no wonder that the
death, and its popularity inspired
with just a line or more to listen

First Folio is regarded as such an
others to consider similar volumes.

out for as their cue. Over time
important book today, given the

Two of Shakespeare’s fellow
manuscripts disappear, or are
vision and determination that went
actors and close friends, John
altered, revised, and covered in ink.

into ensuring its publication.

Heminges and Henry Condell,

Today there are no Shakespearian
oversaw the mammoth task that
manuscripts in existence, although

A threefold division
went into producing the First Folio.

there are 147 lines in a play called

The First Folio divides the plays

This would have been a difficult job Sir Thomas More that are thought to of Shakespeare into comedies, and their first priority was to locate
be in Shakespeare’s own hand. The
histories, and tragedies. The
the play texts. The playwright’s

First Folio serves as a monument
division into three genres is
original manuscript was either
then to Shakespeare’s memory; it
somewhat arbitrary, and is more
used, or transcribed, by the
proved so popular that it had to be
reflective of the publisher’s desire
company, and then served as
reprinted (with revisions) just nine
than it is suggestive of the way

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RENAISSANCE TO ENLIGHTENMENT 87

Similarly, Shakespeare’s comedies,
which one might expect to be light
and frivolous in tone, can sometimes
prove dark and dangerous: Isabella
is sexually harassed by Angelo
in Measure for Measure; Oberon

Our revels now are ended.

enchants Titania’s eyes with a

These our actors …

potion that will lead her to fall in

Are melted into air.

love with the first thing she sees

The Tempest
in A Midsummer Night’s Dream;
and Malvolio’s puritanical streak
in Twelfth Night leads to a very
public humiliation.

The Globe Theatre, co-owned by

Relationships tested

Shakespeare, opened in 1599 on the

While Shakespeare’s comedies
a marriage, but an agreement
south bank of the Thames, but by 1644
share many similarities, they also
between the couples to meet
it had been demolished. A recreated
differ markedly from one another.

again after a year spent apart.

Globe opened at the site in the 1990s.

They almost all end with the

While the comedies ordinarily
prospect of marriage, which
end in harmony and reunion, the
in which Shakespeare viewed his
helps to unite individuals and
tragedies are altogether more
plays. Julius Caesar, for example,
communities simultaneously; it
destructive in their dramatic
is listed as a tragedy when it could
also brings a celebratory, festive
trajectory. Relationships are tested,
just as readily be a history play;
quality to the play’s close and
put under pressure, and eventually
similarly, Richard III is listed under
distances the memory of any
broken, often resulting in a tableau
the histories when it could also be
misunderstandings that have
of death to close the play. The same
under the tragedies.

thwarted the merriment
trajectory can be followed in some

Shakespeare did not necessarily beforehand. Love’s Labour’s Lost of the history plays as well. Tales of
think in terms of writing for one
is unusual among the comedies,
kingship, government, and rule are
particular genre. As an innovative
because the play ends not with
often driven by conflict, feud, and ❯❯
writer he would frequently blend
characteristics associated with
different genres to create variety in
his own work. At moments of great
sorrow, for example, he occasionally
injects an element of black humor,
which serves to alter the pervading
mood: the gravedigger sings as
he digs a grave in Hamlet; the

Porter jokes with the audience as

Macbeth and his wife leave the
stage to wash their hands of blood;
and Cleopatra is moved to mirth as
she contemplates her own suicide
in Antony and Cleopatra.

The Egyptian queen Cleopatra, here
played by Harriet Walter, clasps the

“worme” and succumbs to its bite, like
a “lover’s pinch,” during the passionate,
deadly climax to Antony and Cleopatra.

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88 FIRST FOLIO
alone. King Lear is another of the

Recurring motifs in Shakespeare’s plays
tragic creations that speaks directly
to Shakespeare’s understanding

Women

The Two Gentlemen of Verona,
of the human condition. In old age
disguised

The Merchant of Venice, As You Like It,

Lear’s understanding of himself
as men

Twelfth Night, Cymbeline
and the world around him is at
odds with the views of a younger
generation. His pride leads him to

King Lear, Twelfth Night,

The fool
make rash judgements, which serve

As You Like It
to ostracize him from friends and
family, leaving him to reflect upon

Play
his actions and his relationships

A Midsummer Night’s Dream,
within
with other people. Lear, like so

Hamlet, Love's Labour's Lost
a play
many of Shakespeare’s other tragic
figures, is tormented by his own

Macbeth, Hamlet, A Midsummer Night’s
thoughts, and it takes the duration

The

Dream, The Tempest, Julius Caesar, of a play for him to reassess his
supernatural

Richard III, Cymbeline
situation and “see better.”

Questions of identity

Twelfth Night, Love’s Labour’s Lost,

Overhearing

A Midsummer Night’s Dream is

Hamlet, Othello
one of Shakespeare’s most popular
comedies, and Bottom one of his

Mistaken

The Comedy of Errors, Much Ado
most memorable creations. When
identity (as a

About Nothing, Measure for Measure,
rehearsing in the woods, Bottom’s
comic motif)

All's Well That Ends Well
head is magically transformed into
that of an ass by the knavish sprite

Puck. Visual effects have a much

Storm and

Macbeth, King Lear, The Tempest,
stronger impact on the stage than
shipwreck

Pericles, The Comedy of Errors
on the page. The hilarity of seeing
an actor alter their whole being to
rivalry. Despite the differences,
read or seen Hamlet in performance

Shakespeare’s plays are connected
to be familiar with the words,
through the dramatist’s desire to

“To be, or not to be; that is the
give voice to a socially diverse cast
question.” Hamlet’s association
of characters: pimps, madams, and
with melancholy and deep thought
prostitutes rub shoulders with the
is now famous the world over. In
future king of England in Henry IV
him, Shakespeare created one

Part 1 and Part 2; Bottom the weaver of the most poetic voices of all encounters the fairy world in A
time, and the literary illusion of a

Midsummer Night’s Dream; and
troubled conscience. Shakespeare
the monarch listens to the thoughts walks listeners through the twists of a fool and a beggar in King Lear.

and turns of Hamlet’s imagined
mind as he struggles with issues

The torment of the tragic
of morality and mortality. Hamlet

Of the plays included in the First
is troubled with the idea of “what

Folio there are certain works
dreams may come / When we have

Prince Hamlet of Denmark, here
portrayed by Laurence Olivier in the
that have acquired the status
shuffled off this mortal coil”; as

1948 movie version he also directed, is
of Shakespearian masterpieces.

countless poems, novels, and
a pychologically complex character

People do not always need to have
dramas suggest, Hamlet is not
who feigns madness to exact revenge.

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RENAISSANCE TO ENLIGHTENMENT 89
shown to be fragile. Shakespeare
notes in Henry IV Part 2, “Uneasy
lies the head that wears a crown”:

those in power are never free
from danger. This is a lesson that

Richard III learns to his surprise.

Having murdered his way to the
throne he has to continue killing
until he feels that all threats to
his crown have been wiped out.

Works for the ages

The First Folio stretches to over

900 pages, contains 36 plays, and
features the best-known portrait
of Shakespeare on its title page,
but it does not include Pericles or

The Two Noble Kinsmen, which
can be found in most copies of

Shakespeare’s complete works

The enchanted Bottom the weaver,
body, the hunchback Richard is
today. The Tempest, Cymbeline,
of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, whose
forcefully charismatic from his first
and The Winter’s Tale are often
head has beed replaced with that of an
soliloquy, which opens the play. He
referred to as romances in modern
ass, becomes desirable to Titania, who
informs the audience that he is
editions, while Coriolanus, Julius
is under the spell of a love potion.

“determined to prove a villain,” and

Caesar, and Antony and Cleopatra
proclaims that he is “subtle, false,
are sometimes spoken of today as
convey this metamorphosis can
and treacherous.” The soliloquies,
his “Roman plays.”

only really ever be fully appreciated and the symbolism of his deformity, Shakespeare’s works have
in performance, but readers will
cast Richard as the vice figure of
burst beyond the generic confines
appreciate that Bottom’s experience the drama: audiences love to hate in which they were first published,
of life has been overturned, and for
him. And yet, as is the case in all
but it is thanks to the First Folio
a brief moment he gets to feel life as of Shakespeare’s history plays from that Shakespeare’s works have
someone other than himself. This

Richard II to Henry VI, power is
survived at all. ■
technique is repeated in some
of Shakespeare’s other comedies

The authorship debate
where disguise allows characters
to alter their identity: Rosalind in

Various conspiracy theories

Shakespeare’s last plays were

As You Like It and Viola in Twelfth
have circulated since the late
staged or published. How could

Night both cross-dress as young

18th century claiming that
the Elizabethan playwright
men; and in The Comedy of Errors

William Shakespeare of

Christopher Marlowe have
two sets of twins are mistaken for

Stratford-upon-Avon was not
written the plays when he was
one another to great comic effect.

the author behind the works
murdered in 1593? One story
published in the First Folio.

goes that Christopher Marlowe

Perils of power

There is a long catalogue
did not really die in a tavern

Shakespeare’s history plays are
of alternative candidates, and
brawl in 1593, but went into
filled with duplicitous characters.

it continues to grow. The list
hiding and continued to supply

In Richard III, Richard of Gloucester
includes figures such as Sir
the public theaters with plays

Francis Bacon, Christopher
under the pseudonym “William
disguises his intentions to murder

Marlowe, Edward de Vere, and

Shakespeare.” The arguments
his way to the throne and becomes
even Queen Elizabeth I, all of
for the other contenders are
arguably Shakespeare’s greatest
whom died a decade before
equally improbable.

villain. Set apart by his misshapen

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90

TO ESTEEM EVERYTHING

IS TO ESTEEM NOTHING

THE MISANTHROPE (1666), MOLIÈRE

IN CONTEXT

FOCUS

Afascination with all things whose cantankerous rejection of classical overtook Europe
politesse (superficial, insincere
during the Enlightenment
politeness) is challenged when
period (1650–1800). The ancient
he falls for a society girl, Célimène.

French neoclassicism

Greek ideals of form, clarity, and

Fooled by her flirting, he begins

BEFORE
elegance inspired a neoclassical
to act in exactly the manner he

1637 Pierre Corneille’s
movement in all the arts, with
despises in others, but reverts

“tragicomedy” Le Cid is

France leading the way in the field
to his usual character when
of literature. The classical influence criticizing the sentimental poem performed in Paris to popular
was most apparent in French
of a nobleman. This gets him into
acclaim, but criticized by the
drama, which during the 17th
legal trouble, and loses him friends,

Académie française for not
century adopted a reinterpretation
so he seeks solace (in vain) with
observing the classical unities.

of the conventions of Greek theater,
the flighty Célimène. While poking

1653 Earliest performance of
as described in Aristotle’s Poetics.

fun at Alceste’s misanthropy,

The Rivals, the first of Philippe

This stylized drama in verse

Molière also exposes the hypocrisy

Quinault’s prolific output
frequently took the form of
of 17th-century courtly manners,
of comedies, tragicomedies,
tragedies, which often reflected
in the spirit of the comedies of
and lesser known tragedies.

Greek mythological themes (a
the Greek dramatist Aristophanes.

notable source of inspiration for

The success of Molière’s

AFTER

Jean Racine), but there was a
comedies, including The School

1668 Jean de la Fontaine
growing public demand for comedy, for Wives, Tartuffe, and The Miser, adapts his collection of
which was met by the witty plays
marked the beginning of an era of

Fables from classical sources,
of Molière (1622–1673).

elegant, witty theater that continued
including Aesop and
through the 18th century. The genre

Phaedrus, stretching the

A comedy of manners
caught on in England, inspiring a
metrical verse of the time.

Molière’s major contribution was the line of work that can be traced from

“comedy of manners,” satirizing the Restoration comedy, through Oliver 1671 Molière, Corneille, and
mores of the time with larger-than-

Goldsmith and Richard Brinsley

Quinault collaborate on
life characters such as Alceste, the

Sheridan (and novelists such as

Psyché, a tragicomic ballet.

protagonist of The Misanthrope,

Jane Austen), to Oscar Wilde. ■

1677 Phèdre continues Jean

Racine’s series of tragedies on

See also: Oedipus the King 34–39 ■ Candide 96–97 ■ Le Cid 103 ■

Greek mythological themes.

Phèdre 103–04 ■ Pride and Prejudice 118–19 ■ The Picture of Dorian Gray 194

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BUT AT MY BACK

I ALWAYS HEAR

TIME’S WINGED CHARIOT

HURRYING NEAR

MISCELLANEOUS POEMS (1681),

ANDREW MARVELL

IN CONTEXT

FOCUS

The term “metaphysical History, theology, and astronomy poets” was coined by
are all brought into play by Marvell,
the essayist and literary
who challenges the puritanical
critic Samuel Johnson to describe

Christianity of the 17th century

The metaphysical poets
a group of 17th-century English
as a barrier to sensual pleasures.

BEFORE
writers that included John Donne,

He also brings vivid imagery

1627 John Donne deploys

George Herbert, and Andrew
and intellectual vitality to the
metaphysical exaggeration

Marvell (1621–1678). Their style
pastoral, in poems such as “The
was marked by wit, sophisticated

Mower to the Glow Worms” and
in his melancholic love elegy
logic, and occult metaphor, and

“The Garden,” where he achieves

“A Nocturnal Upon St Lucy’s
often focused on themes of love,
a beautiful balance between

Day”—“Oft a flood / Have we
sexuality, and faith.

abstraction and the senses, as
two wept, and so / Drowned
he eulogizes the pleasure of
the whole world, us two…”

Sensual pleasures
withdrawing “To a green thought

1633 “The Agony,” by George

Better known as a politician than
in a green shade.” ■

Herbert, applies metaphysical
a poet during his lifetime, Marvell
wit to matters of belief—“Love
produced a body of work, published
is that liquore sweet and most
posthumously as Miscellaneous
divine, / Which my God feels

Poems, that contains the famous
as blood; but I, as wine.”

love poem “To His Coy Mistress.”

In the poem, the speaker tries to

1648 Robert Herrick’s book
persuade the object of his desire

Stumbling on melons,

Hesperides includes the
to seize the day and sleep with
as I pass, / Ensnared with
famous carpe diem (“seize the
him. His argument to break down
flowers, I fall on grass.

day”) poem, “To the Virgins,
her resistance contains typically

“The Garden”

to Make Much of Time,” with
metaphysical conceits—fanciful
its famous line, “Gather ye
ideas pursued to an imaginative
rosebuds while ye may.”

conclusion: “The grave’s a fine
and private place, / But none I

1650 Henry Vaughan, inspired
think do there embrace.”

by George Herbert, publishes

“The World,” a poem of

See also: Metamorphoses 55–56 ■ Les Amours de Cassandre 74 ■
mystical devotion.

Paradise Lost 103 ■ The Waste Land 213

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92

SADLY, I PART FROM YOU;

LIKE A CLAM TORN

FROM ITS SHELL I GO,

AND AUTUMN TOO

THE NARROW ROAD TO THE INTERIOR (1702),

MATSUO BASHO¯

IN CONTEXT

FOCUS

Matsuo Bashoˉ (c.1644– Bashoˉ searches for wisdom,

1694) of Edo (modern
relating his discoveries in prose

Tokyo) was the master
that is vivid and frequently tinged
of the haiku, a short Japanese verse with elegiac melancholy—even Haiku and haibun
form. Rendered in English in three
a reference to “pines shaped by

BEFORE
or (more rarely) four lines, the haiku
salty winds, trained by them

1686 Matsuo Bashoˉ composes
captures a fleeting moment, often
into bonsai” appears solemn and
one of his most famous haiku,
with poignancy as well as sharp
resigned. His haiku achieve the
observation. But Bashoˉ’s greatest
sought-after quality of kenshoˉ,
about a frog plopping with a
work is in a composite genre—
or glimpse of enlightenment—
splash into an ancient pond.

the haibun—in which haiku is
a brief awakening into truth. ■

It inspires a competition on
embedded in a prose narrative.

the same theme among other
haiku writers in Edo.

A noble journey

AFTER

Bashoˉ’s goal in The Narrow Road to

1744 The great haiku poet
the Interior was to record a spiritual

Yosa Buson publishes his
pilgrimage to the far north of the
travel notes after following
country, undertaken in the spirit

Those who float away
of Zen Buddhism and to honor
in the footsteps of Bashoˉ.

their lives on boats or who
poets who had traveled before him.

grow old leading horses are

1819 Kobayashi Issa proves

On this journey, direct encounters
forever travelling, and their
a worthy successor to Bashoˉ
with nature, enriched by cultural
homes are wherever those
with The Spring of My Life,
associations, and visits to Shinto
travels take them.

combining prose and haiku
shrines, confirm Bashoˉ’s liberation

The Narrow Road
in a haibun. Issa was prolific,
from selfish attachments. The
to the Interior
writing around 20,000 haiku,
poetry and the prose are in perfect
including 230 on the firefly.

equilibrium, illuminating each
other like a pair of mirrors facing

1885 Masaoka Shika starts
inward. Journeying mostly
to write haiku on portraits he
on foot, for hundreds of miles,
draws—he advocates writing
from life, in the field, as an

See also: The Tale of Genji 47 ■ On the Road 264–65
artist would paint a landscape.

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RENAISSANCE TO ENLIGHTENMENT 93

NONE WILL HINDER

AND NONE BE HINDERED

ON THE JOURNEY TO THE

MOUNTAIN OF DEATH

THE LOVE SUICIDES AT SONEZAKI (1703),

CHIKAMATSU MONZAEMON

IN CONTEXT

FOCUS

Kabuki and Bunraku are Produced as Bunraku and adapted both forms of traditional
for Kabuki, Chikamatsu’s play The

Japanese theater that

Love Suicides at Sonezaki is his
originated in the 17th century.

masterpiece; it was written within

Kabuki and Bunraku

Kabuki dealt with ribald material
two weeks of the real event it was

BEFORE
and was performed by wandering
based on—that of a young couple
c.1603 Kabuki drama—an
troupes of women who were often
who took their lives in a forest.

unruly theatrical form that
available as prostitutes. Bunraku is

In his play, Chikamatsu created
a form of puppet theater, in which
two characters who, like William
blends song, dance, action,
each puppet has a lead puppeteer

Shakespeare’s star-crossed couple
and mime—originates with
who moves the right hand, another

Romeo and Juliet, have become
a female dancer named Okuni,
the left, and a third the legs and
synonymous with the theme
an attendant at the Shinto
feet. The three men remain in full
of ill-fated lovers. Tokubei
shrine of Izumo.

view of the audience, although they is a young man whose family c.1680 Bunraku develops as a
are often dressed in black. There
has received a dowry, but he
form of musical puppet theater
is usually a single chanter, who
refuses to marry the chosen
in which half-life-sized puppets
portrays different characters by
bride because he loves Ohatsu,
act out a chanted romantic
changing his pitch.

a prostitute. A rival for her favors
threatens to frame him as a thief.

narrative called joˉruri.

Japan’s national bard

Unable to do his duty to his family,

AFTER

The greatest dramatist in either of

Tokubei can neither redeem

1748 Chuˉshingura, or The Tale
these forms remains Chikamatsu
his honor, nor have a future with
of the 47 Ronin, by Takedo

Monzaemon (1653–1725). He was

Ohatsu, and so the two decide to

Imuzo, Namiki Sosuke, and
born into the samurai class but
make a death pact. The play and

Miyoshi Shoraku, is performed.

chose instead to write drama,
similar ones provoked a spate of

Composed as Bunraku and
and in time became Japan’s most
copycat lovers’ suicides, leading to
adapted into a Kabuki, it is the
famous playwright. His work often
a ban on the genre for a period after
closest rival to Chikamatsu’s
features individuals caught in

1723. However, the play’s language
work for popularity.

a conflict between ethical and
is considered to be some of the most
personal demands.

beautiful in Japanese literature. ■

1963 Osaka’s Bunraku

Association rescues the joˉruri

See also: First Folio 82–89 ■ The Well Cradle 102 ■ The Temple of the Golden theatrical form from decline.

Pavilion 263

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94

I WAS BORN IN THE

YEAR 1632 IN THE

CITY OF YORK

OF A GOOD FAMILY

ROBINSON CRUSOE (1719), DANIEL DEFOE

IN CONTEXT

FOCUS

Constructing the narrative century characters followed Crusoe, of a literary text around
including Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver,
a fictional autobiography

Henry Fielding’s Tom Jones, and
is a device that not only enables

Charles Dickens’ David Copperfield.

Fictional autobiography
a writer to tell the tale of the life

The title page of the first edition

AFTER
of an individual as if that person
of Robinson Crusoe did not cite

1726 Gulliver’s Travels, by
were the author but also gives the

Defoe as the author: instead,

Anglo-Irish author Jonathan
impression that the words spoken
the words “Written by Himself”

are a direct transcription of actual
appeared beneath the title—and

Swift, is published as a
events. Daniel Defoe’s Robinson
so readers may well have imagined
traveler’s tale and fictional

Crusoe (originally titled The
the story to be true. The book’s
autobiography and becomes

Life and Strange Surprizing
opening sentence, which begins
an immediate success.

Adventures of Robinson Crusoe)

“I was born in the year 1632,”

1740 English author Samuel
was the progenitor of this fictional
suggests that this is a real tale

Richardson publishes Pamela,
autobiographical voice. A number
recounted by the individual who
a fictional autobiography that
of other notable 18th- and 19th-
experienced these adventures.

chronicles the life of its lead
character, a maidservant,

Daniel Defoe
thanks to politician Robert
through a series of letters.

Harley, Defoe acted as Harley’s

1749 The comic novel

Daniel Foe is thought to have
spy, traveling around Britain and
autobiography Tom Jones, by
been born in London in 1660 (he
reporting back on public
later added the prefix “De” to
opinion. Defoe did not turn to

English writer Henry Fielding,
his name). In 1684 he married
novel writing until his late 50s,
is published and follows the

Mary Tuffley, then spent many
and became a key figure in the
adventures of a high-spirited
years as a businessman and
construction of the form, finding
foundling boy.

merchant, but went bankrupt
great success with Robinson

1849–50 David Copperfield,
in 1692. In 1697, he became a

Crusoe. Defoe died in 1731.

confidant of King William III
by English author Charles
and traveled Britain as a secret

Other key works

Dickens, is published; although
agent. In 1702, his pamphlet The
a fictional work, the life of the

Shortest-Way with the Dissenters 1722 Moll Flanders main protagonist has close
led to his imprisonment, due to

1722 A Journal of the
parallels to Dickens’ own.

its political content, and to a

Plague Year
second bankruptcy. Released

1724 Roxana

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RENAISSANCE TO ENLIGHTENMENT 95

See also: Gulliver’s Travels 104 ■ Tom Jones 104 ■ David Copperfield 153 ■ The Catcher in the Rye 256–57

Robinson Crusoe and Gulliver’s Travels both Makes use of an
use an autobiographical voice to present their tales

Makes use of an
autobiographical voice
of travel as factual accounts of real-life experiences;
autobiographical voice to
to endorse the text as
they nevertheless differ in several crucial respects.

parody claims of truth in
a true narrative.

contemporary fiction.

Promotes individualism:

Satirizes the concept
solitary, self-sufficient
of individualism and the
man mastering nature
use of reason.

through reason.

Gulliver becomes a

Crusoe becomes “King
prisoner on the island
and Lord” of his isle.

Robinson

Gulliver’s
of Lilliput.

Crusoe

Travels

The details of the “author’s” birth
farm, and forage. He keeps track

Crusoe’s “autobiographical” island
lend authenticity to the work as
of the days by cutting notches in
memoir proved remarkably resilient,
an autobiographical text—and
a wooden cross; he reads the Bible
inspiring endless reimaginings and
therefore also as a true narrative.

and thanks God. He domesticates
giving rise to an entire subgenre,

Such verisimilitude is enhanced
a parrot. For years this is his life.

the Robinsonade. A pivotal text
by the fact that parts of the novel

Then—in one of the most iconic
in English literature, it has had
take the form of a journal.

moments in literature—Crusoe
a significant influence—perhaps
discovers a footprint in the sand,
unrivaled by any other individual

Island castaways
leading to an obsessive fear that
work—and its motifs have become

Robinson Crusoe is widely credited he will be attacked by “savages.”

part of the general culture. ■
as a foundational text of realism,

After two years spent barricading
and, for many, it also ranks as the
himself in a fortress, he encounters
first English novel. It is believed
a native from a nearby island who
that Defoe’s work was inspired by
is fleeing from cannibals. Crusoe
the account of a real-life castaway,

“rescues” him, puts him to work,

Alexander Selkirk, who, in the early and names him Friday, after 18th century, was marooned on an
the day on which they met. The

[H]e kneeled down again,
island in the Pacific. An instant
relationship between the two has
kissed the ground, and …

success on publication, Defoe’s
been critiqued as one of master
set my foot upon his head;
story mentions expeditions in
and slave (a European explorer/
this it seems was in token
exotic regions of Africa and Brazil,
exploiter and an indigenous local);
of swearing to be
and a slaving mission that leads to

Crusoe, as a bearer of “civilization,”

my slave forever.

shipwreck on a Caribbean island.

is a symbol of burgeoning British

Robinson Crusoe

Crusoe tells of his attempts to
imperialism. Just as European
rescue provisions from the ship
nations claim land for colonies,
and of his solitary existence on
so Crusoe assumes dominion over
the island. He builds a shelter and
the island, and sees himself as an
makes tools with which to hunt,
owner and “absolute Lord.”

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96

IF THIS IS THE BEST

OF ALL POSSIBLE

WORLDS WHAT ARE

THE OTHERS?

CANDIDE (1759), VOLTAIRE

IN CONTEXT

FOCUS

A diverse group of writers lasted from the late 17th century and intellectuals who
to the French Revolution of 1789.

lived in France in the

Indeed, the Revolution was inspired

18th century came to be known
by the ideas of philosophers and

The philosophes
as the philosophes (“philosophers”);
scientists, together with the

BEFORE
their work nevertheless extended
prevailing spirit of rationalism

1721 Persian Letters, by
beyond philosophy into social,
and political liberalism.

Montesquieu, satirizes French
cultural, ethical, and political
realms. The philosophes—who

Supreme optimism
society through the eyes of two
included Voltaire, Jean-Jacques

Candide (originally titled Candide,

Persian visitors, who compare

Rousseau, Denis Diderot, and
ou l’Optimisme, and translated

Christianity with Islam and

Montesquieu—were part of the
into English as Candide: or, All for
undermine Catholic doctrine.

widespread intellectual shift in
the Best) is a conte philosophique,

1751–72 Rond d’Alembert

Europe that was known as the
a philosophical fable in which
and Denis Diderot produce

Enlightenment: the assault on

Voltaire gave narrative expression
the great collective enterprise
superstition, intolerance, and
to Enlightenment values. He turned
of the Enlightenment, the
injustice in the name of reason
his ferocious satirical scrutiny in

Encyclopédie, to “change
and intellectual freedom that
particular on the ideas expressed
the way people think.”

by the German Gottfried Wilhelm
von Leibniz in his philosophy of

AFTER
optimism, which held that because

1779 Nathan the Wise, a play

God is a benevolent deity, this
by Gotthold Ephraim Lessing
world must be the best possible
set during the Third Crusade,

(optimal) world.

offers an aspirational vision of

Man was born to live

Leibniz’s ideas are echoed in
religious tolerance.

either in the convulsions
the novel by the philosopher
of misery, or in the

Dr. Pangloss, who utters his mantra

1796 Diderot’s philosophical
lethargy of boredom.

“All is for the best in the best of all
novel Jacques the Fatalist,

Candide
possible worlds” even in the face of
presenting a determinist
repeated disaster. In a way that
world view, has among its
challenges this rosy metaphysics,
characters two men who
the young hero, Candide, suffers a
cannot stop dueling.

series of ordeals, including expulsion
from a baronial home, numerous

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RENAISSANCE TO ENLIGHTENMENT 97

See also: Gulliver’s Travels 104 ■ Jacques the Fatalist 105

Gullible and naive, Candide is

Dr. Pangloss
incapable of forming his own opinions

(Candide’s old tutor):

on life: his vision of the world—his

Everything that
ideas on determinism, optimism, and
happens reflects

God’s supreme and
free will, for example—are constructed
harmonious purpose
by the views of the people around him.

for humankind.

The old woman

Martin

(daughter of Pope

(scholar and former

Urban X and the
publishing hack):

Princess of Palestrina):

The world is senseless

Everybody’s life is
and detestable. It was

Voltaire
a tale of misfortune
created by the forces
and suffering.

of evil to drive us to
complete madness.

Son of a notary, François-

Marie Arouet was born

Count Pococurante
in Paris, France, in 1694.

(a Venetian nobleman):

The Turkish farmer:

A dramatist and poet, he

No product of the arts

Politics brings misery:

adopted “Voltaire” as a nom
can give untainted
it is better to cultivate
de plume. His satirical verse
pleasure. Artistic
your farm, since work
earned him a stretch in the
endeavor is always
banishes boredom,
overpraised.

vice, and poverty.

Bastille prison, Paris, in

1717–18. After two years
in England (a country that
violent misadventures, and an
catastrophes worked on his
he found more tolerant and
eventual reunion with his lost love,
imagination and profoundly
rational than France), his

Cunégonde, only to find that he
affected his views on God and free

Letters Concerning the English
no longer desires her. Yet the
will: the earthquake that destroyed

Nation (1733) was suppressed
misfortunes come so fast and furious Lisbon, Portugal, in 1755, and the in his homeland; it was seen as
and and are related in so matter-of-
start of the Seven Years’ War (1756–
a critique of the government.

fact a tone that the overall effect is

63), which unleashed destruction

A study of Louis XIV
comic. Women are violated by men; in Europe. Both events feature in restored him to favor at

Versailles, where he became
armies destroy each other; people

Candide in fictionalized form.

royal historiographer in 1745.

are robbed and enslaved. Reversals

Within the book, a narrative

Later, in Berlin, he become
of all kinds make life, health, and
of intertwining personal stories
close friends with the Prussian
happiness precarious. In a world of
becomes a thread that connects
king, Frederick the Great. He
greed, lust, and brutality (often in
depictions of contrasting social
wrote his philosophical tales
the name of religion), good deeds
systems. The first community we
at his estate at Ferney, France,
are scarce. Measured against the
encounter is the feudal castle from
when in his 60s—including
heartlessness of reality, Panglossian which the hero gets expelled. There Candide. He also worked for
optimism is patently naive.

is a utopian interlude in Eldorado,
agricultural reform as well as
an egalitarian nation of natural
for greater justice for wronged

Personal influences
plenty. Finally, Candide, now living
individuals. He died in Paris in

Although vibrant with melodramatic on a farm in Turkey, visits a family 1778, at 84.

incident, Candide is a tale of ideas,
farm dedicated to cooperative work,
albeit with autobiographical roots.

where the people are happy. The

Other key works

Voltaire had known personal
ending, with Candide saying “We

1718 Oedipus
misfortune, including abuse by
must go and cultivate our garden,”

1733 Philosophic Letters

Jesuit teachers, loss of favor in the
indicates that it is possible to be

1747 Zadig

French court, and expulsion from
happy—by means of hard work,

1752 Micromégas (short story)

Prussia. In addition, two public
and an absence of philosophy. ■

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98

I HAVE COURAGE

ENOUGH TO WALK

THROUGH HELL

BAREFOOT

THE ROBBERS (1781), FRIEDRICH SCHILLER

IN CONTEXT

FOCUS

The Sturm und Drang felt that genius could be attained movement (often translated through hard work and practice, as “storm and stress” but
and that good literature must

“storm and urge” is more accurate)

adhere to classical forms. But to

Sturm und Drang
was a sudden and brief explosion
the Sturmer und Dranger (as the

BEFORE
of German literature that lasted
writers of the movement are known)

1750 Swiss-born philosopher
about 10 years. Sturm und Drang
these ideas were stifling—and

Jean-Jacques Rousseau writes
consisted of plays and novels
were discarded with abandon.

characterized by great energy,

Sturm und Drang plays ignored

Discourse on the Arts and
physical and emotional violence,
the established formal structures:

Sciences, an essay in which he
fierce and anguished lyricism, and
they might not have five acts, or
condemns the Enlightenment
the breaking of taboos (both social
dialogue might not be written in
drive toward pure rationalism.

and artistic) in order to express the
perfectly formed sentences. And

1774 The Sorrows of Young
essential drama of the human heart. aside from being expressive, the Werther, a novel by German

The movement was a reaction to language could be shocking, too: writer Johann Wolfgang von
the Enlightenment (and particularly both Friedrich Schiller’s play The Goethe, is an immediate
the French Enlightenment) values

Robbers and Johann Wolfgang
success and contains the
of pure reason and rationalism.

von Goethe’s novel The Sorrows
elements that will characterize

Some early Enlightenment thinkers
of Young Werther exist in several

Sturm und Drang, such as
editions, because the original
high-flown expressions of
language had to be toned down.

intense emotion and the futile

Youthful exuberance
struggle of a young hero.

Schiller’s The Robbers, first

1777 Friedrich Maximilian
performed in 1782, was the final
von Klinger’s play Sturm und

Never has law formed a good flowering of a fading movement.

Drang is first performed, giving
man: ‘tis liberty that breeds

The plot concerns two aristocratic
the movement its name.

giants and heroes.

brothers with opposing outlooks:

The Robbers

Karl, an honorable idealist; and

AFTER

Franz, who is cold, materialistic,

1808 Goethe moves away from
and manipulative. Karl takes to the

Sturm und Drang with his

Bohemian woods to lead a band of
dramatic masterpiece Faust.

robbers after Franz has turned their
father against him, and stolen his

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RENAISSANCE TO ENLIGHTENMENT 99

See also: Candide 96–97 ■ The Sorrows of Young Werther 105 ■ Nachstücke 111 ■ Faust 112–15 ■ Jane Eyre 128–31 ■

Wuthering Heights 132–37 ■ The Brothers Karamazov 200–01
inheritance. The Robbers broke

Freedom

Manipulation
taboos. The plot involved violence,

In Götz von Berlichingen (1773) by

The Soldiers (1776), by Jakob Michael

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, an

Reinhold Lenz, tells the story of the
robbery, and murder, and it is the
honorable noble who prizes his freedom
beautiful Marie, who becomes the
hero, Karl, who leads the gang that
is unable to adapt to a world in which
plaything of chauvinist young noble
commits the illegal and violent acts.

cynical forces pursue power politics.

officers, resulting in murder and suicide.

In the depths of his passion he even
kills his innocent cousin Amalia, to
whom he is betrothed. The language
of the play is as wild and stormy as
the emotions it expresses, but it is
also lyrical too, and The Robbers
is regarded as one of the finest
examples of dramatic writing in

German literature. It is still

Sturm und Drang
considered a masterpiece today,

The subjects of Sturm und
and many critics also see in it the

Drang works were
beginnings of European melodrama.

typically sensational,

The Sturm und Drang movement
reflecting the passions
was made up of energetic young
of their writers.

men—most were in their 20s, the
oldest only in their 30s. Perhaps as
the authors grew older, they lost
their taste for youthful rebellion,
which might account for the
movement’s brevity. Many chose
more reflective modes of expression

Desire and envy

Oppression
thereafter, as the storm-and-urge

A melancholic, violent twin murders

In Friedrich Schiller’s play Don Carlos
era settled into a long and fruitful
his more gentle brother over a woman he

(1787), the main protagonist tries to
period of Weimar Classicism and
desires for himself in Die Zwillinge
free the oppressed people of Flanders.

(“The Twins”; 1776) by Friedrich

The work strove to expose the horrors

German Romanticism. ■

Maximilian von Klinger.

of the Inquisition.

Friedrich Schiller

Johann Christoph Friedrich von

Schiller was ill throughout his

Schiller (1759–1805) was born in
life, and he died of tuberculosis

Württemburg, Germany. A poet,
at 45 in 1805, after making
playwright, philosopher, and
a fruitful return to playwriting
historian, he wrote The Robbers
in his last few years. He is
while still at school. The play
still considered by many to be
made him an overnight sensation,

Germany’s greatest classical
but it did not provide financial
playwright.

independence. Schiller later
became a professor of history

Other key works
and philosophy in Jena, whose
university is now named after

1784 Intrigue and Love
him. His friendship with Goethe

1786 “Ode to Joy”

led, in the late 18th century, to

1787 Don Carlos
their setting up the Weimar

1794 On the Aesthetic Education

Theater, which would become
of Man
the leading theater in Germany.

1800 Wallenstein

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100

THERE IS NOTHING MORE

DIFFICULT IN LOVE THAN

EXPRESSING IN WRITING

WHAT ONE DOES NOT FEEL

LES LIAISONS DANGEREUSES (1782),

PIERRE CHODERLOS DE LACLOS

IN CONTEXT

FOCUS

Letters, diaries, and notes Laclos did not simply imitate this were the primary written
genre, he radically extended it.

means by which people

The most famous epistolary novels
communicated with one another
of the period, such as Samuel

The epistolary novel
in both daily life and literature

Richardson’s Clarissa and Jean-

BEFORE
during the 18th century. Les

Jacques Rousseau’s Julie, or the

1669 One of the earliest

Liaisons dangereuses is an example New Heloise, were often tedious epistolary novels is published,
of a literary style known as the
in their meticulous and lengthy
epistolary novel (from the Greek
descriptions, and moralistic tone.

Letters of a Portuguese Nun.

for “letter”), which tells a story in

Unlike his contemporaries, Laclos

It is attributed to French
the form of letters and, sometimes,
used the epistolary form to provide
author Gabriel-Joseph de La
other documents. Although it
an exciting pace of action, and his

Vergne, comte de Guilleragues.

largely died out after the 1800s,
characters often speak in the witty

1740 The hugely popular
in its heyday the epistolary novel
and urbane manner of the time.

novel Pamela, by English
was a popular and fashionable
author Samuel Richardson,
genre, reflecting the social world

The ruin of innocents
details the corruption of an
of a great age of correspondence.

In France, the epistolary novel was
innocent maidservant.

linked with narratives of passion
and the calculated seduction of

1747–48 Richardson’s tragic
women. Key to the success of
tale Clarissa is one of the
these novels was the philosophy
longest novels in the English
of “libertinage,” in which eroticism,
language and considered to
sexual depravity, and a lifestyle of
be his masterpiece.

When one woman stabs
excess and vice were intermingled

1761 Swiss-born philosopher
another to the heart …

with sophisticated wordplay.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau writes
she rarely misses the vital

In Les Liaisons dangereuses
spot and the wound
letters between multiple characters

Julie, or the New Heloise, in
can never be healed.

expose the moral decline of the
which he uses the epistolary

Les Liaisons dangereuses French aristocracy just before the form to explore philosophical

Revolution. Laclos’ key “actors” in
questions of rationality,
this form of seduction as sport are
morality, and autonomy.

the libertine Vicomte de Valmont,
and the Marquise de Merteuil—
with her public façade of a virtuous

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RENAISSANCE TO ENLIGHTENMENT 101

See also: Robinson Crusoe 94–95 ■ Clarissa 104 ■ The Sorrows of Young Werther 105 ■ Dracula 195 ■ The Moonstone 198–99
lady. Former lovers, they try to
actions, contemporary reviewers
outdo each other in their cruelty
wondered if Laclos too was as
and manipulative degradation of
wicked as Merteuil and Valmont.

others through sexual exploitation.

The cleverness of Les Liaisons

Their own and others’ letters show
dangeureses lies in its moral
how they plot the pursuit of their
ambiguity and the extent to which
entertainment like a military

Laclos implicates the reader in
campaign, the narrative tracing
society’s treatment of women as
a calculated process of ruination
pawns in games of ownership and
involving rape, sexual corruption,
sexual domination. In her own
and humiliation.

words to Valmont, Merteuil views

Pierre Choderlos de
her actions as part of a wider battle

Laclos

Moral ambiguity
of the sexes in which she is “born

Unlike his contemporaries, who
to avenge my sex and subjugate

Pierre Choderlos de Laclos
often addressed the reader directly
yours”—although in doing this, she
was born in 1741 in Amiens, to
in their epistolary novels, Laclos
brings destruction as much to other
a family that had only recently
removed his authorial presence
women as to men. In the letters
become part of the French
nobility. The family’s relative
from the narrative, leaving his
through which he presents this
unimportance in the social
characters to speak for themselves.

battle, Laclos seduces his reader
hierarchy meant that as a

Because of his absent narrational
via the “pleasure” to be found in
young man Laclos looked to
voice and the lack of any authorial
a voyeuristic literary exploration
the military for a viable career.

condemnation of his characters’

of artful temptation. ■

While captain of an artillery
regiment at Besançon in 1778,
he began writing his only

The letters that form Laclos’

novel, influenced by the work
text are also objects in the plot,
used to manipulate. Merteuil
of Jean-Jacques Rousseau.

and Valmont, the orchestrating

Although Les Liaisons
villains, are adept at writing
dangereuses was scandalous
letters in ways that exploit
because of its libertine
how others will read
characters and themes of

Chevalier

Cécile de
meaning into them.

sexual vice, Laclos himself

Danceny

Volanges
was not a faithless seducer.

He married his lover, Marie-

Soulange Duperré, when she
became pregnant; they went
on to have two children and a
happy life. He escaped the

Madame de

Marquise de

Vicomte de
guillotine in 1794 and devoted

Rosemonde

Merteuil

Valmont
himself to his family until his
death in 1803 from fever.

Other key works

1777 Ernestine

1783 Des Femmes et de
leur éducation

Madame de

Présidente de

1790–91 Journal des amis

Volanges

Tourvel
de la Constitution

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102

FURTHER READING

THE DECAMERON

SIR GAWAIN AND THE

(1353), GIOVANNI BOCCACCIO

GREEN KNIGHT

(c.1375)

Structured as a frame narrative,

The Decameron by Italian writer,

Consisting of some 2,500 lines,

Therein stuck a fair sword
poet, and scholar Giovanni

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
naked by the point … Whoso

Boccaccio (1313–75) is a collection
is one of the best-known examples
pulleth out this sword of this
of 100 tales. The frame story
of Middle English alliterative verse.

stone and anvil, is rightwise
uniting them is that of 10 young

Of unknown authorship, the poem
king born of all England.

adults—seven women and three
is a chivalric romance set in the

Le Morte d’Arthur
men—who flee plague-ridden
early days of the legendary King

Sir Thomas Malory

Florence to an attractive villa in

Arthur’s court. A beautifully written
nearby Fiesole. The group decides
tale of enchantment that is full of
that every day, each of them should
psychological insight, the poem
tell a story, resulting in 100 stories
describes a series of challenges
over 10 days. Whoever is nominated and temptations faced by the hero, leader for the day chooses the

Sir Gawain, following an encounter
subject and stipulates rules for the
with the mysterious Green Knight.

Le Morte d’Arthur is a compilation
stories to be told. Each day ends
of stories about the legendary King
with one person singing a canzone

Arthur and the knights of the
or song, while the others dance.

THE WELL CRADLE

Round Table. Deriving from older

The result is a dazzling collection of (c.1430), ZEAMI MOTOKIYO

French romances, the stories were
exquisitely written tales—ranging
translated into English prose and
from stories of tragic love and

The Well Cradle ( Izutsu) is a classical compiled by English knight, soldier, bawdiness through to the power of

Noh play by Zeami Motokiyo (1363–
writer, and member of Parliament
human will and tricks that women

1443), the greatest dramatist and

Sir Thomas Malory (d.1471). Malory
play on men—that inspired writers
theorist of the Japanese Noh theater. arranged the stories in chronological of the Renaissance and beyond.

The play, which takes its name
order, starting with the birth of
from the protective railing around a Arthur, and chose to focus on the well, is framed within an encounter
brotherhood of the knights rather
between a Buddhist monk and a
than the theme of courtly love so
village woman, who tells the monk
popular with the French.

a story. Highly stylized, the play is
based on a visionary Noh story of

A kissed mouth does not
a boy and girl who meet at a well,

AMADIS OF GAUL
lose its freshness, for like
fall in love, and marry.

(1508), GARCI RODRÍGUEZ
the moon it always

DE MONTALVO
renews itself.

The Decameron

LE MORTE D’ARTHUR

A chivalric prose romance written

Giovanni Boccaccio

(1485), SIR THOMAS MALORY
in Spanish by Montalvo (c.1450–

1504), Amadis of Gaul probably

Printed by William Caxton in 1485,
had its origins in the early 14th
although an earlier manuscript
century, but its original date and
version from around 1470 exists,
authorship is uncertain. Written

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RENAISSANCE TO ENLIGHTENMENT 103
in four volumes, Montalvo’s version
and an incident when he is asked
recounts the story of Amadis—

THE FAERIE QUEENE
by his father to challenge his future
a handsome, valiant, yet gentle

(1590, 1596), EDMUND SPENSER
father-in-law to a duel. In so doing,
knight—and his love for Princess
he is forced to choose between the

Oriana, in whose service he

The defining work of English poet
woman he loves and family honor.

undertakes chivalric adventures

Spenser (c.1552–99), and one of the
and bold feats against giants and
great long poems of the English
monsters. Its high ideals, gallantry,
language, The Faerie Queene is

PARADISE LOST
and romance set the standard for
a religious, moral, and political

(1667), JOHN MILTON
chivalric works that followed.

allegory. Set in a mythical Arthurian
world, symbolizing Tudor England,

Milton’s masterwork, and a supreme

THE BARCAS TRILOGY
the poem consists of six books, each triumph of rhythm and sound, the of which describes the exploits of
epic poem Paradise Lost relates the

(1516, 1518, 1519), GIL VICENTE
a knight who represents a moral
biblical story of the fall from grace
virtue, such as chastity. The knights of Adam and Eve, and hence of all A devotional work, the Barcas
serve Gloriana, the Faerie Queene,
humanity. Organized into 12 books

(“Ships”) trilogy by Portuguese
who represents Queen Elizabeth I.

for the final 1674 edition (the first
playwright Gil Vicente (c.1465–

Spenser had planned 12 books, but
edition contained 10 books), the

1573)—often described as the
died in London at the age of 46
poem interweaves two themes: the

“father of Portuguese drama”—
before completing his great work.

rebellion of Satan against God and
consists of three one-act plays:

heaven; and the temptation of

The Ship of Hell; The Ship of

Adam and Eve and their expulsion

Purgatory; and The Ship of Heaven.

LE CID
from the Garden of Eden.

Satirical and allegorical, these

(1637), PIERRE CORNEILLE
three plays—which together are
considered Vicente’s most masterful A verse tragedy in five acts, Le Cid PHÈDRE
work—portray the passengers, who by French tragedian Pierre Corneille (1677), JEAN RACINE
reflect all classes of Lisbon society,

(1606–84) is seen as the defining
and their mainly unsuccessful
example of French neoclassical

The dramatic tragedy Phèdre by
attempts to enter heaven.

tragedy. Inspired by the story of

French playwright Jean Racine

Spain’s national hero, El Cid, the

(1639–99) is a supreme example of

THE LUSIADS
play relates Le Cid’s coming of age

French neoclassicism. It consists

(1572), LUÍS DE CAMÕES

John Milton
secretary to the council of state.

Completely blind by 1654, he

Often regarded as Portugal’s national

English poet John Milton is
was able to continue working
epic, The Lusiads is a 10-canto epic
best known for Paradise Lost,
by dictating his verse and prose
poem by the great Portuguese poet
considered the greatest epic
to an assistant. Following the
de Camões (1524–80) recounting
poem in the English language.

Restoration in 1660, he devoted

Vasco da Gama’s sea route to India.

Born in Cheapside, London, in
himself to producing his greatest

After the introduction, an invocation

1608, he began writing while
literary works. He died in 1674
to river gods, and a dedication to
still a student. But with the
in London at the age of 65.

King Sebastian, the poem includes
outbreak of the English Civil War
orations by a series of narrators,
in 1642, he devoted himself to

Key works
including a history of Portugal,
revolutionary politics, producing

1644 Areopagitica, A Speech for
recounted by da Gama, as well as
pamphlets defending religious
and civil liberties. Following the
the Liberty of Unlicensed Printing
descriptions of adventures, storms,
execution of Charles I in 1649

1667 Paradise Lost (see above)

and interventions by Greco-Roman
and the overthrow of the

1671 Paradise Regained
gods. Overall it is a homage to the

English monarchy, he became

1671 Samson Agonistes

Portuguese and their achievements.

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104 FURTHER READING
authorship, and was published
between Clarissa and her friend

Samuel Richardson
anonymously. Seen as the first

Miss Howe, and Lovelace to his
novel to explore the psychology of
friend John Belford.

A true man of letters, English
character, events take place at the
novelist Samuel Richardson
royal court of Henry II of France,
was born in Derbyshire in
which La Fayette reproduces with

TOM JONES

1689 and is best remembered
historical accuracy. Her heroine,
for developing the innovatory

(1749), HENRY FIELDING
the Princess of Cleves, suppresses
epistolary novel, in which the
her love for a young nobleman, but

A comic novel by English writer
story is told through letters.

Moving to London, where he
misunderstandings and court

Henry Fielding (1707–54), Tom
had only a meager education—
intrigues damage her marriage.

Jones (originally titled The History
something that would always
of Tom Jones, a Foundling) is one
trouble him—he became a
master printer. Richardson’s

GULLIVER’S TRAVELS
of the earliest works to be defined
as a novel. It follows the adventures
domestic life was tragic: his

(1726), JONATHAN SWIFT
of the eponymous hero, a foundling
first wife died, as did his six
who is brought up by the wealthy
children, and he married again.

An influential satirical novel by

Squire Allworthy, and his pursuit of

He was 50 when he wrote his

Anglo-Irish writer Jonathan Swift
the virtuous Sophia Western. Rich
first novel, becoming a popular

(1667–1745), Gulliver’s Travels is
in coincidences and misadventures,
and respected author. He died
narrated by ship’s doctor Lemuel
the novel makes a moral point in
in 1761 of a stroke in London.

Gulliver, who visits various fantasy
highlighting differences between
regions: Lilliput, where inhabitants
the lusty but essentially well-

Key works
are six inches tall; Brobdingnag, a
meaning Tom Jones, and his

1740 Pamela: Or, Virtue
land of practical giants; Laputa,
hypocritical half-brother, Blifil.

Rewarded
a flying island; Glubdubdrib, the

1747–48 Clarissa (see right)

Island of Sorcerers; and the land of

1753 The History of Sir Charles
the Houyhanhnms. Humorous and

TRISTRAM SHANDY

Grandison
fantastical, Swift’s novel lampoons

(1759–1767), LAURENCE STERNE
travel books and pokes fun at much
of contemporary society, satirizing

A bawdily humorous novel, The Life
of five acts written in verse, and
political parties, religious dissenters, and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, takes its subject matter from Greek
scientists, and philosophers, as well Gentleman, by Irish clergyman and mythology that had already been
as mocking small-minded attitudes.

explored by the classical dramatists

Euripides and Seneca. Racine’s
play portrays the incestuous love

CLARISSA
of Phèdre (Phaedra), married to

(1747–1748), SAMUEL RICHARDSON
the king of Athens, for her stepson

I wish either my father or

Hippolyte (Hippolytus) who,

Clarissa, also titled The History of
my mother, or indeed both
shocked and in love with another
a Young Lady, is an epistolary novel
of them, as they were in duty
woman, rejects her advances.

by Samuel Richardson and,
both equally bound to it,
at over a million words, is one of
had minded what they were

THE PRINCESS OF CLEVES the longest novels in the English
about when they begot me.

language. It traces the tragic

(1678), MADAME DE LA FAYETTE

Tristram Shandy
history of the virtuous heroine,

Laurence Sterne

Clarissa Harlowe, who is rejected

The Princess of Cleves by French
by her family and abused by the
author Madame de La Fayette
unscrupulous Lovelace. Events are

(1634–93) appeared at a time when
recounted mainly through a four-
women could not openly declare
way correspondence of letters

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RENAISSANCE TO ENLIGHTENMENT 105
writer Laurence Sterne (1713–68),

(1749–1832), as an internationally
was published in nine volumes over acclaimed writer. Completed in William Blake
eight years, and is a fictionalized
just six frenetic weeks, Goethe’s
biography of its hero and a parody
debut novel is epistolary in form

Born in Soho, London, in 1757,
of the novels of its day. Narrated in
and loosely autobiographical. It

Blake left school at the age of
an endless series of digressions and
consists of a series of letters written

10. Profoundly influenced by
the Bible from an early age,
speculations by Shandy, the novel
by the hero, Werther, a young artist
he experienced visions on
begins with his botched conception in the Romantic tradition, to his angelic and heavenly themes

(though he is not born until Volume
friend William. The letters describe
throughout his life; religious

II) and then ambles through his life, his tormented passion for a young and spiritual motifs figured
introducing unfinished anecdotes,
woman, Lotte, who is promised to
heavily in both his poetry and
shifts in time, and various colorful
another. The novel’s popularity was
his engravings. After being
characters—Shandy’s parents, his
such that “Werther Fever” spread
apprenticed to a distinguished

Uncle Toby and his servant Trim,
across Europe, with young men

London printmaker, Blake
the parson Yorick, and household
adopting the dress and habits
developed his own method of
servant Obadiah. Its experimental
of its eponymous, tragic hero.

relief etching in 1789, which
approach—as well as the erratic
he used in his finest illustrated
narrative, Sterne left some pages
works. Now considered the
blank and littered others with

SONGS OF INNOCENCE
earliest and most original of
asterisks—has led some to describe AND OF EXPERIENCE
the Romantic poets, at the
time of his death in 1827 many
it as a forerunner of 20th-century

(1794), WILLIAM BLAKE
contemporaries dismissed his
stream-of-consciousness writing.

work and regarded him as mad.

Blake’s Songs of Innocence and
of Experience—masterpieces of

THE SORROWS OF

Key works

English lyric poetry, rich in rhythmic
subtlety—explore what the poet

YOUNG WERTHER

1794 Songs of Innocence and
defined as “Two Contrasting States

(1774), JOHANN WOLFGANG
of Experience (see left)

of the Human Soul.” Songs of

VON GOETHE

1804–20 Jerusalem

Innocence, first published in 1789,

A significant novel in the Sturm
portrays the innocence of childhood
und Drang (literally, “Storm and
through the eyes of the child or as
novel consists of dialogue between

Urge”) movement, The Sorrows
observed by adults. The edition of

Jacques and his unnamed master
of Young Werther established its

1794 was expanded to include the
who are riding through France; on

26-year-old German author, Goethe
contrasting “Songs of Experience,”

his master’s prompting they begin
including “The Tyger” and “The
to talk about their loves. A picture

Fly.” These explore experiences
emerges not just of 18th-century
of fear, aggression, conflict, and

France, but also of a world in which
oppression, which come with the
events occur at random and, as
loss of innocence and childhood.

personified by Jacques, where
history determines an individual’s

It is certain that nothing
on earth but love makes

JACQUES THE FATALIST
fate. Diderot’s novel is complex and
multilayered—the haphazard
a person necessary.

(1796), DENIS DIDEROT
progress of Jacques’ journey is

The Sorrows of
frequently interrupted by long,

Young Werther

Published posthumously, Jacques
often-comedic digressions, other

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
the Fatalist and his Master by
characters, other narratives, and

French Enlightenment philosopher
chance events. This playful and
and writer Diderot (1713–84) explores modern narrative style has led to issues of moral responsibility, free

Diderot’s book being hailed as a
will, and determinism. Much of the
precursor of the 20th-century novel.

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ROMANTICISM

AND THE RISE

OF THE NOVEL

1800–1855

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ROMANTICISM

AND THE RISE

OF THE NOVEL

1800–1855

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108 INTRODUCTION

Steam engines developed

Jacob and Wilhelm

Mary Shelley, at just 18
by James Watt drive

Johann Wolfgang von

Grimm publish their
years old, begins writing
machinery in mills and

Goethe’s magnum opus
hugely influential
the gothic fantasy
factories, accelerating

Faust emerges from his
collection of

Frankenstein; or, The
the process of
involvement in the

German folklore,

Modern Prometheus,
industrialization

Weimar Classical

Children’s and
which is published
and urbanization.

movement.

Household Tales.

two years later.

1780S

1808–32

1812–22

1816

1798

1808

1813

1830S

The collection of verse

The US prohibits

Jane Austen’s novel

The first mass-market

Lyrical Ballads, by William
the importation of
of manners Pride and
magazines appear aimed

Wordsworth and Samuel
slaves, but slavery

Prejudice offers a biting
at a newly literate working

Taylor Coleridge, marks the
is still legal in the
social commentary on
class: they contain the
beginnings of English
southern states
the mores of the
serializations of

Romantic literature.

of the union.

English landed gentry.

popular novels.

T he late 18th century was on subjective feelings and faculties novels that appeared at the time.

a period of revolutionary
such as intuition, imagination, and

By the mid-19th century,
change across Europe. The
emotion. This movement became

Romanticism had spread across

Enlightenment, or Age of Reason,
known as Romanticism.

Europe to Russia, and writers such
had fostered the scientific advances
as Alexander Pushkin, Mikhail
that brought about the Industrial

Romantic literature

Lermontov, and Ivan Turgenev

Revolution, as well as the various

Romanticism had its roots in
developed the idea into that of the
philosophical ideas that had led to
the German Sturm und Drang

“superfluous man,” whose
the political revolutions in North
movement, from which the writers
unconventional ideas isolate him

America and France. The effects

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and
completely from society.

of growing industrialization and

Friedrich Schiller emerged. In

Another characteristic of
urbanization on society had a
this transition from the classical

Romantic literature was an affinity
significant impact on the way that
style of the Enlightenment to
with the natural world. English
many people lived and worked.

19th-century Romanticism, they
poets such as William Wordsworth

During the Renaissance and the introduced the idea of an
and Samuel Taylor Coleridge offered

Enlightenment periods, humankind unconventional protagonist whose an antidote to the industrial age by
and reason were the twin focuses
actions are less important than
portraying the beauty and power
of cultural interest. But in the early
his thoughts and feelings. This
of nature, and celebrating the

19th century, the individual came

“Romantic hero” later became
innocence and impulsiveness of
to the fore. Partly as a reaction
more of an antiestablishment
childhood. A similar reaction to
to the cool rationality of the
figure, epitomizing the rebellious
urbanization was evident in the

Enlightenment, a movement in the
spirit of the period, and a recurrent
work of American transcendentalist
arts arose, which placed emphasis
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ROMANTICISM AND THE RISE OF THE NOVEL 109

The autobiographical

Charles Dickens

Eugene Onegin,

Narrative of the Life

Harriet Taylor and
embarks on public

“a novel in verse”

of Frederick Douglass,

John Stuart Mill
readings of his work,
by Russian poet
by escaped
publish the radical
and Bleak House, Hard

Alexander Pushkin,

American slave
essay “The

Times, and Little Dorrit
is first published

Frederick Douglass,

Enfranchisement
are published in
in serial form.

is published.

of Women.”

serial form.

1825–32

1845

1851

1850S

1844

1847

1851

1855

Alexandre Dumas’s

Sisters Charlotte and Emily

Herman Melville’s

The collection of poems
swashbuckling

Brontë publish their best-known
epic whaling novel

Leaves of Grass, by New
adventures of the
novels: Jane Eyre, by Charlotte

Moby-Dick, inspired

England transcendentalist
young d’Artagnan

(under the pseudonym Currer
by a real-life event, is

Walt Whitman, is published,
are serialized as The

Bell), and Wuthering Heights,
a quest to exact
but he continues adding to it

Three Musketeers.

by Emily (writing as Ellis Bell).

revenge on nature.

until his death in 1892.

Henry David Thoreau, and Walt
untameable nature of a Romantic

Alexandre Dumas, and James

Whitman who evoked the spirit of
hero in a wild landscape, as in Emily Fenimore Cooper, which catered to humanitarian liberty, culminating

Brontë’s Wuthering Heights, or the
an urban public’s desire for romance
in their call to go “back to nature.”

grotesque characters in grim urban and adventure, but included graver surroundings that feature in the
fare such as Leo Tolstoy’s War and

Gothic novels
works of Charles Dickens. The genre

Peace. There was also an appetite

However, many Romantic writers
also became popular in the US, as
for folk stories and fairy tales which,
recognized that nature (and human exemplified by Edgar Allan Poe’s like historical novels, were often
nature) also has a dark side, and
tales of the macabre; it also
specific to a culture. This focus on
can arouse feelings of terror as well
influenced the style adopted by
regional traditions chimed with the
as pleasure. This fascination with

Herman Melville in his haunting
era’s growing nationalism.

the destructive power of nature,
short stories and Moby-Dick.

In addition to a broader
and even the supernatural, inspired
readership, increased literacy
the genre that came to be known

History and identity
spawned a greater variety of authors,
as gothic literature. The tone was

As society industrialized, levels of
most noticeably a generation of
set in Germany by Goethe’s play
literacy increased, and literature
women such as the Brontë sisters

Faust, and the short stories by
was no longer solely for an educated and George Eliot of England, who E. T. A. Hoffmann, but the genre was elite. Novels in particular reached (albeit under pseudonyms) pioneered
most eagerly adopted by English
a mass readership in 19th-century
a female perspective in literature,
novelists, such as Mary Shelley,

Europe and the US, and many were
and the first freed slaves, such as
who wrote Frankenstein. Elements
made available in serial form.

Frederick Douglass, Harriet Jacobs,
of the gothic run through many

Especially popular were historical
and Solomon Northup, who gave a

Victorian novels, often stressing the
novels by the likes of Walter Scott,
voice to oppressed black people. ■

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110

POETRY IS THE BREATH

AND THE FINER SPIRIT

OF ALL KNOWLEDGE

LYRICAL BALLADS (1798–1800),

WILLIAM WORDSWORTH AND

SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE

IN CONTEXT

FOCUS

William Wordsworth brief was to give “the charm of (1770–1850) and Samuel
novelty” to everyday life and

Taylor Coleridge (1772–
awaken the reader to the loveliness

1834) were two of the “Lake Poets,”

of the familiar. Both writers

The English
so called because they lived and
believed that poetry should be

Romantic poets
wrote in the inspirational setting
written in transparent, unadorned

BEFORE
of England’s Lake District. The
language for the general populace,

1794 William Blake’s Songs
friends collaborated on the Lyrical
with simple meter and rhyme, and

Ballads, a collection of Romantic
chose subject matter consistent
of Innocence and of Experience
verse with the ambition (stated
with this democratizing impulse:

marks the early phase of
in the preface of the book’s second
the lives of uneducated rustic

Romanticism, anticipating the
edition of 1800) to “follow the fluxes folk, whose emotions were pure esteem placed by Wordsworth
and refluxes of the mind when
and universal. Poems dealing
on the purity of childhood and
agitated by the great and simple
with royalty or lofty allegory were
giving a voice to society’s
affections of our nature.” In part
replaced with themes of poverty,
marginalized figures.

a reaction to the acute rationalism
crime, and madness.

AFTER
of the industrial age, English

1818 Percy Bysshe Shelley’s

Romanticism (c.1790s–1830s) took

Purity and reflection
human experience, imagination,

Some of Wordsworth’s poems focus
sonnet about the statue of
nature, and individualistic freedom
on children, whom he thought lived

Ozymandias points to a
as its inspiration.

closer to nature and form a bond

Romantic interest in the
insignificance of man.

1819 Romantic poetry’s link
with intoxicants, death, and

with it—childhood being a time

Democratizing poetry
of innocence, impulse, and play.

Lyrical Ballads starts with “The

Most of the poems are deeply felt

Rime of the Ancient Mariner,”

rather than deeply thought, but
the imagination is expressed

Coleridge’s seven-part ballad with
two have a more reflective manner:

in John Keats’s poem “Ode
otherworldly overtones: it was

Coleridge’s “The Nightingale,”

to a Nightingale.”

agreed that supernatural poetry
a conversational poem, and
with a “semblance of truth” would

Wordsworth’s “Lines written a

1818–1823 Lord Byron’s Don
be this writer’s remit. Wordsworth’s few miles above Tintern Abbey.” ■

Juan—cynical, subversive,
and witty—undermines his

See also: Songs of Innocence and of Experience 105
earlier Romanticism.

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ROMANTICISM AND THE RISE OF THE NOVEL 111

NOTHING IS MORE

WONDERFUL NOTHING

MORE FANTASTIC

THAN REAL LIFE

NACHTSTÜCKE (1817), E. T. A. HOFFMANN

IN CONTEXT

FOCUS

German Romanticism came Hoffman was a musician, rather after, and was a reaction
than a writer; Nachtstücke (“Night
to, Weimar Classicism; its

Pieces”) is a musical title, and one of
proponents rejected calm restraint
many German Romantic texts that

German Romanticism
and cared only about the artist’s
were adapted into songs or operas.

BEFORE
perceptions. Romantic literature in

The most famous of the stories

1797–99 Best known as

Germany looked to the medieval
is “The Sandman,” in which this
a poet, Friedrich Hölderlin
past as a period of intellectual
traditionally sympathetic figure,
simplicity that could be recreated.

who blesses children with their
writes the lyrical and tragic

It also explored the supernatural,
dreams, is revealed as a monster
two-part novel Hyperion. The
the uncanny, and the fantastical
who instead plucks out their eyes.

book reflects the typically
as realms of the imagination—the

The gothic and fantastical tales

German Romantic fascination

Romantics wanted the world to
offer a disturbing insight into the
with ancient Greek culture.

become dreamlike, and for dreams
human psyche and the individual’s

AFTER
to be so realistic they resembled
struggle to feel at ease in society. ■

1821 Heinrich von Kleist’s The
the world. German Romanticism

Prince of Homburg is staged
tended to be less serious than
for the first time—10 years

British Romanticism, and often
made use of playful wit.

after the author’s death by
suicide. The patriotic play, in

Dark revelations
which the prince fails to follow

He puts their eyes in a bag

Nachtstücke by E. T. A. Hoffmann
orders and faints in a dream
and carries them to the

(1776–1822), from Königsberg in
scene, has been edited so as
crescent moon to feed

Prussia, is a collection of eight short
not to offend the Prussian elite.

his own children...

stories that combine a spirit of

1827

“The Sandman”

The Book of Songs by
lightheartedness with darker

Heinrich Heine is published.

themes of human irrationality. The

A five-section collection of
stories are written in a simple and

Romantic poetry that wins
populist tone, accessible to all, and

Heine fame, many of the
not self-consciously intellectual.

poems were later set to
music by Franz Schubert

See also: The Robbers 98–99 ■ The Sorrows of Young Werther 105 ■
and Robert Schumann.

Lyrical Ballads 110 ■ Faust 112–15 ■ Frankenstein 120–21

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112

MAN ERRS TILL IN CONTEXT

FOCUS

Weimar Classicism

HE HAS CEASED BEFORE

1776 Under the auspices of
the young Goethe, German
philosopher Johann Gottfried

TO STRIVE

Herder comes to Weimar and
begins to write works on
literary aesthetics that hark
back to the values of the Greek

FAUST (1808, 1832), JOHANN WOLFGANG
classics. His ideas provide the
philosophical underpinning

VON GOETHE
for the movement known as

Weimar Classicism.

1794 Friedrich von Schiller
writes to Goethe. Their
friendship, after they meet in

Weimar, forms the backbone
of Weimar Classicism.

1799 Schiller completes his

Wallenstein drama trilogy,
often said to be the greatest
historical drama in the

German language and a key
work of Weimar Classicism.

It was not until shortly before
his death in 1832 that Johann

Wolfgang von Goethe finally
completed the work for which he is
best remembered— Faust, a tragic
play in two parts, the first of which
was completed in 1808. Faust is
also the most notable achievement
of the movement known as Weimar

Classicism, a period of prolific
cultural and literary activity
centered on the German city of

Weimar, which began in the 1780s
and lasted for nearly 30 years.

The two writers most closely
associated with Weimar Classicism
are Goethe and his friend and
collaborator, the playwright

Friedrich von Schiller (1759–1805).

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ROMANTICISM AND THE RISE OF THE NOVEL 113

See also: Doctor Faustus 75 ■ The Robbers 98–99 ■ Les Liaisons dangereuses 100–01 ■ The Sorrows of Young Werther 105 ■

The Magic Mountain 224–27 ■ The Catcher in the Rye 256–57
of balance and harmony, arguing
that a literary work could be
considered great if it existed
in perfect balance with its own
imperfect elements. In this way,

Age is no second childhood—
a work could achieve the unity

Here deeds have understood
age makes plain,
and wholeness that the authors

Words they were darkened by;

Children we were, true
of the Greek classics had sought.

The Eternal Feminine,
children we remain.

This balance, according to

Draws us on high.

Faust

Goethe and Schiller, was achieved

Faust
by a combination of the three
elements essential to a work of
art. The first, gehalt, the author’s
primary inspiration or vision,
combined with the second, gestalt,
the aesthetic form of the work,

As young men, both had been
which might be based on close
be managed carefully because
involved with the late 18th-century
study of classical models. The
it can create an imbalance that
movement known as Sturm und
third element, the inhalt, is the
could distract from the gehalt

Drang (“storm and urge”), which
bulk of the author’s invention—
and the gestalt.

featured novels and plays that
the “content” or, in effect, the words

Goethe and Schiller collaborated
broke with the literary traditions
in a work of literature. The inhalt
on each other’s productions and
of the Enlightenment and promoted is therefore the element that must encouraged one another—it was ❯❯
passionate emotional expression.

However, in the 1780s, as the fire
of their youth subsided, Goethe

Weimar Classicism
argued that works of
and Schiller began to look back at
aesthetic harmony
the Enlightenment values that they could be created if an Gehalt
had previously rejected, reconciling author had the skill to The living inspirational
them with the energy of Sturm und
keep three key elements
force within the mind

Drang, and revisiting the Greek
in balance.

of the artist or writer.

classics with a view to creating
new and finer aesthetic standards.

Collaborative classicism

Weimar Classicism is often
regarded as Goethe and Schiller’s
joint achievement, although it
included other writers—notably
the philosopher Johann Gottfried

Herder (1744–1803) and Christoph

For any great work, inhalt

Martin Wieland (1733–1813), a poet
and gestalt should

Gestalt
and novelist.

merge seamlesly.

Inhalt

The structure and
shape of the work,

In formulating their ideas about

The main content, or
substance, of the work.

through which its
good literature, Goethe and Schiller
principal ideas
agreed that aesthetic perfection
are expressed.

was an impossible goal. Instead,
they emphasized the importance

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114 FAUST

A man who sells his soul for worldly
gain is an idea that has long captivated
writers. Part One of Goethe’s play
inspired Charles Gonoud’s opera. Here,

Bryn Terfel (right) plays Mephistopheles.

Faust: Part One begins in heaven
where Mephistopheles (the devil)

muses on mankind and wagers
with God that he can turn one of

God’s favorite subjects, Faust, to
sinful ways and win his soul. God
accepts the bet but asserts his
belief that Faust will stay faithful,
pointing out that while a man may
make mistakes in his life, he is
basically good.

Schiller who insisted that Goethe
would like to make a play that will
should return to his work on Faust,
draw in the crowds and be well

A deadly deal
a work he had begun in his 20s
received by its German audience;

Moving the action to Earth with
and later put aside. The two
the poet is an idealist, trying to
its contemporary German setting,
men corresponded daily until
portray eternal values and make a

Goethe introduces Faust, a learned

Schiller’s death in 1805, a date
work of integrity and inspiration—a professor, doctor, and theologian.

many critics take to be the end of
masterpiece that will endure; and

Faust is sitting in his study in

Weimar Classicism.

the clown wants to entertain the
despair, feeling that he has reached
audience through comedy and
the limit of his learning and that

A universe on stage
action. The three finally reach a
he is merely “a wretched fool, no

The story of Faust is based on many compromise—the poet can create a wiser than I was before”; he even popular legends about pacts with
play with profound meaning as long contemplates suicide. The devil the devil that circulated throughout as it includes action, comedy, and appears and an agreement is made

Europe from the early 16th century
tragedy. The discussion ends with
between the two: Mephistopheles
onward, and which had inspired
a promise to the audience—that
agrees to fulfill Faust’s wishes on

Christopher Marlowe’s 1604 play,
the whole universe, from heaven,

Earth; in return Faust will serve

Doctor Faustus, among others.

via the world, to hell—will be
the devil in hell. As part of the deal,

While earlier versions presented presented on the stage.

Faust declares that if the devil can
the Faust legend as a relatively
provide him with a moment that
simple contest between God and
is so absolutely rewarding that he
the devil, or between good and evil,
wants to remain in it forever, then

Goethe’s Faust is a more profound
he will die at that precise moment.

tale that moves beyond simple

The pact is signed in blood.

morality. Goethe argues that

Faust meets and is attracted to
through living, doing, and striving

Whoever strives,
a young woman named Gretchen.

humans may make mistakes, but
in his endeavour,

With the devil’s help, he seduces
that learning from these mistakes

We can rescue
her, but what Faust hoped would
will lead them to righteousness.

from the devil.

bring happiness quickly turns to

Goethe starts his play (after a

Faust
death and tragedy, and in this first
verse dedication) with a prologue.

part, Faust is denied fulfillment.

Here a director, a poet, and a clown

Faust: Part Two is the more
discuss what characteristics are
complex part of the tragedy. It
needed to make a good play. Each
consists of five acts, each different
has his own agenda: the director
from the others, which leap around

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ROMANTICISM AND THE RISE OF THE NOVEL 115
between settings: real, magical,

Middle Ages. It takes inspiration
historical, and mythical. In effect
from Renaissance masque and

Goethe, having explored Faust’s
commedia dell’arte (a form of
personal small world in Part One,
theater from 17th-century Italy,
now places events in the wider
in which actors improvised around
world. Part Two introduces many
stock characters), and makes use
fantastical, and often confusing,
of a variety of poetic forms.

plot strands, such as the marriage

Faust is without question
of Faust to Helen of Troy (in Greek
the greatest accomplishment of
mythology, the most beautiful

Weimar Classicism, yet it took
woman in the world).

such an astonishingly long time
to complete, that by the time Part

A literary landmark

Two was published, a few months

Faust typifies Weimar Classicism
before Goethe’s own death in 1832,

Johann Wolfgang
in its richness of classical allusion:

the movement had long finished.

von Goethe
the play’s characters include gods,

Faust did not exert a strong
goddesses, and heroes from Greek
influence on the “next generation”

Born on August 28, 1749 in
mythology and settings from
of writers, since many had already

Frankfurt to a wealthy middle-
classical antiquity. It is written in
published numerous works by the
class family, Goethe was not
a staggering array of literary styles, time of the play’s appearance.

only a great writer and literary
figure but also knowledgeable
referencing Greek tragedies as well

Instead, German Romanticism
in many fields from law and
as mystery plays about biblical

(which ignored classical “balance”)

philosophy through to botany,
subjects, which were popular in the held sway across much of Europe.

zoology, science, and medicine.

Despite its lack of contemporary

Goethe was home tutored
influence, Faust went on to become

Weimar’s Courtyard of the Muses,
until 1765 when he was sent
painted by Theobald von Oer in 1860,
one of the most famous and studied
to Leipzig to study law. There
depicts Goethe (right, hand on hip)

works of German literature, and is
he began to write lyric poetry
opposite Schiller (reading, left), with
now considered one of the greatest
and his first full-length plays.

Herder and Wieland seated behind.

plays ever written. ■

After graduation, he continued
writing, establishing his
reputation as an innovative
and outstanding writer.

In 1775 he was invited to
take a position at the Weimar
court, where he held public
offices for 10 years. In 1786 he
left for a two-year tour of Italy.

From around 1794 he began
a collaboration with Friedrich
von Schiller that resulted in
some sublime and influential
literary and cultural work. He
died on March 22, 1832.

Other key works

1773 Götz von Berlichingen

1774 The Sorrows of Young

Werther

1795–96 Wilhelm Meister’s

Apprenticeship

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ONCE UPON

A TIME…

CHILDREN’S AND HOUSEHOLD TALES

(1812–1822), BROTHERS GRIMM

IN CONTEXT

FOCUS

Folklore collections that but folk stories do not usually synthesize into a single
contain references to religion.

written text cultural

Real places, people, or events are
traditions such as fairy tales, oral
not cited. Instead, these stories are

Folklore collections
history, and popular beliefs (as told
ahistorical, existing “once upon a

BEFORE
in homes and at social gatherings)

time…,” and readers and audiences
c.1350–1410 Welsh stories
have been compiled since the
expect stock characters, random
based on oral tales are collected

Middle Ages. The term “fairy
magic, reward and revenge, and a
tale” was coined by French writer

“happily ever after” ending. Poetic
in the Mabinogion, the earliest

Madame d’Aulnoy in the late 17th
or literary references and realism
prose literature of Britain.

century, but it is her contemporary
are rarely used; fairy tales are

1697 French author Charles

Charles Perrault’s retellings of old
written in a plain style, using

Perrault writes Tales of Mother
fairy tales that are better known.

mainly straightforward imagery,

Goose, a collection of rewritten

English antiquarian William Thoms and plot is key: these stories power and original tales.

first defined “folklore” in a letter to
along with astonishing swiftness.

The Athenaeum magazine in 1846.

1782–87 German author

Some tales, such as the 14th-

Enriching Western culture

Johann Karl August Musäus
century Welsh Mabinogion, have

The Brothers Grimm, like many
publishes a popular collection
a religious or spiritual function—
folklorists since, embarked on a
of satirical folk stories.

scholarly project to identify and

AFTER
preserve the spirit of the people

1835–49 Finnish folklore is
by recording the fairy tales being
celebrated in the epic poem
told across their culture.

This was an epic romantic
the Kalevala by Elias Lönnrot.

venture: interest in folklore was

1841 Norwegian Folktales, by

In olden days, when
inspired by a rise in nationalism

Peter Christen Asbjørnsen and
wishing still worked…

and cultural pride, and the purpose

Jørgen Moe, is published.

Children’s and
of the Grimms’ collection was no

Household Tales
different. Nor were they the only

1979 The Bloody Chamber, by

European scholars to undertake

English novelist Angela Carter,
such an enterprise, and their peer
challenges traditional folktale
group at their university shared
portrayals of women.

their enthusiasm for folk traditions.

But the Grimms’ work, as reflected

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ROMANTICISM AND THE RISE OF THE NOVEL 117

See also: One Thousand and One Nights 44–45 ■ Fairy Tales 151 ■

Kalevala 151 ■ The Bloody Chamber 332
in their Children’s and Household
their first version of “Rapunzel”

Tales, represents the greatest body
openly referred to her pregnancy
of stories collected in Europe and

(outside marriage), but in the
is the most widely translated and
revised version she simply fattens.

read. W. H. Auden declared Grimms’ Yet violence was not necessarily tales “among the few common-minimized. The French Cinderella,
property books upon which

Cendrillon, in Charles Perrault’s

Western culture can be founded.”

tale, forgives her stepsisters and

The methodology for gathering
finds good husbands for them. But
stories did not include sorties into
in the Grimms’ punitive version,
the woods, as is often picturesquely Cinderella’s helper birds blind the Jacob Grimm and
believed. The Grimms’ sources
sisters by pecking out their eyes.

Wilhelm Grimm
generally came to them, and some

Violence notwithstanding, the
stories were already written down,
popularity of the Grimms’ collected

Known as the Brothers
such as “The Juniper Tree,” sent to
tales has endured, and they have

Grimm, Jacob (1785–1863)

them by painter Philip Otto Runge.

sustained multiple interpretations
and Wilhelm (1786–1859) were

In their first edition, the Grimms and rewrites in various media over celebrated German academics,
cultural researchers, linguists,
wrote for a mainly adult audience.

the years. The romantic depiction
and lexicographers.

It was only after Edgar Taylor’s
of “Once upon a time” continues to

The oldest surviving sons

English translation of their work in
manifest inextinguishable truths,
of a family of six children, they

1823 was successful with children
which, along with the allure of a
were raised in Hanau, Hesse.

that they made revisions to sanitize happy and harmonious ending, Despite poverty following the
the German stories. For example,
appeal across the generations. ■
death of their lawyer father,
they were educated at the

University of Marburg, thanks

Archetypal characters in folklore
to a well-connected aunt.

The Grimms are credited
with developing an early

In the Grimms’ version, Cinderella weeps by her

The magical
mother’s grave, marked by a hazel tree that then
methodology for collecting folk
helper
gives her an outfit to go to the ball (Perrault has a
stories that is now the basis
fairy godmother instead of the tree).

of folklore studies. They were
also notable philologists

These characters were mothers in the

(studying the language in

The wicked

Grimms’ early versions: the sanctity of
written historical sources).

stepmother
motherhood was preserved by changing

Both brothers also worked
the texts to “stepmother.”

on a monumental (32-volume)

German dictionary, which was

This archetype creates opportunities for shifts

The witch
unfinished in their lifetimes.

in plot and for the triggering of magical but
or sorceress
often terrible events.

Other key works

1813–16 Old German Forests

The

This archetype creates menace and obstacles

1815 Poor Heinrich by
trickster
in a story to challenge the natural order.

Hartmann von der Aue

1815 Songs from the

Elder Edda

Grimms’ tales are littered with characters

The
that have been transformed into birds and other

1816–18 German Sagas
transformed
animals and that might become human again

1852–1960 German Dictionary
animal
under the right circumstances.

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FOR WHAT DO WE LIVE BUT

TO MAKE SPORT FOR OUR

NEIGHBOURS AND LAUGH

AT THEM IN OUR TURN?

PRIDE AND PREJUDICE (1813), JANE AUSTEN

IN CONTEXT

FOCUS

The early to mid-18th Jane Austen’s novels are the prime century saw the rise of
examples of such literature, gently
the novel and, a little later,
satirizing the social mores of the
the development of Romanticism in English country gentry, as well as The novel of manners
literature. By the close of the 18th
poking fun at the overindulgent

BEFORE
century, however, a new genre had
drama of gothic Romanticism.

1740 English author Samuel
emerged in England—the novel of

Austen highlights the vulgarities

Richardson’s Pamela is a
manners, which moved away from
and follies of the English upper
the excesses of emotion and flights
classes: the importance of rank, the
story about a servant girl
of fancy common to Romanticism.

stigma of social inferiority, and the
climbing the social ranks;

Instead, it placed emphasis on
system of patronage are played out
it is considered to be an early
the beliefs, manners, and social
via balls, visits, and society gossip.

novel of manners.

structures of particular groups of

AFTER
people. These novels were often

Social ups and downs

1847 Jane Eyre, by Charlotte
dominated by women—both as

In Pride and Prejudice, the reader

Brontë, critiques Victorian
authors and as protagonists—and
follows the Bennet sisters in their
class divisions and prejudice,
for this reason were sometimes
quest for an eligible bachelor. For
as well as the constricting
wrongly dismissed as trivial.

women, a good marriage was key
expectations faced by women.

to maintaining or improving one’s
social status. The novel is told

1847–48 The duplicity and
mainly through the eyes of its
dishonesty of society life
principal character, Elizabeth
are satirized via the exploits

Bennet (Austen’s own favorite
of Becky Sharp in Vanity Fair,
among her heroines), a good and
by English novelist William

A lady’s imagination is
well-intentioned young woman.

Makepeace Thackeray.

very rapid; it jumps from

She is one of the five daughters
admiration to love, from love of the intelligent but put-upon Mr.

1905 An American novel of
to matrimony in a moment.

Bennet, a country gentleman, and
manners, Edith Wharton’s

Pride and Prejudice
his pushy, vulgar wife; their own

The House of Mirth reflects
marriage being a perfect example
the social, economic, and
of how not to do it.

moral constraints that are

Elizabeth meets the aristocratic
placed on women.

Fitzwilliam Darcy, who is drawn to
her despite himself; however, she

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See also: Jane Eyre 128–31 ■ Vanity Fair 153 ■ North and South 153 ■

Middlemarch 182–83

Fanny Price ( Mansfield

Park) is undervalued by
the family she lives with.

Jane Austen

Emma Woodhouse

Elinor Dashwood

( Emma) is a

The lives of

( Sense and Sensibility)

The daughter of a relatively
matchmaker who

Austen’s heroines
is unable to display
prosperous country parson,
is oblivious to
are influenced and often
her emotions.

people’s feelings.

Jane Austen was born in
circumscribed by their

Steventon rectory, Hampshire,
social class and the
customs of their time.

England, in 1775, the seventh

Austen draws each
of eight children. As a child
individual character in
she read voraciously, having
a nuanced way.

access to her father’s library,
which was uncommon for
girls at the time. She started
writing in her early teens,
producing an embryonic
version of Pride and Prejudice,

Catherine Morland

Marianne
titled First Impressions,

( Northanger Abbey)

Dashwood ( Sense
between 1796 and 1797. In
believes herself to be
and Sensibility)

1800 her father decided to
a gothic heroine.

displays her emotions
too freely.

retire and the family moved
to Bath; Jane was unhappy

Anne Elliot ( Persuasion) is
there. In 1809 she moved to
thrown into confusion when
her old love reappears.

Chawton, Hampshire, with
her mother and sister, where
she wrote daily. It was her
finds his haughty pride and his
through these trials, she grows into
observations of genteel life
supercilious behavior offensive.

a mature adult. Darcy, similarly,
in Hampshire that furnished

He is contrasted with his equally
has to grow out of his own pride to
her novels. Despite writing
wealthy but unaffected friend,
prove he is a worthy match for her,
a great deal about marriage,

Bingley, who takes a liking to
in spite of his higher social class.

she never married herself,

Elizabeth’s older sister, Jane. Yet

Indeed, through the use of
although she did receive a
when the flighty younger sister,
subtle wit and irony, Austen
proposal. She died in 1817,

Lydia, scandalously elopes with the makes clear that good breeding at the age of 41.

dashing officer George Wickham,
does not necessarily equate with
threatening to disgrace the entire
good manners (although good

Other key works
family, it is Darcy who unexpectedly manners may well be indicative steps in to help. Elizabeth’s pride,
of good morals). While the

1811 Sense and Sensibility

1814 Mansfield Park
prejudice, and inexperience lead
landscape of Pride and Prejudice

1815 Emma
her to make errors of judgement
might appear to be narrow, it

1818 Northanger Abbey

(concerning both Wickham and
nevertheless keenly probes the

1818 Persuasion

Darcy) that she must pay for, but
manners and morals of its day. ■

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WHO SHALL CONCEIVE

THE HORRORS OF MY

SECRET TOIL

FRANKENSTEIN (1818), MARY SHELLEY

IN CONTEXT

FOCUS

Gothic fiction established imagination, and contemporary its main themes in the late social questions, coupled with 18th century, years before
gothic tropes of evil aristocratic
the publication of Mary Shelley’s
villains, gory deaths, and gloomy

Early gothic

Frankenstein. Works such as
medieval settings. This mixture

BEFORE

Horace Walpole’s The Castle of
was frequently embodied in

1764 The Castle of Otranto by

Otranto, Ann Radcliffe’s The
beings such as vampires, ghosts,

English writer Horace Walpole

Mysteries of Udolpho, and E. T. A.

monsters, and terrifying and

Hoffmann’s Nachtstücke, set out
mysterious female figures.

is published. It is later hailed
the key elements of the genre. In

In Frankenstein, Mary Shelley
as the origin of gothic fiction.

these books, exiles roam sublime
expanded on these elements,

1794, English author Ann
foreign landscapes, or are trapped
linking them to wider philosophical

Radcliffe publishes her novel
in ruined castles in nightmarish
debates, and forever changing the

The Mysteries of Udolpho,
tales of abuse, tyranny, and murder. gothic genre in the process. The introducing readers to the

At the heart of early gothic
inspiration for the novel came from
dark, romanticized, and
fiction was a combination of
conversations she had with, among
brooding gothic “hero.”

Romantic preoccupations with the
others, the English Romantic poets
power of the mind, the limits of the

Percy Bysshe Shelley and Lord

1796 Inspired by Radcliffe’s

Byron. One evening, the group told
novels and German horror
stories around the fire, as a storm
stories, Englishman Matthew
raged outside. Byron suggested

Lewis writes The Monk, one of
they devise ghost stories, and Mary
the most sensationalist gothic

Shelley’s imagination was stirred.

novels of the period.

1817 E. T. A. Hoffmann, from

A flash of lightning

An unsettling age

Prussia, writes a collection
illuminated the object ... it was Although the stormy origins of the wretch, the filthy daemon, Frankenstein are perhaps fitting, of short stories, Nachtstücke,
to whom I had given life.

the novel is much more than a
that includes his now famous

Frankenstein
simple tale of terror. One of
tale “The Sandman,” which

Shelley’s most significant
blends Romantic philosophy
contributions to the gothic genre is
with gothic themes of horror
her ability to expand on the stock
and irrationality.

themes of persecution, threat, and
monstrous hauntings into a more

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See also: Doctor Faustus 75 ■ Nachtstücke 111 ■ Faust 112–15 ■

Wuthering Heights 132–37 ■ The Picture of Dorian Gray 194 ■ Dracula 195

Elements of gothic

Crumbling castles, dark forests,

Gloomy
mysterious towers, wild and remote
settings
places, graveyards, and tombs.

The villainous tyrant, the maiden in

Stock
distress, madwomen and maniacs, the
characters
femme fatale, and the evil monk or nun.

Mary Shelley

Foreboding

Omens, portents, visions, dreams,

The birth of novelist Mary
signs
storms, and full moons.

Wollstonecraft Shelley on

August 30, 1797 in London,

England, was closely followed

The

Ghosts, monsters, inexplicable events,
by the death of her mother,
supernatural
vampires, or werewolves.

the feminist author Mary

Wollstonecraft, 11 days later.

Her father was the radical

Overwrought

Terror, madness, mental anguish, fury,
philosopher William Godwin.

emotions
passion, curiosity, or screaming.

At the age of 14, Shelley
was sent to live in Scotland.

In 1814 she returned to her

(remarried) father’s London
sophisticated exploration of one of
focuses on “rejection of the strange,
home and met the young poet
the key Romantic preoccupations of at both social and psychological Percy Bysshe Shelley. He was
the period: the alienated individual
levels.” Frankenstein’s monster
already married, but the pair
in the modern world.

is a product of the moment of his
eloped to Europe and wed in
creation in the new and unsettling

1816. It was a loving but tragic

A fable for the times
union: only one of their four
age of industrialization and of the
children survived, and in 1822

The title name of Frankenstein
author’s negotiation of the political

Percy drowned. Mary wrote
refers not to the infamous monster,
and social upheaval of the time.

until her death in 1851. She
but to Victor Frankenstein, the

The horror of Frankenstein lies
is best remembered for her
novel’s protagonist—the scientist,
not with its monster but rather—in
novel Frankenstein, which
artist, and creator of the unnamed
its melding of key gothic tropes of
she began drafting in 1816,
creature whom he describes as
haunting, exile, and isolation—with
during happier times with

“the demoniacal corpse to which
the anxieties of the period that so
her husband and their circle

I had so miserably given life.”

preoccupied the Romantics, such
of close friends.

Frankenstein is a solitary creative
as questions about religion versus
genius, whose “secret” horror stems science; philosophies of justice; Other key works
from within, as he overreaches the
debates about the origins of life;
ethical laws of humankind in
and the role of education, culture,

1817 History of a Six
typical Romantic fashion. Through
and nurture in shaping identity.

Weeks’ Tour

1819 Mathilda
him, Shelley reworks the gothic

Frankenstein’s downfall through

1826 The Last Man
theme of monstrosity in the form of
his own monstrous creation is the

1830 The Fortunes of
the idealized persona of the exiled
ultimate modern fable, cleverly

Perkin Warbeck
or wandering outsider. As scholar
wrapping moral and social issues

1835 Lodore

David Punter suggests, the book
in the guise of gothic terror. ■

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ALL FOR ONE,

ONE FOR ALL

THE THREE MUSKETEERS (1844),

ALEXANDRE DUMAS

IN CONTEXT

FOCUS

Although the idea of setting Translations of British historical a novel in a previous period fiction were also creating a market of history was not a new
for the genre across Europe, notably
one—fictional tales of the past
in France, where it was taken up

The historical novel
are as old as literature itself—the
by writers such as Victor Hugo and

BEFORE
historical novel as a distinct genre

Honoré de Balzac. The most popular

1800 Anglo-Irish writer Maria
achieved unprecedented popularity of the French historical authors, Edgeworth’s Castle Rackrent
in the 19th century. Demand came
however, was Alexandre Dumas.

first in Britain, and was stimulated
is in the vanguard of a fashion
by the novels of the Scottish writer

A thirst for adventure
for historical fiction.

Sir Walter Scott, which appeared

The first of Dumas’ novels, The

1814 Waverley, by Scottish
between 1814 and 1832. These had

Three Musketeers, appeared in
writer Walter Scott, is the first
a huge readership, in Britain and
serial form in 1844, and almost
in a series of historical novels
abroad, and their success inspired
immediately made him a household
that includes Rob Roy (1817)

a wave of similarly themed novels.

name. The novel contained all the
and Ivanhoe (1820).

By the 1820s, the influence of
ingredients of the popular fiction of

Scott’s novels in particular had
the time: dashing, romantic heroes

1823–41 US author James
spread as far as the US, where
and wily villains; plots involving

Fenimore Cooper writes his

James Fenimore Cooper wrote the
derring-do and camaraderie; and

“Leatherstocking Tales,”

popular “Leatherstocking Tales.”

the backdrop of a period that was
historical fictions that include
well known to its readers for

The Pioneers (1823) and The
political intrigue.

Last of the Mohicans (1826).

At the time of the book’s
publication, France had undergone

AFTER
a turbulent period post-Revolution:

1829 Honoré de Balzac’s The
tensions between monarchists and

Chouans tells of the 1799

Never fear quarrels, but seek
republicans were unresolved,
royalist uprising in France.

hazardous adventures.

and the romantic depiction of a

1989 Gabriel García Márquez’s

The Three Musketeers
fictionalized past appealed to those

The General in His Labyrinth
yearning for a more settled time.

is a postmodern historical

At the heart of Dumas’ story is
novel about Simon Bolivar,
d’Artagnan, a young nobleman who

“Liberator of South America.”

leaves his home in Gascony to join
the Musketeers of the Guard in

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See also: Ivanhoe 150 ■ The Last of the Mohicans 150 ■ Les Misérables 166–67 ■

War and Peace 178–81 ■ A Tale of Two Cities 198

Aramis

Porthos

Athos

Friends and comrades of

Ex-husband

Bitter enemies
and wife
d’Artagnan

Alexandre Dumas

Comte

Evil agents of

Milady
de Rochefort
de Winter

Alexandre Dumas was
born Alexandre Davy de la

Pailleterie in Picardy, France,

Manipulative First Minister to

Cardinal

Plotting against
in 1802. His father was the
de Richelieu
son of the governor of Saint-

Domingue (now Haiti) and an

Married, king and queen

Afro-Caribbean slave woman,
of France

Marie-Cessette Dumas.

King Louis XIII

Queen Anne
of Austria

Like his father, Alexandre
later adopted the surname
of his grandmother, but it was

The Musketeers of the Guard, a brotherhood of bodyguards, are his aristocratic ancestry that
the focal point of a story that combines international politics, courtly helped to launch his career as
intrigue, friendship, enmity, and romantic entanglements: a historical a writer. He found work with
tale with timeless themes that guarantee its enduring popularity.

the Duke of Orléans (who later
became the “Citizen King”

Paris, in 1623. Through a series
allegiance to the monarchy, and

Louis-Philippe), and after
of misadventures, his ambition
are not always gentlemanly in their
initial success with historical
drama, turned to writing
is thwarted, but he ends up first
treatment of others. And the object
novels. These included
dueling with, and then befriending, of their loyalty, King Louis XIII, the adventures of d’Artagnan,
the three musketeers of the title,
is portrayed as gullible and weak:

for which he became famous.

Athos, Porthos, and Aramis.

he is ruthlessly manipulated by the

When Louis-Philippe was

Together they embark on a series
cardinal and his agents, the Comte
deposed, Dumas fled France
of missions to save the honor
de Rochefort and Milady de Winter.

in 1851 and did not return
of the queen, and to ensure that

The installments of the story
until 1864.

the king is not hoodwinked by the
were eagerly awaited by the French

Dumas had many affairs,
machinations of First Minister
public in the summer of 1844, and
and is said to have fathered at

Cardinal de Richelieu into a war
were translated widely. Building on
least four children, including
with the English. Along the way,
this success, Dumas serialized two
a son Alexandre, who also
there is much carousing, and
more “d’Artagnan Romances,”

became a writer and is often
inevitable romantic liaisons.

Twenty Years After and The
known as fils (son).

Beneath the swashbuckling,

Vicomte of Bragelonne, and the

Other key works
however, Dumas makes some
similarly styled The Count of Monte
serious points, and is critical

Cristo, all of which have remained

1845 Twenty Years After
in his portrayal of the period.

popular, both in their original

1847–50 The Vicomte of

His musketeer heroes are brave
novel form and as adaptations

Bragelonne
and attractive, but show a blind
for television and the movies. ■

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BUT HAPPINESS I

NEVER AIMED FOR,

IT IS A STRANGER

TO MY SOUL

EUGENE ONEGIN (1833), ALEXANDER PUSHKIN

IN CONTEXT

FOCUS

Like the main protagonist in and flirtatious sister, Olga. Tatyana Eugene Onegin, Alexander
falls in love with Onegin, but is

Pushkin (1799–1837) was
rejected by him because he does
killed in a duel. In spite of this early not want “life restricted to living in The superfluous man
end to his career, he is considered
domestic bliss.” Unable or unwilling

BEFORE
to be Russia’s greatest poet. His
to prevent tragedy, he fights a duel

1812–24 English poet Lord
work was extremely influential,
with Lensky, leaves his estate for

Byron’s characters Childe
particularly his masterpiece
some years, and returns to find that

Eugene Onegin, whose eponymous

Tatyana has married someone else.

Harold and Don Juan are the
hero established the concept and
precursors of the superfluous
character of “the superfluous man.”

Lonely destiny
man in Russian literature.

A disillusioned individual, often

Writing in a lively and often ironic

AFTER
born into wealth and privilege,
tone, Pushkin not only describes

1840 Mikhail Lermontov’s
the superfluous man regards the
the lives of his main characters,
only novel, A Hero of Our Time,
society around him with boredom,
but also introduces a large cast of
builds on the superfluous man
cynicism, and lack of interest, at
other individuals. He realistically
theme with its hero Grigory
the same time feeling himself to be depicts scenes from Russian life Pechorin, a Byronic figure
morally and intellectually superior.

and there are numerous wide-
ranging literary references and
desperate for activity that will

A life unfulfilled
philosophical observations, some
stave off his world weariness.

Set in imperial Russia during the
satirizing the society of the time.

1850 In the figure of the

1820s, Eugene Onegin is written

At the end, Eugene Onegin,

Hamlet-like Tchulkaturin,
in the form of “a novel in verse,”

who has spent most of his life

Ivan Turgenev’s novella The
as Pushkin called it. It follows the
distancing himself from those

Diary of a Superfluous Man
life and destiny of Eugene Onegin,
around him, is left regretting
further develops the idea of
a bored landowning man about
his lonely destiny. Pushkin’s
the idealistic, inactive man.

town; his friend Vladimir Lensky,
superfluous man was adopted by
a young, romantic dreamer; and
other writers and embedded as a

1859 Idle dreamer Oblamov,
the beautiful and intelligent
recurring motif in much Russian
in Ivan Goncharov’s novel

Tatyana Larina and her vain
literature of the 1840s and 1850s. ■
of the same name, epitomizes
the laziness and inertia of the

See also: Tristram Shandy 104–05 ■ A Hero of Our Time 151
superfluous man’s character.

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ROMANTICISM AND THE RISE OF THE NOVEL 125

LET YOUR SOUL STAND

COOL AND COMPOSED

BEFORE A MILLION

UNIVERSES

LEAVES OF GRASS (1855), WALT WHITMAN

IN CONTEXT

FOCUS

The Transcendentalist the bank by the wood and become movement thrived in
undisguised and naked, / I am mad
the US in the mid-19th
for it to be in contact with me.”

century, inspired by German

Whitman delighted in nature

Transcendentalism
philosopher Immanuel Kant’s
and its cycles, in which, for him,

BEFORE
idea that knowledge is concerned

God was self-evidently present.

1840 Author and literary critic

“not with objects, but our mode of

He shared a conviction with the

Margaret Fuller and essayist
knowing objects.” This fusion of
poet Emerson that humankind was
the intellectual and metaphysical—
innately good, and this became
and poet Ralph Waldo Emerson
combined with a celebration of
a hallmark of Transcendentalism.

become founding editors of the
physicality, sexuality, and nature—

Later poems in the book, such as

Transcendentalist journal The
characterized the work of American “A Noiseless Patient Spider,” also Dial, publishing on literature,
poet Walt Whitman (1819–92) and
show a mystic fascination with the
philosophy, and religion.

other Transcendentalist writers.

“measureless oceans of space.” ■

1850 Emerson, spokesman
of Transcendentalism,

In praise of body and spirit
proposes a “general mind”

Whitman’s collection Leaves of
that expresses itself through

Grass contains poems such as “I
the lives of geniuses such as

Sing the Body Electric,” where, at

Plato and Shakespeare.

the same time as revering the soul,
he displays a desire to liberate

This is the grass that grows

1854 The rewards of a simple

Americans from shame about the
wherever the land is and the
life in nature are described in
body, to foster egalitarian instincts,
water is, / This the common

Walden; or a Life in the Woods
and to promote human connection.

air that bathes the globe.

by Henry David Thoreau.

“Song of Myself” is a eulogy to all

“Song of Myself”

of humanity, in which the poet

AFTER
imagines himself returned to the

1861–65 The great American
cycles of nature. With the hypnotic
poet Emily Dickinson enjoys
rhythm of his verse, Whitman
her most prolific period. Her
revels in the senses: “I will go to
poems have Transcendentalist
overtones mixed with a fear

See also: Lyrical Ballads 110
of cosmic immensities.

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126

YOU HAVE SEEN HOW A

MAN WAS MADE A SLAVE;

YOU SHALL SEE HOW A

SLAVE WAS MADE A MAN

NARRATIVE OF THE LIFE OF FREDERICK DOUGLASS

(1845), FREDERICK DOUGLASS

IN CONTEXT

FOCUS

In the decades leading up to 1845 and created the template the American Civil War (1861–
for the slave narrative genre in

65), about four million slaves

American literature.

were held in the southern states of

Douglass asked in the book,

Slave narratives
the US, while abolitionists in the

“How is a man made a slave?” He

BEFORE

North campaigned to bring an end
told how he was removed from his

1789 The Interesting Narrative
to the inhuman practice of slavery.

slave mother within a year of his
of the Life of Olaudah Equiano,

In 1841 Frederick Douglass—a
birth. Always hungry and cold,
mixed-race slave who had escaped
he saw overseers whipping male
or Gustavus Vassa, the African
north—was invited to address an
workers for the smallest excuse.

is published in England; it is

Anti-Slavery Society meeting in

He witnessed slaves murdered for
narrated by an enslaved boy

Massachusetts, and was found to
disobedience; the young Frederick
from Benin (now Nigeria).

be a powerful orator for the cause.

became aware that “killing a slave

AFTER

He went on to chronicle his life in a
or a colored person … is not treated

1853 Solomon Northup’s
book that sold 5,000 copies within
as a crime, either by the courts
autobiographical Twelve Years
four months of its publication in
or the community.”

a Slave contrasts the lives of
free blacks in the American

Literature as liberation

North and enslaved blacks in

Published by the Anti-Slavery

Office, and prefaced by two leading
the South.

abolitionists, Narrative of the Life

1861 In Incidents in the
of Frederick Douglass, an American

Life of a Slave Girl, ex-slave

It was new, dirty, and hard

Slave was crafted in part to suit the

Harriet Jacobs focuses on the
work for me; but I went at it
needs of the abolitionist cause. In
experiences of slave women.

with a glad heart and a
eloquent, compelling text laced
willing hand. I was now
with biblical imagery, the fugitive

1979 In Octavia E. Butler’s
my own master.

slave debunked myths peddled by
novel Kindred, a neo-slave

Narrative of the Life of
the South, such as the ineducable
narrative, the main character

Frederick Douglass
character of blacks and the benign
time-travels between present-
nature of slave holding. Christianity
day California and pre-Civil
in the South, he concluded, was “a

War Maryland.

mere covering for the most horrid
crimes, a justifier of the most
appalling barbarity….”

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ROMANTICISM AND THE RISE OF THE NOVEL 127

See also: Uncle Tom’s Cabin 153 ■ The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn 188–89 ■ Invisible Man 259 ■ Beloved 306–09

As his story gradually unfolds,

The writing of narratives
by slaves had a dual effect:

Douglass asks “How is a slave
in addition to furthering the
made into a man?.” He answers
cause of the abolitionists,
this question by writing himself
the texts marked the
into existence in a picaresque
beginning of a uniquely
coming-of-age tale. As a boy,

African-American literature.

Frederick was taught to read and
write by a mistress and quickly
grasped the power of literacy to
both expose injustice and unlock a
future self. Although he was denied
further teaching, he enlisted poor

Writing the truth
white boys and fellow workers as

Fugitive slaves escaping to the North
teachers. A turning point came
have poignant stories to tell that reveal
the injustice and brutality of their lives.

when, at 16, he won a fight with a
brutal overseer: there is a strong
sense of self-discovery in the rest of
the story of his growing into a man.

Lasting influence

After the American Civil War,
interest in slave narratives declined.

However, the language and
sentiment of the writing resurfaced
in the rhetoric of activists such as

Martin Luther King during the civil
rights movement of the mid-20th

Propaganda

Finding a voice
century. Stories told by slaves then

These widely read narratives

The stories give an empowering
became central to black studies, and
are powerful propaganda for the
voice and history to people
to the canon of American literature. ■
abolitionist and antislavery societies.

silenced by slavery.

Frederick Douglass

The son of Harriet Bailey and an
published newspapers, assisted
unnamed white man, Frederick
fugitive slaves, and recruited

Augustus Washington Bailey was
black troops for the Union cause.

born into slavery in Maryland in

After the death of his wife, he

February 1818. At the age of 20 he
married Helen Pitts, a white
escaped to New York and married
editor and feminist. Douglass

Anna Murray, a free black woman. became US Marshall for the They had five children.

District of Columbia and Consul

Moving to Massachusetts,

General for Haiti. He died in

Frederick adopted the name

Washington, DC, in 1895.

Douglass to avoid capture, and
spoke regularly at abolitionist

Other key works
meetings. He lectured in Great

Britain, where friends raised funds 1855 My Bondage and for his release from slavery in

My Freedom

Baltimore in 1846. Douglass

1881 Life and Times of Frederick
settled in New York, where he

Douglass (revised 1892)

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128

I AM NO BIRD;

IN CONTEXT

FOCUS

Victorian feminism

AND NO NET

AFTER

1847 Emily Brontë publishes

Wuthering Heights, exploring
feminist issues of gender,

ENSNARES ME
domesticity, and women’s
status in Victorian society.

1853 Charlotte Brontë’s

Villette is published. It is

JANE EYRE (1847), CHARLOTTE BRONTË
considered a more mature
reworking of her earlier themes
of women’s self-determination,
identity, and independence.

1860 George Eliot’s The Mill
on the Floss contrasts themes
of female intellectual growth
with notions of family duty.

1892 Charlotte Perkins Gilman
publishes her short story “The

Yellow Wallpaper,” an early
example of American feminist
literature that shows women’s
mental health in relation to
patriarchal oppression.

When Jane Eyre was
first published in 1847,
it was credited to

Currer Bell, a pseudonym used by

Charlotte Brontë to conceal her
gender (the work of women writers
was often considered by critics
to be second-rate). The book was
also subtitled An Autobiography,
signaling that it had borrowed
from the 19th-century German

Bildungsroman genre (the “novel of
formation”). In these coming-of-age
stories, readers typically followed
protagonists through their lives
from childhood to adulthood as
they overcame obstacles to reach
maturity. Significantly, the
development of selfhood and

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See also: Wuthering Heights 132–37 ■ Middlemarch 182–83 ■ The Magic Mountain 224–27 ■ Wide Sargasso Sea 290

Haddon Hall, a picturesque medieval
manor house in Derbyshire, England,
has been used as the fictional
setting of Thornfield Hall for two
movie adaptations of Jane Eyre.

identity was often explored through
male characters because at that
time women were not generally
thought to possess the same depth.

What makes Jane Eyre radical for
its time is that it assumes that
women have a complex interior the
equal of men’s, rather than merely
being superficial exteriors defined
by their beauty alone.

beauty or morality, there is no
lack of freedom and independence.

distanced contemplation of Jane

These are expressed in numerous

Character development
as a “type” in the novel.

memorable passages that link

Brontë’s plain, passionate, and

The book tells the story of Jane

Jane’s desire for liberty and her
intelligent heroine enlists her

Eyre, from her childhood as an
restlessness with the language
readers to follow her emotional
orphan in the care of her aunt and
of revolt and rebellion.

development and her relationships,
her education at a charity boarding

At Thornfield Hall, Jane meets
and through these to sympathize
school, Lowood Institution, to her

(and falls in love with) the owner,
and empathize with the plight
employment as a governess at a
the mysterious Mr. Rochester. She
of women of her class and the
country house, Thornfield Hall.

becomes embroiled in his complex
inequalities in the lives of young

Brontë presents Jane as a complex,
affairs—in particular, with his
girls and women. Unlike many
three-dimensional human being,
insane first wife, Bertha Mason,
contemporary male authors who
and her readers are emotionally
who is imprisoned in the attic
presented female characters
invested in her, from her childhood
of the house. Unable to marry
as general figures of aesthetic
abuse to the later injustices of her

Rochester, Jane leaves Thornfield. ❯❯

Charlotte Brontë

Born on April 21, 1816 in Yorkshire, The immediate success of Jane England, Charlotte Brontë was the Eyre in 1847 was soon followed third daughter of the Reverend
by tragedy, when first her

Patrick Brontë and his wife Maria
brother Patrick and then her

Branwell. In 1824, she and her
two remaining sisters, Emily
elder sisters, Maria and Elizabeth, and Anne, died. Of the six were sent to a boarding school,

Brontë children, Charlotte was
where poor conditions resulted
the lone survivor. She married
in a typhoid outbreak. Charlotte

Reverend A. B. Nicholls in 1854,
blamed this for the early death
and died during childbirth in
of Maria and Elizabeth and used

March the following year.

her experiences at the school as
the basis for Lowood in Jane Eyre.

Other key works

Charlotte worked as a
governess and teacher. Her first

1849 Shirley
novel, The Professor, was rejected

1853 Villette
and only published posthumously.

1857 The Professor

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130 JANE EYRE

Some feminists view Bertha Mason—the deranged, imprisoned wife of Edward Rochester, Jane Eyre’s employer—as a metaphorical reflection of Jane and her own status in society.

Bertha Mason is Jane’s antagonist, but can be considered her psychological gothic double, a feminist version of Robert Louis Stevenson’s Jekyll and Hyde.

Jane hears voices.

Bertha is considered
to be insane.

Jane has been taught to
repress expressions of her

Bertha enacts her rage,
emotions as a child and
turbulent emotions, and
young woman.

passions.

Jane reacts “like a mad
cat”upon being locked

Bertha growls “like some
in a room as a child
strange wild animal.”

by her aunt.

Jane is imprisoned within

Bertha is literally
the domestic household.

imprisoned.

Jane Eyre

Bertha Mason

At first she is penniless, but fate
absolute a stagnation, precisely as
time. After the publication of
restores her fortunes, and draws
men would suffer; and it is narrow-
the novel a new type of female
her back to Rochester.

minded in their more privileged
protagonist was apparent in
fellow creatures to say that they

Victorian literature—a plain,

Domestic slavery
ought to confine themselves to
rebellious, and intelligent one.

Jane Eyre’s compelling story
making puddings and knitting

She offered a counterpart to
is far more than an English
stockings, to playing on the piano
the passive, sweet, pretty, and

Bildungsroman. Brontë infused
and embroidering bags.” This plea
domestic heroines who were
the work with the antislavery
for equality among the sexes runs
usually championed by male
and revolutionary rhetoric that she
throughout the novel as Jane Eyre
authors such as Charles Dickens
and her sisters had read in many
progressively builds a case for
and William Makepeace Thackeray.

19th-century political tracts. In
women’s need for liberty,

Jane Eyre, this political language
independence, and action.

Female spaces
is not used in reference to

These feminist aspects of

Jane Eyre opened the door for other
humanity in general, but with
the novel did not go unnoticed by
female writers of the period to
specific regard to middle-class

Brontë’s contemporaries. While
explore the limitations of women’s
women in Victorian society and
many early reviews praised the
lives and their desire for equality.

the domestic constraints placed
novel, some criticized its radical

It was a theme that was apparent in
upon their lives. In one of the most
content and “unfeminine“ view of
many of the great Victorian stories.

passionate passages of the novel,
womanhood. Jane Eyre, however,

George Eliot’s Middlemarch, for

Jane tells her readers that women
quickly became one of the most
example, criticizes patriarchy

“suffer from too rigid a restraint, too influential literary heroines of her and its moral weaknesses, and

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ROMANTICISM AND THE RISE OF THE NOVEL 131
brings the frustration of women’s
medical and cultural oppression of
ambitions into focus. The reality of
women within a patriarchal society.

domestic responsibility dictating

In her widely acclaimed 1966 novel
women’s lives, which Brontë

Wide Sargasso Sea, Dominica-born
introduced into the Victorian novel

British author Jean Rhys would
through her own evocative use

Women are supposed to be
go on to tell Bertha’s story from
of domestic spaces in Jane Eyre,
very calm generally: but
another perspective: Bertha
continued to haunt women writers
women feel just as men feel;

(originally named Antoinette), a
throughout the 19th century.

they need exercise for their

Creole woman in colonial Jamaica,

Many feminist readings of Jane
faculties and a field for
marries an Englishman and is

Eyre focus on key spaces such as
their efforts as much as
taken by him to England, where
specific rooms, windows, and the
their brothers do.

she is trapped in an oppressive
infamous attic at Thornfield Hall
patriarchal society, losing her

Jane Eyre
in which Jane’s love interest,
identity and becoming mad.

Edward Rochester, locks up his
first “mad” wife. The domestic

Not mad but trapped
sphere is intimately linked with

From a feminist perspective, Jane’s
the female body and the female self,
double is not “mad” but is forbidden
and for this reason, much women’s
her freedom—like all other women.

fiction of the time is riddled with
marry and lose their identity; she

In this context, Jane’s passionate
details of domesticity. Feminist
is not just a metaphor or mirror for
comment to Rochester that “I am
critics have argued that these are

Jane’s constraint and rage but also
no bird; and no net ensnares me:

the natural fictional manifestations
represents the “madness” of being

I am a free human being with
of women reacting to the strict
restricted in life.

an independent will” becomes
boundaries and gender ideologies

Later authors produced more
a poignant reminder of the social
of the time.

explicitly feminist interpretations
nets that trapped women in
of Bertha’s predicament. When the
the 19th century, inducing a

Madness and savagery

American writer Charlotte Perkins
psychological madness within

Jane is a woman who wants

Gilman published her feminist
them. When Brontë wrote Jane
more than the predefined life of
short story “The Yellow Wallpaper”

Eyre she, perhaps unwittingly,
a Victorian woman, and reacts
in 1892, she developed Brontë’s
created not one but two feminist
against her domestic confines
representation of Bertha’s insanity
icons: Jane herself, and the
as a prison from which she must
by calling into question the

“Madwoman in the Attic.” ■
escape. At a turbulent moment in
their relationship, Rochester calls

The Madwoman in the Attic

Jane a “resolute wild free thing,”

noting that “Whatever I do with its

The most famous feminist

A major theme in their analysis
cage, I cannot get at it—the savage
interpretation of Jane Eyre is
is that of the concept of
beautiful creature!” His description

The Madwoman in the Attic by

“madness” in relation to the
of Jane as a “savage” creature in

American scholars Sandra M.

emotional, psychological, and
a cage could also be a description

Gilbert and Susan Gubar.

physical confinement of women
of his first wife, Bertha, who is

Published in 1979, this
in the 19th century.

literally caged in the attic of his
influential book borrows its title

The authors argue that
home. Bertha’s madness is a
from Jane Eyre and examines

19th-century women were
manifestation of the limitations

Brontë’s novel alongside the
represented by male writers
that were placed on women’s lives
works of other female writers of
as either angels or monsters;
and it mirrors Jane’s sense of
the era, including Jane Austen,
women writers expressed

Mary Shelley, Emily Brontë,
their anxieties about these
imprisonment throughout her life.

George Eliot, Elizabeth Barrett
stereotypes by depicting their

Bertha is the most extreme and

Browning, Christina Rossetti,
own female characters as either
literal depiction of what happens
and Emily Dickinson.

submissive or entirely mad.

to 19th-century women when they

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I CANNOT LIVE

WITHOUT MY LIFE!

I CANNOT LIVE WITHOUT

MWUTHEYRING S

HEIGHTSO

(184 U

7),

L!

EMILY BRONTË

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134 WUTHERING HEIGHTS

IN CONTEXT

FOCUS

Emily Brontë’s Wuthering

Heights is considered
one of the most famous
love stories in Western culture.

Victorian gothic

This is, however, a questionable

BEFORE
assessment: while the intense

Oh I am burning! I wish I were

1837–39 Charles Dickens’

but doomed affair between its two
out of doors—I wish I were a
main characters, Catherine and

Oliver Twist shifts the gloomy
girl again, half savage and

Heathcliff, is certainly captivating,
atmosphere of early gothic
hardy, and free.

readers soon discover that—rather
fiction to the streets of London.

Wuthering Heights
than romance—the novel presents

1840 Edgar Allan Poe writes
a tale of violence, haunting, and
stories of intense relationships
abuse. In this book, Emily Brontë
mixed with gothic themes of
expands and reworks gothic
unsettling, crumbling houses;
themes in a way that exposes
ghosts; and corpses coming

Victorian concerns about gender,
back to life.

class, poverty, and domesticity.

years, Heathcliff’s loss of his
soulmate, Catherine, to Edgar

1847 Charlotte Brontë’s Jane

Myth on the moors

Linton, and the revenge he takes.

Eyre is published: its themes

The story told in the novel is one

Structurally, the novel uses
of gothic domestic abuse and
of revenge, dependence, and
a framing device—a separate
confinement are mirrored in
passionate longing, centered on the story within which the main Wuthering Heights.

manor called Wuthering Heights,
narrative is presented. This frame
set in the harsh landscape of the
consists in the tale of the visit of

AFTER

Yorkshire moors. It follows the life
a gentleman named Lockwood to

1852–53 Charles Dickens
of the antihero, Heathcliff, an

Wuthering Heights. An unsettling
writes Bleak House and
orphan adopted from the streets of
encounter with what he believes to
reworks the ruined gothic

Liverpool by the Earnshaw family.

be Catherine’s ghost traumatizes
castle of earlier fiction as the

Heathcliff is brought up alongside
him deeply, and he quizzes Nelly
slum tenements of London in
the family’s daughter, Catherine,

Dean, a former servant of Catherine,
the development of the
and son, Hindley, and the book tells about the history of the house. The Victorian urban gothic.

of their complex relationships and
story recounted by Nelly unfolds for
power struggles over the following
the reader as it does for Lockwood.

Emily Brontë

Born on July 30, 1818, Emily

Haworth, they decided to start

Brontë was the fifth daughter of
publishing their work under
the Reverend Patrick Brontë. The
male pseudonyms, Emily’s being
family lived in the village of

“Ellis Bell.” Her only published

Haworth, on the edge of the moors novel was Wuthering Heights in Yorkshire, a location that had

(1847), although she and her
a profound influence on Emily’s
sisters had brought out a volume
writing, and that of her literary
of their poems the previous year.

sisters, Charlotte and Anne.

Tragically, Emily never lived to

Her mother died in 1821, and
witness the success of her novel
in 1824 Emily was sent with her
since she died from tuberculosis
sisters to the Clergy Daughters’

just a year after its publication.

School in Lancashire. After the
death of her eldest sisters,

Other key works

Elizabeth and Maria, from
typhoid, the remaining three

1846 Poems by Currer, Ellis, and
siblings returned home. Later, at

Acton Bell

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ROMANTICISM AND THE RISE OF THE NOVEL 135

See also: Jane Eyre 128–31 ■ Bleak House 146–49 ■ Oliver Twist 151 ■ Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque 152 ■

Great Expectations 198

Wuthering Heights did not enjoy
immediate success when it was
published in 1847, perhaps because

Victorian sensibilities could not
cope with its unbridled passion
and cruelty. But the tide of public
opinion turned when later critics
championed the novel. An essay on

Familial

Class

Patriarchal
the work by English writer Virginia
abuse
victimization
oppression

Woolf in 1916 marked a shift in how
the text was interpreted. Woolf
describes the book as being like a
fairy tale or myth that is timeless
in nature. This perspective on

Confinement

Fear of
the novel became popular and is
poverty
current today; however, it tends to
ignore or diminish the significance
of Brontë’s use of gothic literary
conventions in her narrative, and

The house in Wuthering Heights is symbolic of the tumult of the story, her work’s own relationship with
and of the emotional turmoil of its protagonists. Rather than functioning as a the literature and issues of its time.

place of refuge from the outside, the home is transformed into a gothic site of abuse, fear, claustrophobia, exploitation, and oppression.

Gothic themes

What is particularly striking about
thus deepening the themes, style,
used as an insult for someone who

Wuthering Heights is the way that
and meanings associated with
was homeless, a wanderer, and
it adapts Victorian gothic themes.

earlier gothic literature. Instead
therefore to be feared.

Other contemporary writers, such
of the crumbling medieval castle,

Brontë’s more complex take on
as Charles Dickens, used gothic
for example, Dickens portrayed
the gothic is also evident in her
elements within realist novels,
teetering urban landscapes, rife
portrayal of the conflicts within
with poverty and exploitation. In
her characters’ minds. Catherine,
place of the terrifying manor house, for example, when forced to choose with its victimized inhabitants
between Heathcliff and Linton,
within, Dickens presented the
does not sleep for three days and
horrifying abuse that occurred
is unable to distinguish between
in the gloomy London streets
imagination and reality.

Terror made me cruel; and
outside the home.

finding it useless to attempt

Brontë took things further than

Victorian respectability
shaking the creature off, I

Dickens, expanding on gothic

Racial difference and working-
pulled its wrist on to the broken literary traditions through the class poverty were significant
pane, and rubbed it to and fro character of Heathcliff, who is concerns for the Victorians.

until the blood ran down and brought to the house of Wuthering They fashioned their ideas of
soaked the bed-clothes.

Heights as a boy. When he arrives
respectability and of English

Wuthering Heights
in the household, and indeed
national identity through the
throughout the story, he is referred
idealized domestic space of the
to as a “gypsy.” For the Victorians,
middle-class home. For example,
the word “gypsy” had several

Dickens himself often depicted
connotations: it indicated someone
clichéd domestic scenes where the
of a different race, and it was also
respectability of the bourgeois ❯❯

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136 WUTHERING HEIGHTS

The wild moorland setting
reveals that crime and exploitation

Catherine utters a similar line:

symbolizes the barbaric threat
were not simply the domain of the

“Whatever our souls are made of,
presented by nature. The desolate
urban working-class poor.

his and mine are the same.” For her,
landscape, in which it is easy to get

Heathcliff is not a source of girlish
lost, is one of the book’s characters.

Lovers or vampires?

infatuation and she even warns

Catherine and Heathcliff’s
her sister-in-law not to idealize
space was contrasted with the
relationship is more vampiric
him as the hero of a romance book.

literal and moral poverty of the
than romantic. They draw the life

Instead, she sees him for what
streets outside. Brontë, however,
force from each other in pursuit
he is: selfish and predatory. She is
brought the raw realities of the
of their needs and revenge, and
also a willfully stubborn and selfish
outside into the home, recalling
often mirror each other’s desires
character and her actions mirror
earlier gothic narratives where
and frustrations with society.

Heathcliff’s unbending will.

households were not sites of refuge

Heathcliff’s plea to Catherine

Bred in poverty and abused
or comfort, but spaces of familial
that “I cannot live without my life!

at Wuthering Heights for his lower
abuse. In doing so, she reveals

I cannot live without my soul!”

class, Heathcliff desires social
to her contemporary reader that
is an indicator of how theirs is
power through class elevation,
the “slavery” and “homelessness”

not a flowery love union, but
money, and the ownership of
associated with Heathcliff are
an existential meeting of souls.

property, represented by Catherine.

also evident within the idealized

Like other middle-class women
domestic sphere: in effect, the
of the period, Catherine is herself
home is no safer than the crime-
regarded as a piece of property, a
ridden gothic streets.

feature of the household in which

As an abandoned waif found
she is confined. For her, Heathcliff
in Liverpool, Heathcliff has been
represents a weapon against the
associated not only with gypsies

My great miseries in
respectable middle-class world
but also with the slave trade of the
this world have been
she is expected to conform to as
period. As a character, he may be

Heathcliff’s miseries, and
she enters womanhood.

seen as a gothic manifestation of

I watched and felt each
the outside, bringing the terror
from the beginning.

Gender and the domestic
of the unfamiliar into the domestic

Wuthering Heights

The relationship between Victorian
environment. Through his strong
gothic and gender is an important
attachment to Catherine, who, like
aspect of Wuthering Heights that is
him, experiences only neglect
strongly evident in one of the most
and abuse within the house of
violent and famous passages in the

Wuthering Heights, his presence
novel. When the hapless Lockwood

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ROMANTICISM AND THE RISE OF THE NOVEL 137
first comes to Wuthering Heights,
anywhere. For her, the real gothic
he expects to find a typical
terror is the house’s inability to

Victorian country house—the kind
accommodate her and her desires.

of domestic home Dickens was

Instead, like Lockwood’s fracturing
famous for writing about, with its
of her skin in death, her identity is
comforting fireside scenes of
broken in life. Through her, Brontë
familial bliss and harmony. Instead, reveals the limits of the Victorian he seems to stumble into the pages domestic ideology that was often of a gothic novel, where strange
used to define women in the period.

dogs attack him, a surly owner
banishes him, and a mysterious

Imprisoned by the home
housekeeper sends him to sleep

During the 19th century, women
in a haunted room.

were intimately linked with the

Lockwood’s encounter with
site of the home to the extent that

Catherine’s child-ghost in her old
eminent Victorian critics such as

The Brontë sisters (Anne, Emily, and
bedroom culminates in a startling

John Ruskin described women’s

Charlotte), shown here in a painting by
and gory image of him deliberately
bodies themselves as private
their brother Bramwell, collaborated on
rubbing the ghost’s bare wrist
spaces of domesticity. This
literary works and explored similar
on the jagged glass of a broken
claustrophobic limiting of women’s
themes in their writing.

window. This violent, disturbing
lives is an issue that is echoed
image could be interpreted as
in Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre
dilemma that makes her question
simple gothic melodrama were
through the literal imprisonment
where she belongs and drains her of
it not for the fact that Catherine’s
of a woman within the household.

her life and vitality, leaving only a
relationship with her home is a

In Wuthering Heights, this gothic
spectral “shadow” of her former self,
complex one. Throughout her
theme of female imprisonment,
first metaphorically, then literally.

life, she experiences households
expressed through Catherine,

This is the power of Wuthering
as sites of confinement. She
suggests that the only way out

Heights and its use of Victorian
seeks escape from them and yet,
for women is through a violent
gothic elements; it reveals that
ironically, haunts the edges of
self-destruction that results in
the fundamental tragedy of the tale

Wuthering Heights, seeking
a permanent homelessness.

lies not in the doomed relationship
entry into it after her death. Like

For Catherine, Victorian
between Catherine and Heathcliff,

Heathcliff, she is a “homeless”

domestic ideology is not only a
but rather in the lack of a true space
character who does not belong
prison, it is also an existential
of belonging for either of them. ■

The destinies of two
families are intertwined in

Earnshaw

Linton

Wuthering Heights. Brontë
tends to repeat names,
often causing confusion
in the minds of readers.

Frances

Hindley

Catherine

Edgar

Isabella

Heathcliff

(family

Earnshaw

Earnshaw

Linton

Linton

(orphan)

unknown)

Hareton

Catherine

Linton

Earnshaw

Linton

Heathcliff

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THERE IS NO FOLLY OF THE

BEAST

OF THE EARTH WHICH IS NOT

INFINITELY OUTDONE BY THE

MADNESS OF MEN

MOBY-DICK (1851), HERMAN MELVILLE

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140 MOBY-DICK

IN CONTEXT

FOCUS

Early to mid-19th-century

America witnessed the
development of two strands
of Romanticism. One, practiced

Dark Romanticism
notably by Ralph Waldo Emerson

BEFORE
and Henry David Thoreau, was

… all that cracks the sinews

1845 In “The Raven,” a poem

Transcendentalism, an idealistic
and cakes the brain; all the
movement centered on a belief in
by Edgar Allan Poe, the bird
subtle demonisms of life and
the soul or “inner light,” and the
repeats the word “Nevermore”

thought; all evil, to crazy
inherent goodness of humans and
to accelerate a grief-stricken

Ahab, were visibly personified,
the natural world. The other was
lover’s descent into madness.

and made practically

Dark Romanticism, which took a
assailable in Moby Dick.

1850 In Nathaniel Hawthorne’s
less optimistic view of human

Moby-Dick

The Scarlet Letter, Hester
nature; writers such as Edgar Allan

Prynne has a daughter out of

Poe, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and
wedlock. The scarlet letter is

Herman Melville explored ideas

“A” for “Adulteress,” which she
of the individual susceptible to sin
must wear on her dress.

and self-destruction, in a reaction
against Trancendentalist idealism.

1851 The House of the Seven

In their poetry and prose from

Gables, also by Hawthorne,

The dark side
about 1836 through the 1840s,
explores guilt, retribution, and

Both schools recognized a spiritual
exponents of Dark Romanticism
atonement, with hints of the
energy in nature, but whereas the
often depicted individuals failing
supernatural and witchcraft.

Transcendentalists saw nature as
in their attempts to bring about
a mediating channel between God
positive change. Drawn to horror,

AFTER
and humanity, the Dark Romantics
the supernatural, and the macabre,

1853 In a foreshadowing of
were less sanguine about human
as well as to suffering and tragedy,
existential literature, a legal
perfectibility. They saw nature as
they were fascinated by the human
copyist in Melville’s story
embodying dark, mysterious truths
propensity for evil and by the

Bartleby, the Scrivener politely
that humans confront at their peril.

psychological consequences of
refuses to accept his tasks,

In the same spirit of pessimism,
sin, guilt, revenge, and insanity.

dwindling to mere existence.

they regarded attempts at social

Such elements were also found
reform as dubiously utopian.

in gothic literature, and paved

Herman Melville

The son of an importer and

Moby-Dick, and Melville hoped
merchant, Melville was born in
to capitalize on popular interest

1819 in New York. Starting his
in marine adventure. But by the
working life at his late father’s
time the book was published,
business, he then taught at local
public interest had shifted to the
schools, worked on his uncle’s

American West, and Moby-Dick
farm, and clerked in a bank. At 20, was not seen as a masterpiece he enrolled as cabin boy on a
in Melville’s lifetime. He died of
merchant ship sailing to Liverpool. a heart attack in 1891.

In 1841 he got a job aboard the

Acushnet, a whaling ship. An

Other key works
interlude of living in the

Marquesas Islands in the South

1846 Typee

Pacific inspired his first novel,

1853 Bartleby, the Scrivener

Typee. Later he served on more

1857 The Confidence-Man
whalers and on a US Navy frigate.

1888–91 Billy Budd (published

Seafaring provided material for
posthumously in 1924)

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ROMANTICISM AND THE RISE OF THE NOVEL 141

See also: First Folio 82–89 ■ Frankenstein 120–21 ■ Leaves of Grass 125 ■ Wuthering Heights 132–37 ■

Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque 152 ■ The Scarlet Letter 153 ■ Dracula 195 ■ Gravity’s Rainbow 296–97

Transcendentalism and Dark Romanticism were two opposing sides of the American Renaissance of the mid-19th century. The Transcendentalists saw both nature and people as inherently good; conversely, for the Dark Romantics, nature was a potentially sinister force and humans infinitely fallible.

Nature is a divine

Nature is a sinister
spiritual force that
spiritual force that
mediates between
reveals terrifying
man and God.

truths.

Humankind possesses

Humankind is
a divine spark, making
imperfect, and inclined
humans innately good.

toward sin and self-
destruction.

Individuals are at their

Individuals fail when
best when self-reliant
trying to change things
and independent.

for the better.

Transcendentalism

Dark Romanticism
the way for the modern horror story. was greatly inspired by the narrator’s quest to discover

Since the truths the Dark Romantics older writer’s intense Romantic meaning “in the damp, drizzly
sought to reveal were primitive
inwardness and his rejection of

November of [his] soul.”

and irrational, they favored the use
conformity. Later he moved with

In fact, Ishmael’s own quest
of symbolism—a mode of
his wife and family to live near
is paired with an obsessive and
communication that bypassed the

Hawthorne, and he included a
ultimately tragic adventure ❯❯
faculty of reason. Edgar Allan Poe
dedication to him in the opening
wrote stories and poems featuring
pages of Moby-Dick, which read
somber, dreamlike details such as

“in token of my admiration for
people being buried alive, decaying your genius.”

mansions, and a raven that inflicts
psychological torment. Nathaniel

The revenge quest

Hawthorne, who found his own

Rich in language, incident,

For all men tragically
nightmares in the hypocrisy
character, and symbolism, and
great are made so through
of Puritanism in the real world,
displaying an extraordinary depth
a certain morbidness …

wrote about shame and secret sin.

and breadth of knowledge within
all mortal greatness is

On August 5, 1850 two of the
its maritime subject area, Moby-
but disease.

great writers of Dark Romanticism,

Dick; or, The Whale is the first

Moby-Dick

Hawthorne, 46, and Herman
great American fictional epic. It is

Melville, 31, met on a hike up a
a book driven by an intense literary
mountain in Massachusetts.

ambition; from its famous opening

Melville, in the throes of writing
line, “Call me Ishmael,” it sweeps
his great whaling novel Moby-Dick,
the reader along, following the

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142 MOBY-DICK
engaged in a battle with God, the
by the British Puritan settlers
ineffable presence behind Moby
during the 17th century. The story

Dick’s “unreasoning mask”—
therefore hints at the doom of

Ahab’s vision of the world being
a civilization brought about by
one in which all objects represent
unquenchable thirst for material
something unknown, inscrutable,
progress, imperial expansion, white
and malign. By striking at the whale, supremacy, and the exploitation of he strikes at God, or that unknown
nature. The ship may be seen as a
agent. The story of his obsession,
microcosm of the world, and of
as the novel relates it, is also an

America in particular; and since
inquiry into the meaning of life and Ahab’s obsession infects the whole death, with insights on subjects
ship, a whole society is implicated.

from religion to madness.

The crew is a mixture of

Ahab’s violent craving for
races and creeds, reflecting the
revenge is tempered only by his
universality of Melville’s vision.

tender feelings, toward the end,

Working together, the shipmates
for the young black deckhand
are mutually dependent. Freedom
named Pip, and by a short interlude of movement and communication The persona of Ahab as a hate-filled,
of nostalgia, when he drops a single takes place across the hierarchical obsessive sea captain is at first built
tear into the sea. Speaking to the
boundaries of status and command.

through secondhand information and

Pequod’s chief mate, Starbuck, of
hearsay; Ahab only physically appears
his 40 years of oceanic solitude,
more than 100 pages into the novel.

he thinks of his wife (“I widowed
that poor girl when I married her,
conducted by Ahab, the captain

Starbuck”) and of his little boy.

of the whaling ship Pequod, as he

These regrets are overwhelmed
searches the seas for the gigantic
by his hate-filled lust (two deadly

And of all these
albino sperm whale known as
sins in one) for vengeance.

things the Albino whale

Moby Dick that has bitten off one
was the symbol.

of his legs below the knee. Ahab,

A nation afloat

Moby-Dick

“a grand, ungodly, god-like man,”

The Pequod’s voyage, and even
who stomps around the deck on his the name of the ship itself, has prosthesis made from whale bone,
allegorical overtones: the Pequod
sends out a satanic charisma. At a

(or Pequot) was a Native American
profound pyschological level he is
tribe that was almost exterminated

The giant albino whale that gives its name to Melville’s novel is a vivid symbol of Ahab’s quest for vengeance. However, the animal is interpreted by other characters in various ways, depending on their education, class, and faith—or lack thereof.

A source
of glory

The mask of an

The embodiment

A blank
and profit
inscrutable God
of man’s
canvas, yet to

A mythical
limitations
be fashioned
beast
by man

Terrible,

Ahab’s madness
unfeeling
made flesh

Evil incarnate
nature

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ROMANTICISM AND THE RISE OF THE NOVEL 143

16–25, Ishmael, the illegitimate son

Ishmael signs up on the Pequod, a
of the patriarch Abraham, was cast character named Elijah (in another out in favor of the legitimate son,
biblical equivalence) predicts a

Isaac. By giving his narrator this
vague doom for the vessel. Later,
name, Melville underlines the fact
a prophecy by Fedallah, a harpooner,

Moby Dick seeks thee
that Ishmael is a wanderer and
foreshadows the final stages of the
not. It is thou, thou, that
an outsider: his inexperience at
narrative’s trajectory. He says that
madly seekest him!

whaling prevents his unqualified
the captain will die only after

Moby-Dick
acceptance by the crew. Ahab, in
seeing two hearses, one “not made

Kings 1.21, is a ruler who covets a
by mortal hands” and one made of
vineyard and obtains it by means
wood grown in the US—which
of deceit, but is destined to come

Ahab interprets as a sign of his
to an inglorious end. His namesake
surviving the voyage.

follows a loosely analogous pattern
in Moby-Dick, finding success in a

Hellfire and retribution

However, this diverse floating
way that seals his own doom.

Ishmael comments tartly, after
society is far from democratic:

Melville, concerned with the
making the acquaintance of the
social and racial distinctions
machinations of chance and fate,
harpooner Queequeg: “Better
make for inequality and all on
uses prophecy to create a sense
sleep with a sober cannibal than
board bend to the iron rule of Ahab. of ominous foreboding. Before a drunken Christian.” Such ❯❯

The diversity of thoughts and
feelings experienced by the crew of
the whaler forms a dramatic
counterpoint to the monomania of
the captain and the monolithic
energy of the whale that he is
determined to track down and kill.

The ship is a floating factory,
as well as a vessel of pursuit, and

Melville was fully conscious of
the parallels that readers would
see between the ship and

American capitalism, the machine
age, and the market economy.

The Bible and prophecy

Moby-Dick is an epic tale of
blasphemous aspiration (“Talk
not to me of blasphemy, man;”

says Ahab, “I’d strike the sun if
it insulted me”), and it uses biblical
references to add meaning to its
structure. Its two main characters,

Ishmael and Ahab, are named after
figures in the Bible. In Genesis

Whaling ships were a regular sight
in New Bedford, Massachusetts, where

Melville worked and where the early
parts of Moby-Dick are set. The last
whaler left the harbor in 1925.

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144 MOBY-DICK

Forecastle”), a short dramatization.

In depicting self-destructive
ambition, Melville was inspired
by the Elizabethan tragic hero:

Ahab has echoes of Shakespeare’s
tragic hero-villain Macbeth, of King

Lear in his heartless unreason, and
of Hamlet in his impulse to avenge.

In an essay of 1850, Melville wrote
of admiring the “deep far-away
things” in Shakespeare and the
vital truths that are spoken by his

“dark characters.” Melville used
explicitly Shakespearean means
to express his vision, from the
soliloquies already mentioned (used
with great power by Shakespeare)

to intense, elevated language to
prose that actually has the cadence
of blank verse (the unrhymed,
rhythmic poetic line).

Melville also drew inspiration
for the language of the book from

John Milton’s epic blank-verse
poem Paradise Lost. There are

The Nantucket whaling ship Essex he had written “a wicked book,”

parallels too with Samuel Taylor
encountered a large sperm whale in
and, in an earlier letter, that his

Coleridge’s poem The Rime of the
the Pacific Ocean in 1820 and sank. It
novel was “broiled in hell-fire.”

Ancient Mariner—the albatross
was one of several events that inspired

The ship itself, painted black
brought down by the mariner is

Melville to write Moby-Dick.

and festooned with the enormous
equivalent to Melville’s whale.

teeth and bones of sperm whales,
undermining of Christian orthodoxy, is reminiscent of the funeral ship Encylopedic elements
and of other religions too, is a
of some dark, tribal religion—

The use of various elements from
strand running through the novel.

Melville describes it as a “cannibal
drama and poetry, with the bold

Assembling the crew on deck,
of a craft, tricking herself forth in
originality that helps to make

Ahab makes the three “pagan”

the chased bones of her enemies.”

Moby-Dick such a major landmark
harpooners drink from the hollow

At night, the fires used to melt the
heads of their steel harpoons, in a
whale blubber turn it into a “red
scene that resembles a sacrilegious hell.” In this way, even the setting mass. He calls them his cardinals
of the novel picks up the note of
and their drinking vessels chalices, subverted faith that is so often urging them to swear death to
sounded in the action and dialogue.

Moby Dick. To the harpoon point,

I see in him outrageous
anointed with blood, that he will

Drama and poetry
strength, with an inscrutable
use to skewer the whale, he later

The book uses devices that are
malice sinewing it.

says mockingly in Latin: “I baptize
more often associated with drama

Moby-Dick
you, not in the name of the Father
than with novels, including
but in the name of the Devil”—a
soliloquies (speeches sharing a
sentence that Melville described to
character’s thoughts directly with

Hawthorne as the book’s “secret
the audience), stage directions,
motto.” He wrote to Hawthorne that and even, in Chapter 40 (“Midnight, US_138-145_MobyDick.indd 144

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ROMANTICISM AND THE RISE OF THE NOVEL 145
an account of the extraction of
whale oil, or a discussion about
the portrayal of whales in art. The
prodigious volume and density
of knowledge on display seem
appropriate to Melville’s experience

How can’st thou endure
as a self-taught man: “I have
without being mad? Do the
swam through libraries,” declares
heavens yet hate thee, that

Ishmael, and Melville did the same,
thou can’st not go mad?

absorbing mountains of knowledge

Moby-Dick
through his own reading, often
while at sea himself. The content
and tone of the encyclopedic
chapters provide the novel with a
vastly detailed filling in of factual

Queequeg, the tattooed Polynesian
realism. This helps to relate
harpooner, is part of the international

Melville’s Dark Romantic world
impressiveness and theatrical
crew of the Pequod. Although said to
view to the civilization inhabited
exclamation. Genres and styles
be a pagan and a cannibal, he is calm,
by the book’s readers, and taught to are mixed to powerful effect.

generous, honest, and loyal.

them through science and history.

Moby-Dick has an encyclopedic
depth and wide-ranging literary
in fiction, is offset by borrowings

A compelling mix
styles; since the oceans occupy
from another literary genre: the

The strands of Shakespearean
two-thirds of the Earth’s surface,
encyclopedia. As the suspense of
drama and factual content give the
it could perhaps be described as
the story is ratcheted up through
novel two of its characteristic prose a psychological drama conceived a series of increasingly dramatic
styles, and offset against both is a
on the largest imaginable scale.

whale hunts, the momentum is
third: conversational casualness.

With its consideration of good and
deliberately frozen, at strategic

This mode announces itself in
evil in an indifferent cosmos, and
intervals, by chapters that present

Ishmael’s second sentence (“Some
its realization of a detailed social
a wealth of anthropological,
years ago—never mind how long
world, this monumental epic of
zoological, and other factual
precisely—having little or no
fanaticism infused with a tragic
information on whales and the
money …”) and surfaces frequently
vision set a new benchmark for
activity of whaling—for example,
in the midst of writing of elaborate
fictional ambition. ■

The Great American Novel

Writing the “Great American

Beecher Stowe, 1852) and, later,
and philosophical ideas. Moby-

Novel,” as an expression of

Beloved (Toni Morrison, 1987),

Dick, the first Great American
nationalist pride and a challenge was deemed appropriate. Some Novel, belongs to both the
to the European fictional canon,
candidates for the label focused
second and the third of these
became an explicit ambition in
on self-creation, which in the 20th
categories; the next major
the 19th century.

century became the cornerstone
contender, The Adventures of

The phrase “Great American
of the American Dream; these

Huckleberry Finn (Mark Twain,

Novel” was devised by the
themes were scrutinized in The

1884), largely to the second.

novelist John De Forest in 1868.

Great Gatsby (F. Scott Fitzgerald,

In the 21st century, the

An essential qualification was

1925) and Invisible Man (Ralph

Great American Novel remains
that the book should capture

Ellison, 1952). Another suitable
an ideal for writers and readers,
a distinctively American ethos.

type was the so-called mega
although the notion has lost

A family saga addressing race
novel, with multiple characters
its swagger, and the idea of a
and other social tensions, such
and plot lines presenting a
unifying “American” voice is
as Uncle Tom’s Cabin (Harriet
microcosm of contrasting social
rejected by many critics.

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146

ALL PARTINGS IN CONTEXT

FOCUS

Serial fiction

FORESHADOW

BEFORE

1836–37 Charles Dickens’ The

Pickwick Papers is published
in 20 monthly installments.

THE GREAT

It establishes the popularity
and financial viability of
serializing narrative fiction.

FINAL ONE

1844–45 The Count of

Monte Cristo, a thrilling
adventure of a man’s false
imprisonment and his
subsequent revenge, by

BLEAK HOUSE (1852–1853), CHARLES DICKENS

Alexandre Dumas, is
published in installments.

AFTER

1856 Gustave Flaubert’s debut
novel Madame Bovary appears
in serial form in the literary
magazine Revue de Paris.

1868 Wilkie Collins’ The

Moonstone proves so popular
that it is extended from 26 to

32 serialized episodes.

Readers on both sides of
the Atlantic Ocean could
barely contain themselves
as they awaited the final
installment of Charles Dickens’

serialized The Old Curiosity Shop—
so much so, that when the ship
carrying it finally docked in New

York, in 1841, excited readers
waiting at the port rushed forward
across the wharf, desperate to find
out whether Little Nell, the novel’s
protagonist, had died.

Such enthusiasm showed just
how popular the work of Charles

Dickens had become. But it also
highlighted the popularity of
serialization—a process by which
a novel was published in episodes

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ROMANTICISM AND THE RISE OF THE NOVEL 147

See also: Oliver Twist 151 ■ The Count of Monte Cristo 152–53 ■ Vanity Fair 153

■ David Copperfield 153 ■ Madame Bovary 158–63 ■ The Moonstone 198–99
dramatic storytelling style. It also
helped to create an intimacy
between him and his readers—he
sometimes even altered the plot
of later installments in response

The one great principle
to his readers’ reactions.

of the English law is, to
make business for itself.

Mature complexity

Bleak House

Bleak House was published in
monthly installments between

March 1852 and September 1853.

Charles Dickens

It was Dickens’ ninth novel and

Born in Portsmouth, England,
is thought by many to be one of his
on February 7, 1812, Charles
most mature. English writer and

Dickens was the second of
critic G. K. Chesterton considered it
eight children. When he was
before being offered in book form.

to be his best novel, a view shared

12, his father was imprisoned

Improved printing technology,
by many readers, then and now.

for debt. Charles left school
cheaper paper, the growth of the

An immense and complex
and worked in a bootblacking
railroads, and a rise in literacy all
novel, Bleak House is set mainly
factory, a grim experience that
contributed to the emergence of
in London but also in Lincolnshire
he would describe in David
serial fiction. Price, too, played
in the east of England. Its main

Copperfield. Later he worked
a part: readers were more willing
theme is the iniquities of the
as a legal clerk and started
or able to pay per episode than to

English legal system at that time,
writing as a journalist.

buy an expensive book outright. In
which through delays, obfuscation,

In 1836 Dickens married
this way serial fiction enabled the
and lack of humanity, destroyed

Catherine Hogarth and began
work on The Pickwick Papers,
growth of a mass reading public.

the lives of innocent individuals.

establishing his reputation

Central to the story, and woven
as a novelist. Over the next

Serial pioneer
through it, is the fictional case of

30 years, he published 12

When Charles Dickens embarked

Jarndyce and Jarndyce, a legal ❯❯
major novels; he also edited
on his novel-writing career, he had
periodicals and wrote
intended to produce a three-volume
numerous articles, short
novel, in the conventional tradition
stories, and plays. He
of the time. However, his publishers
separated from Catherine
suggested that he write a series
in 1858, having fathered
of articles to accompany some

10 children. Dickens died in
sporting prints. According to

1870 and was buried in Poets’

Dickens, “My friends told me it was

Corner, Westminster Abbey.

a low, cheap form of publication, by
which I would ruin all my hopes,”

Other key works
but he accepted and began work

1836–37 The Pickwick Papers
on the first episode of The Pickwick

1837–39 Oliver Twist

Papers. It was a huge success, and

1843 A Christmas Carol
from then on Dickens published all

1849–50 David Copperfield
of his novels in serial form.

Each installment of Bleak House was

1855–57 Little Dorrit

Despite the stress involved
accompanied by two illustrations by

1859 A Tale of Two Cities
in meeting a weekly or monthly

Hablot Knight Browne, enhancing

1860–61 Great Expectations
deadline, the serial format perfectly
the mood of the text—this illustration

1864–65 Our Mutual Friend
suited Dickens’ energetic and
shows the stately home Chesney Wold.

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148 BLEAK HOUSE

Pea-soupers, heavy fogs containing
soot and other pollutants, were a
feature of 19th-century London. In

Bleak House, fog serves as a symbol
of confusion and oppression.

They go to live in the eponymous

Bleak House with their guardian,

John Jarndyce, a kindly man and
benefactor who has resolutely
distanced himself from the infamous
lawsuit and warns his young wards
to do the same. But each is touched
by the case, and Carstone becomes
dangerously sucked into it.

dispute over an inheritance that
the main characters. He also

Brought up as a child by a harsh
has already lasted several decades
provides clues to mysteries that
aunt, and with a shameful mystery
by the time the novel begins,
will eventually unfold.

surrounding her birth, Esther plays
and which has become “… so

The book’s memorable opening
a central role in the novel. She is a
complicated that no man alive
describes London in November, fog modest, shy, self-effacing young knows what it is.”

on the river seeping into the bones
woman, who says of herself, “I
of the characters, symbolizing the
know I am not very clever.”

Multiple layers
confusion and corruption that

Esther is also one of the two

However, Bleak House is not
emanate from the fog’s densest
narrators that Dickens uses. Her
just an attack on the English
point—the High Court of Chancery. first-person narrative weaves in and legal system: it is also a murder

Moving outward to Lincolnshire, it
out of the story, describing people
mystery, a whodunnit, and a
reappears as mist around Chesney
and events from a personal and
searing exploration of the poverty,

Wold, the estate of the aristocratic
retrospective view. She provides
disease, and neglect that were part

Lord and Lady Dedlock.

insight into and criticism of the
of 19th-century England. The novel

We are introduced to three main other characters. The other narrator includes plots and subplots that
characters: Esther Summerson,
is an anonymous third-person voice
touch on themes of secrets, guilt,

Ada Clare, and Richard Carstone.

that describes events in the present
greed, self-interest, love, and

All are orphans, their lives already
tense, creating dramatic tension
kindness. Like all of Dickens’

affected by the long-running
and highlighting social injustice—
novels, it includes a huge and

Jarndyce and Jarndyce case.

the voice of conscience.

memorable cast of characters,
who interlink with each other in

Remarkable characters
ways that are both obvious and

Each member of Bleak House’s
extremely subtle (introducing
large cast is carefully named and
surprise into the serial form), most
presented to make social points;
of them drawn into each other’s
characters are often larger than life,
lives through the complex web

Fog everywhere. Fog up the
but are never oversimplified. The
of Jarndyce and Jarndyce. Such
river, where it flows among
complexity of Dickens’ characters
features grew out of the serial
green aits and meadows;
made them compelling to readers,
nature of the work, its episodic
fog down the river…

who followed their fortunes in
creation allowing for many subplots

Bleak House
installments in much the same
involving numerous characters.

way that today’s television viewers

Dickens starts to lay the basis
tune in to weekly soap operas.

for his story in the very first

Lord and Lady Dedlock
episode, introducing the reader
epitomize the deadness, sterility,
to places, events, and several of
and aloofness of the aristocracy,

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ROMANTICISM AND THE RISE OF THE NOVEL 149
although the haughty coldness of

Dickens treats the locations in Bleak House almost as Lady Dedlock hides a dark secret.

characters in their own right. Vividly portrayed, they serve Miss Flite, who befriends the young as a shorthand for class and provide a credible backdrop for wards, is a half-crazed old woman,
people of very different social status to meet and interact.

driven insane by the Jarndyce and

Jarndyce case. Carrying a bag of
documents, she haunts Chancery,
expecting a day of judgement when
she will release the birds she keeps
in cages, whose names chillingly
include Ashes, Waste, Ruin, and

Despair. Krook, a scrap merchant
fond of rum and obsessed by the
court case, plays a critical role until

Lincoln’s Inn

Tom-All-Alone’s
one day, in a startling end to the

Much of the action—especially the legal

The poverty and ruinous living and working
tenth installment, he spontaneously
machinations of Jarndyce and Jarndyce—
conditions in Dickensian London are
combusts. And Tulkinghorn,
occurs in and around Lincoln’s Inn, one
encapsulated in the tumbling slum called
of four Inns of Court in London. This was

Tom-All-Alone’s. Although this area is

Dedlock’s lawyer, haunts the pages,
the home of Tulkinghorn and also of
fictional, it may have been based on an area
stalking the mystery that links the

Dickens’ lawyer in real life.

called Devil’s Acre in London’s Westminster.

Dedlocks and Esther Summerson.

Neglect vs. kindness

Selfishness, greed, hypocrisy,
and neglect are common themes of
the book: Mrs. Jellyby neglects her
own children for her philanthropic
interests; self-centred “model of

Deportment” Mr. Turveydrop shows
little interest in his hardworking,

St. Albans

Lincolnshire Wolds
impoverished son; the grotesque

Dickens locates John Jarndyce’s middle-

Dickens placed Chesney Wold—the grand
class home, Bleak House, in St. Albans,
home of Sir Leicester and Lady Honoria

Smallwood family are obsessed by

Hertfordshire, but it is believed to have

Dedlock—in Lincolnshire. Its description

“compound interest”; and all of
been modeled on the house in Broadstairs,
is based on Rockingham Castle in
society neglects Jo, a poor young

Kent, where he stayed with his family

Leicestershire, which was owned by his
every summer for several years.

friends Richard and Lavinia Watson.

crossing sweeper, who is constantly
told to “move on.” Hypocrisy is
caricatured in the persons of
tracks down the culprit. Dickens

Collins’ detective novel The

Chadband, a oily Evangelical
creates false clues in this subplot;

Moonstone first appeared in
churchman, and Harold Skimpole,
these appeared tantalizingly as
installments, and episodes of Sir
who presents himself as untouched cliff-hangers at the end of two Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock
by the monetary realities around
installments, keeping readers in

Holmes tales were published in The
him, yet cadges money from all his
suspense and eager to read more.

Strand Magazine. Outside Britain,
friends. By contrast, kindness is

Some early reviews were critical

Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina was
shown to all by Esther, Ada, and
of Bleak House, feeling that it was
published serially, as was Fyodor
their benefactor John Jarndyce.

too gloomy and lacking in humor.

Dostoyevsky’s The Brothers

Dickens’ friend and biographer John

Karamazov. Radio and television

Serial success

Forster described it as “too real,” but eventually took over from magazine Bleak House is also arguably one
readers clearly disagreed: sales were serials, but in 1984 American writer of the earliest detective novels in
between 34,000 and 43,000 copies

Tom Wolfe returned to serialization

English literature. The detective
a month. Following the success of
with The Bonfire of the Vanities,
is Mr. Bucket, a genial, terrier-like

Dickens, other writers also gained
which was first published in Rolling
man, who, after a ghastly murder,
readers via serialization. Wilkie

Stone magazine. ■

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150

FURTHER READING

RENÉ
stories and essays. It includes tales
appearance as an outlaw with
such as “Rip van Winkle,” in which
exemplary archery skills and a

(1802), FRANCOIS-RENÉ
the main character sleeps through
compelling sense of justice. Scott’s

CHATEAUBRIAND
the American Revolution, and “The
characterization in Ivanhoe helped

Legend of Sleepy Hollow,” with its
rejuvenate Robin Hood’s reputation

The melancholic figure of René,
account of Ichabod Crane’s pursuit
for a Victorian readership.

wandering the lands from France
by the Headless Horseman. Irving’s
to the Americas, finding only ennui
book was one of the first American
both in the city and the countryside, literary works to be successfully THE LAST OF
offered a perfect protagonist for
received in Britain and Europe, and THE MOHICANS
early Romanticism. René by French raised the reputation of American (1826), JAMES FENIMORE COOPER
writer, diplomat, and politician
literature in the early 19th century.

Chateaubriand (1768–1848) shocked

Set in the 1750s at the height of the
readers with its plot revelation

French and Indian War (1754–63),
that René’s sister Amélie joined

IVANHOE

The Last of the Mohicans tells of
a convent to conquer her feelings

(1820), SIR WALTER SCOTT

Chingachgook and his son Uncas,
of incestuous love. The novella was
the eponymous last pure-blooded
an instant success.

Set in 12th-century England, Ivanhoe member of the Mohican tribe.

was based on the tensions between American writer Cooper (1789–

THE SKETCH BOOK OF
the brutal Norman rulers and the

1851) details their brave efforts,
dispossessed Saxon population.

with their white trapper friend

GEOFFREY CRAYON, GENT.

Scott’s romance tells the love story

Natty Bumppo, to save innocent

(1819–1820), WASHINGTON IRVING of two highborn Saxons, Rowena lives. By far the most popular of the
and Ivanhoe; they live alongside
five-part series the “Leatherstocking

Penned by American writer
many noble and ignoble knights

Tales,” Cooper’s novel helped to

Washington Irving (1783–1859), The who duel and joust. Legendary create several enduring stereotypes

Sketch Book is a collection of short
figure Robin Hood makes an
of the Western genre, such as the
romantic notion of the brave,
fearless frontiersman and the wise,

Sir Walter Scott
especially in the Waverley
stoic indigenous tribesman.

novels (1814–32), which he

Scott (1771–1832) was born
wrote anonymously—delighted
in Edinburgh, and Scotland
huge audiences and changed
is central to much of his work.

the way Scotland was viewed

THE RED AND THE BLACK

Considered by some to be the
culturally. Scott suffered with

(1830), STENDHAL
inventor and greatest exponent
bad health for much of his life,
of the historical novel, Scott’s
finally sailing to Italy for respite,

Told over two volumes, The Red
childhood love of nature,
before dying at Abbotsford, the
and the Black describes the
the Scottish landscape, and
estate he had built over many
formative years of Julien Sorel,
traditional folktales helped
years in Scotland, in 1832.

a provincial young man who
to foster his strong sense of
attempts to scale the social order
national identity. In poetry and

Key works
in 19th-century France. Through
prose, Walter Scott’s meshing
detailed personal, historical, and
of romance and historical fiction

1810 The Lady of the Lake
psychological accounts of Julien’s
set against the passionate

1814 Waverley
early life, from his beginnings as
depiction of his homeland—

1820 Ivanhoe (see above)

the sensitive child of a carpenter,

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ROMANTICISM AND THE RISE OF THE NOVEL 151
in recounting his brutal vision of
syllables. It retold mythological

Honoré de Balzac
early 19th-century Paris society,
tales, building a literary and cultural
and in particular the social climbers heritage that awakened Finnish One of France’s leading writers
willing to tread on others to achieve
nationalism in the 19th century.

of the 19th century, Balzac is
their ends. Considered by many to
known for his development
be his finest novel, it was the first of
of realism in the novel form,

Balzac’s stories to feature characters OLIVER TWIST
especially in Old Goriot. Born
from his other books, a practice that
in Tours in 1799, he moved to

(1837–1839), CHARLES DICKENS
became a trademark of his fiction.

Paris as a child, attended the

Sorbonne from 1816, and was

In his second novel, English writer
heading toward law as a
profession when he turned to

FAIRY TALES

Dickens (see p.147) paints a bold
depiction of the social underclass
writing. By 1832, he had plans

(1835–1837), HANS CHRISTIAN
of Victorian Britain, and of the poor
for La Comédie humaine—a

ANDERSEN
fending for themselves in a hostile
collection of nearly 150 of his
world. Seen as an early example of
works, including essays, novels,

Danish writer Hans Christian
the social protest novel, Oliver Twist
and a range of analytical and

Andersen (1805–75) created some
tells the story of Oliver as he flees
philosophical texts. Balzac
of his fairy tales by retelling tales
the workhouse for London and joins
intended this vast compendium
he heard as a child and others by
a criminal child gang. Like many
to capture the nature of the
inventing his own bold, original
of Dickens’ novels, it was published
human condition, but he died in
stories. Published in three volumes, serially, with cliff-hangers to keep 1850, his life’s work unfinished.

Fairy Tales consists of nine tales,
readers hungry for each installment.

including classics such as “The

Key works

Princess and the Pea,” “The Little

1829 The Chouans

Mermaid,” and “The Emperor’s

A HERO OF OUR TIME

1834–35 Old Goriot (see below)

New Clothes.” Andersen’s works

(1840), MIKHAIL LERMONTOV

1841–42 The Black Sheep (see
prefigured the explosion of children’s
p.152)

literature in the 19th century and

In A Hero of Our Time, Russian
continue to hold enormous cultural
writer, poet, and painter Lermontov
significance today.

(1814–41) introduces the protagonist
to his rise into upper-class echelons

Grigory Pechorin, an idle, nihilistic,
via affairs with aristocratic women,

“superfluous man” figure. Pechorin
the book leads up to Sorel’s

KALEVALA
acts as an antihero through a series
eventual fall into disgrace. French

(1835–1849), ELIAS LÖNNROT
of adventures and love affairs set
writer Stendhal (1783–1842) set his
against the landscape of the
novel in early 19th-century France,

Taken from folklore tales of the
both parodying and satirizing the

Karelian and Finnish indigenous
excesses of the Bourbon regime
peoples, the Kalevala—meaning
prior to the July Revolution of 1830.

“the land of Kaleval”—is a collection
of epic poetry that is considered

OLD GORIOT
one of the most significant works of

I was ready to love the whole

Finnish literature. Brought together
world—no one understood me:

(1834–1835), HONORÉ DE BALZAC
by the ethnographic research of

I learned to hate.

Finnish doctor and philologist Elias

A Hero of Our Time

Set in Paris in 1819, Old Goriot

Lönnrot (1802–84), who traveled

Mikhail Lermontov
by Balzac tells of life during the
across the expanses of Finland and

Bourbon Restoration. The 1789

Karelia recording oral folk songs, the
revolution seems far away, though

Kalevala is written in a distinctive
class divisions are tense once more. meter, with each line featuring four Balzac employed realist depiction
pairs of stressed and unstressed

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152 FURTHER READING

Caucasus region of Russia. The
has centered on the meaning of the
author arranged his novel in five
terms “Grotesque” and “Arabesque”:

Nikolai Gogol
parts, portraying the complex
whatever Poe’s exact intention,
nature of a sensitive, emotional,
the tales are significant for their

Born in 1809 in Sorochintsy in
yet brutally cynical antihero who
treatment of terror and horror.

the Russian Empire (now part
despairs at the pointlessness of life.

of Ukraine), Gogol was the
progenitor of the great 19th-

THE BLACK SHEEP
century tradition of Russian

TALES OF THE GROTESQUE
realism. Raised in the Cossack

(1841–1842), HONORÉ DE BALZAC

AND ARABESQUE
heartlands and shaped by the
folklore of his native people,

(1840), EDGAR ALLAN POE

Long overlooked but now considered

Gogol’s early works displayed
to be one of the masterpieces of
a lively and often colloquial

Originally published in two

French novelist and playwright
style, winning instant acclaim
volumes, Tales of the Grotesque

Balzac (see p.151), The Black Sheep
from the Russian literary
and Arabesque consists of 25 short
tells the story of the competing
public. His short stories,
stories or “tales.” Many of them are
plots, manipulations, and schemes
novels, and plays spanned
written with elements of gothic
of the members of a bourgeois family

Romanticism, Surrealism,
form, and some delve into the
to secure a substantial inheritance.

comedy, and satire, but his
darker psychological aspects of the

Titled La Rebouilleuse—someone
creative capacity waned in the
protagonists’ minds. American
who stirs water in order to trap
years before his death in 1852.

writer Poe (1809–49) is regarded as
fish—in French, in reference to a

Key works
the creator of “Dark Romanticism”— controlling mistress of the story, it a specifically American form of
is a compelling exploration of the

1831–32 Evenings on a

Romanticism. “The Fall of the House nature of deceit. Money, status, and Farm near Dikanka
of Usher,” best known of the tales,
legitimacy, and the lengths to which

1836 The Government
sees Roderick Usher’s home cracking human beings will go in order to Inspector
and breaking and finally collapsing
secure financial reward are among

1842 Dead Souls (see left)

in sympathetic parallel with his
the themes explored by Balzac.

own psychological breakdown.

Much analysis of Poe’s collection

DEAD SOULS
money against the value of his

“dead souls” to start his own estate.

(1842), NIKOLAI GOGOL

Chichikov’s travels across Russia
are a comic tale reminiscent of

Dead Souls is often seen as the first Cervantes’ Don Quixote.

great novel of the Russian Golden

Age. Inspired by his friend, the poet

There was an iciness, a

Pushkin, Ukrainian-born writer
sinking, a sickening of the

THE COUNT OF

Gogol intended to write a three-
heart—an unredeemed

MONTE CRISTO
part epic, but only produced the
dreariness of thought which

(1844–1845), ALEXANDRE DUMAS
first two parts, and burned the
no goading of the imagination manuscript of the second volume The most popular book throughout
could torture into aught
when close to his death. The

Europe at the time of its serialization,
of the sublime.

remaining novel satirizes the

The Count of Monte Cristo, by

“The Fall of the House
practices of serfdom in Russia. Since French playwright and novelist of Usher”

tax must be paid by landowners on

Dumas (see p.123), was set during

Edgar Allan Poe
all their serfs—even those who
the Bourbon Restoration. It tells the
have died since the last census—
story of the revenge inflicted by
lead character Chichikov colludes

Edmond Dantès on his enemies,
illegally with estate owners to buy
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ROMANTICISM AND THE RISE OF THE NOVEL 153
meets Abbé Faria, who tells him
with the author’s own, although
country’s race issue and North–
of hidden treasure on the island of
places and settings were altered.

South division. It was even seen by

Monte Cristo. After escaping and

Characters such as great-aunt Betsy some as a spark for the American finding the treasure, Dantès rises

Trottwood, the obsequious Uriah

Civil War (1861–65).

again as the Count of Monte Cristo.

Heep, and penniless Mr. Macawber
are among Dickens’ best-known
and best-loved creations.

NORTH AND SOUTH

VANITY FAIR

(1854–1855), ELIZABETH GASKELL

(1847–1848), WILLIAM

MAKEPEACE THACKERAY

THE SCARLET LETTER

English novelist Gaskell despised

(1850), NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE
social inequality and poverty. Her

Vanity Fair follows the fortunes of
tale of heroine Margaret Hale’s
two women—Amelia Smedley, from Set amid the Puritan world of journey from prosperous southern
a decent family, and the orphan
mid-17th-century Massachusetts,

England to the north allowed readers

Becky Sharp—as they head out

Hawthorne’s historical romance tells to see the dire state of the lowest into a swirling social world seeking the tale of Hester Prynne, a young classes in Britain’s industrial
wealth and standing. They are polar woman found guilty of adultery and northern cities. The work graphically opposites: Amelia is innocent and
forced to wear a scarlet letter “A” to
depicts the division between the
gentle, while Becky is ferocious in
signify her crime. Her husband has
north and south of England and
her ambition to climb the social
long disappeared, and is presumed
the lives of those who provided the
strata. English author Thackeray
dead. She defiantly refuses to name labor for the Industrial Revolution.

(1811–63) paints a vivid parody of
the father of her daughter, Pearl—

It was published serially just after
society and creates an essentially
against the demands of her public

Hard Times by Dickens, at whose
amoral heroine in the impish Becky.

trial and her church minister—so
request Gaskell wrote her novel.

is sent to prison. Hester’s alienation
from the strict religious creeds of

Elizabeth Gaskell

Puritan society allows American
writer Hawthorne (1804–64) to

Born in London in 1810,
explore wider spiritual and moral

Gaskell was the daughter
issues, such as attitudes to the
of a Unitarian minister.

Vanity Fair is a very vain,
notion of sin. The Scarlet Letter was

Married to a church minister
wicked, foolish place …

an immediate success, becoming
in industrial Manchester,

Vanity Fair
one of the first mass-produced
she began writing in her

William Makepeace Thackeray
books in American history.

30s after beginning a diary
to record the day-to-day life
of her family. Her first books

UNCLE TOM’S CABIN
drew on her early life in rural

(1852), HARRIET BEECHER STOWE

Cheshire, but it was her later
novels, set amid the poverty
and strife of the working class,

The hugely successful antislavery

DAVID COPPERFIELD
that made her name. She died
tale by American writer Stowe
in 1865, her finest work— Wives

(1849–1850), CHARLES DICKENS

(1811–96) helped persuade readers
and Daughters—unfinished.

that Christian beliefs and slavery

Describing the coming of age of the were incompatible. Uncle Tom’s Key works
title character, David Copperfield

Cabin tells of noble slave Tom, who
was first published in serial form,
is sold and forced to leave his wife

1848 Mary Barton
and of all the novels of Dickens (see
and family, yet never loses his moral

1853 Cranford
p.147), it is the one closest to an
values. In its first year of publication

1854–55 North and South (see
autobiographical work. The details

Stowe’s story sold some 300,000
above)

of Copperfield’s life show parallels
copies in the US, highlighting the

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DEPICTING

REAL LIFE

1855–1900

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REAL LIFE

1855–1900

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156 INTRODUCTION

In The Condition of the

Charles Darwin’s On

Leo Tolstoy finishes

Working Class in England
the Origin of Species

Lewis Carroll’s first
his historical epic
in 1844, German political
by Means of Natural
fantasy novel for

War and Peace,
theorist Friedrich Engels

Selection provokes
children, Alice’s
which is set during
exposes the squalor of
debate, and whets the

Adventures in
the Napoleonic era
ordinary people’s lives
public appetite for

Wonderland,
and the 1812 French
caused by industrialization.

scientific knowledge.

is published.

invasion of Russia.

1845

1859

1865

1869

1856

1862

1866

1871–72

Gustave Flaubert’s

In Les Misérables, Victor

Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s

Under the pen name

Madame Bovary contrasts

Hugo highlights social
novel Crime and

George Eliot, Mary
ordinary life in
injustice by recounting

Punishment describes

Ann Evans portrays
provincial France with
the events leading up
the thoughts and
the complexity of
the heroine’s romanticized
to the antimonarchist
motivations of a
ordinary life in
view of the world.

uprising in Paris in 1832.

murderer, Raskolnikov.

Middlemarch.

By the mid-19th century, the This literary approach, known and fallibilities—could be found in novel was firmly established as “realism,” began in earnest in novels from as far apart as Russia,
as the predominant form of

France, where a generation of

Britain, and the US.

literature, with an unprecedented
writers—uncomfortable with the

Authors enhanced the realism of
number of readers creating demand tendency of Romanticism toward their novels by various means. Some
for new fiction across the world. No
idealization and dramatization—
used the roman à clef, presenting
longer restricted to a cultural elite,
sought to depict familiar scenes
historical events as fiction; others
reading had become a popular
and characters as accurately as
wrote from an omniscient narrator’s
pastime, and readers increasingly
possible. One of the first to embrace perspective, enabling them to sought books that were relevant to
the style was Honoré Balzac, whose describe the thoughts and feelings, their own experiences and the
monumental series of stories La
as well as the actions, of the
world they lived in.

Comédie Humaine was intended to characters. This emphasis on provide an encyclopedic portrait of
internal characterization developed

Realism gains momentum
society, revealing the principles
into psychological realism, a

The portrayal of believable
governing individual lives and their subgenre that Russian authors in characters and stories had been
effects. This grand vision inspired
particular adopted, including Leo
pioneered by the earliest novelists,
not only French realist novelists

Tolstoy and Fyodor Dostoyevsky.

such as Daniel Defoe and Henry
such as Gustave Flaubert, but also

Fielding, and in the 19th century
a literary genre that spread across

Social protest
the trend toward ever greater
the Western world. By the latter

In striving for authenticity, many
authenticity continued, resulting in
half of the 19th century, elements of writers turned their attention to the contemporary fiction about ordinary realism—and in particular the lives of working people rather than
people and their everyday lives.

depiction of human preoccupations
the middle classes. In contrast to the

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DEPICTING REAL LIFE 157

In the “Scramble for

Mark Twain’s The

A killer dubbed “Jack the

Oscar Wilde’s The

Africa” European

Adventures of

Ripper” brutally murders

Picture of Dorian
powers compete to

Huckleberry Finn,
several women in squalid

Gray, is published—
establish colonies
written in a regional

East London, providing
a novel that explores
and extend control
vernacular, subverts
dark and disturbing
sensual pleasure and
over a still largely
the racist attitudes of
material for urban
the superficial
unexplored continent.

the American South.

gothic fiction.

nature of beauty.

1880s

1884

1888

1891

1881

1885

1891

1899

Henry James’s The

The hope of a better

In his novel Tess of the

Joseph Conrad’s

Portrait of a Lady
future for humanity is

D’Urbervilles, Thomas
masterpiece, Heart of
contrasts the Old
at the heart of Emile Zola’s

Hardy explores the

Darkness, juxtaposes
and New World

Germinal, set in a mining
destructive effects
colonial ideals with
cultures of Europe
community in northern
of modern life on
human despair in a
and North America.

France in the late 1800s.

traditional English values.

primeval setting.

depiction of the humdrum existence

The hope that this distressing era
more down-to-earth yarn of The
of a character like Madame Bovary,
of dirt, disease, and death might

Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by

Victor Hugo and Charles Dickens
be transformed for the better by

Mark Twain.

showed in graphic detail the grim
advances in science enthralled the
conditions of the peasantry and
public and inspired authors such

Symbolist expression
industrial working class, not only
as Jules Verne and Arthur Conan

Some writers argued that art
for literary effect, but also as a form

Doyle to write “scientific romances.” should represent beauty and of social and political commentary.

These precursors of science fiction
depict sensual pleasure rather than

Others, including Emile Zola,
had plots that featured invented
suffering. Writers of this Aesthetic
emphasized the role that social
discoveries and technologies,
movement used an indirect style
conditions play in shaping character. presented as if they were real.

influenced by the symbolism of

A taste for the fantastical was

French poets such as Charles

From gothic to fantasy
also a prominent feature in the

Baudelaire and Stéphane Mallarmé.

The focus on the harsh, squalid
growing number of children’s

The symbolists had reacted against
realities of working-class life
books that appeared at this time,
what they saw as the prosaic
contributed to a gradual shift in
notably in the “nonsense” fantasy
description of realist novels, instead
perspective toward the dark side of
of Lewis Carroll’s surreal Alice
emphasizing the importance of
city life. One result was the
novels. This strange, adventurous
metaphor, imagery, and suggestion.

development of the gothic tradition
material began a “golden age”

Symbolist poets also explored new
that became known as urban
of children’s literature, which
means of expression, experimenting
gothic, epitomized by Bram
included perennial favorites, such
with poetic techniques, which

Stoker’s Dracula and Robert Louis
as Rudyard Kipling’s collection of
were later to inspire the coming

Stevenson’s Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.

fables The Jungle Book and the
generation of Modernist writers. ■

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BOREDOM

UIET AS THE SPIDER

WAS SPINNING ITS WEB IN THE

SHADOWY PLACES

OF HER HEART

MADAME BOVARY (1856),

GUSTAVE FLAUBERT

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160 MADAME BOVARY

IN CONTEXT

FOCUS

Romanticism, with its focus
on emotion, nature, and the
heroic, dominated French
literature from the end of the 18th

French realism
century, but by the 1830s a new

BEFORE
literary genre was gathering force:

Her heart was just like that:

1830 With its detailed
realism. Although the genre went
contact with the rich had left
on to spread throughout Europe
analysis of French society
it smeared with something
and beyond, its beginnings and
and psychological depth,
that would never fade away.

its development are particularly

Stendhal’s The Red and the

Madame Bovary
associated with France.

Black marks a definitive shift

Emerging partly as a reaction
from Romanticism to realism.

to Romanticism, and reflecting

1830–56 The interlocking
the evolution of science and the
novels and stories of Honoré
social sciences, this new genre
de Balzac’s monumental La
sought to depict contemporary

Comédie humaine provide a
life and society with detail and
and The Charterhouse of Parma
panoramic view of French
precision, in an unadorned and

(1839). Honoré de Balzac was a key
society from 1815 to 1848.

unromantic way. Realist writers
pioneer of French realism, creating
put familiar situations and events
a keenly observed and realistic

AFTER
under the literary microscope,
portrayal of ordinary life in his

1869 Flaubert’s A Sentimental
representing them realistically
masterpiece, La Comédie humaine,

Education adds to the body of
rather than idealistically, even if
which incorporated a vast series

French realism with its vast
some of the subject matter might
of more than 100 novels and stories.

presentation of France under
have been considered banal when

However, Gustave Flaubert’s

Louis-Philippe.

compared with the Romantics.

Madame Bovary moved much
further along the path of realistic

1885 Guy de Maupassant

Realism gathers force
depiction, and it is considered to
portrays the rise to power of

One of the first French novelists
be the finest and most influential
a ruthless social climber in
of the period to take this approach
example of French realism.

Bel Ami, a realist novel set
was Stendhal, who incorporated

On the surface, Madame Bovary
in fin-de-siècle Paris.

both Romanticism and realism in
has a fairly simple plot. A young
his novels The Red and the Black
woman, Emma Bovary, is unhappily

Gustave Flaubert

Gustave Flaubert was born in

Flaubert began to work on his

Rouen, France, on December 12,
novel Madame Bovary in 1851,

1821. His father was chief surgeon completing it five years later.

at the main hospital in Rouen.

In 1857 he traveled to Tunisia,

Flaubert began writing while still
collecting material for his next
at school, but in 1841 he went to
novel, Salammbô (1862), which

Paris to study law. At age 22 he
was set in ancient Carthage.

developed a nervous disorder, and

Other works would follow, but
he left the law to devote himself
none ever achieved the acclaim
to writing. In 1846 his father and
of his first novel. Flaubert died
his sister Caroline died; with his
on May 8, 1880 and was buried
mother and niece, Flaubert moved in Rouen cemetery.

to Croisset, near Rouen, where
he lived for the rest of his life. He

Other key works
never married, but between 1846
and 1855 he carried on an affair

1869 Sentimental Education
with poet Louise Colet.

1877 Three Tales

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DEPICTING REAL LIFE 161

See also: The Red and the Black 150–51 ■ Old Goriot 151 ■ Germinal 190–91 ■ A Sentimental Education 199 ■

Lolita 260–61
married to a rather dull doctor in
provincial Normandy, in northern

France. Influenced by the romantic
reading of her youth, she dreams
of a more exciting and fulfilling
life, but her attempts to force reality
to live up to her fantasies have
devastating results.

Life in the provinces

The novel is more complex than the
outline of its plot would suggest.

From its beginning, when the
reader is introduced to the young

Charles Bovary, to its tragic ending,
which supposedly had Flaubert
himself in tears, Madame Bovary is
deeply rooted in mid-19th-century
provincial France. Events in the
wider world were moving fast, and
for the newly emerging middle
classes, the center of sophistication
was Paris. But Flaubert chose to
focus on the petit bourgeois in the

The Temptation of Saint Anthony.

Rouen, the capital of Normandy,
provinces, whose lives he portrayed However, some of his close friends, is the provincial setting of Flaubert’s
with an acute—and not always
particularly his mentor, author
text—a perfect backdrop for his
kindly—psychological perception.

Louis Bouilhet, reacted critically
skillful rendering of the lives and

Flaubert had begun his literary
to an early draft of this work and
preoccupations of the middle class.

career as a Romantic, working
urged him to attempt something
on an exotic and mystical novel,
more realistic. Drawing on a real-
accuracy; he drew up biographies
life event (the death of a doctor
of his fictional characters, and set
whose wife had caused a scandal),
out to create a prose style that was

Flaubert began work on his new
totally stripped of all Romanticism,
book. His goal was to write about
laboring over every sentence.

the lives of ordinary people.

Sitting in his room by the river

Seine at Croisset, near Rouen, he

There was no fire in the

Creativity in detail
constantly corrected and rewrote
fireplace, the clock was still

The project took Flaubert five
every page of his manuscript, a
ticking, and Emma felt vaguely years and involved meticulous time-consuming process. His goal
amazed that all those things
research. He set his novel in the
was to write in an entirely new
should be so calm when there region around Rouen, where he and objective fashion, without
was such turmoil inside her.

spent most of his life and which

“a single subjective reaction, nor

Madame Bovary
he knew in intimate detail; he
a single reflection by the author.”

modeled places in his novel—the

The result, as Flaubert had hoped,
villages of Tostes and Yonville—
was a “tour de force.”

on real country towns. He walked

Divided into three sections,
around the region and even made

Madame Bovary contrasts the
maps to ensure the greatest
hopelessness of sentimental ❯❯

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162 MADAME BOVARY

Fantasy, reality, and realism

Emma yearns for:

Emma’s life is
thrilling adventures
characterized by:

in far-flung places;
the tedium and mediocrity
love, passion, and
of a provincial town;

“intoxication”; wealth
boredom and dissatisfaction
and a “luxurious life.”

with marriage;
insurmountable debt.

Flaubert dissects Madame Bovary
in this 1869 caricature. The novel is
a dissection of Emma’s inner mind,
exploring her private thoughts with
an intense psychological realism.

not just by Charles’s dullness and
lack of ambition, but also sexually.

The disparity between her dreams
and the unstimulating reality of
her marriage, so perceptively
described by Flaubert, lies at

Flaubert achieves penetrating realism by means of:

the heart of the novel.

his insistence on finding “le mot juste”—exactly the Emma and Charles move to
right word; unrelenting attention to detail;

Yonville, a provincial town that
rigorous objectivity.

Flaubert portrays in painstaking
and often ironic detail, describing
it as a “bastard region where the
romanticism with the monotonous

Romantic poet scorned by Flaubert, language is without accentuation, reality of everyday life. In particular, she dreams of living “in some old as the landscape is without

Flaubert criticizes the foolishness
manor-house, … looking out far
character.” Flaubert’s ability
and dullness of the middle classes,
across the fields for the white-
to capture the mundane and
whom he held in contempt, even
plumed rider galloping towards
commonplace contributed to
though he was himself middle
her on his black horse.”

establishing the novel as a key
class. Emma Bovary, around whom
work in French realism. No detail
the novel rotates, symbolizes

Passion and reality
is too small to be included: he
unrealistic romanticism. She is

Seeking a “marvellous passion,”

describes roof thatch like fur caps,
the convent-educated daughter

Emma marries Charles Bovary,
sickly pear trees, ancient
of a wealthy farmer. Fed by the
a kindly but boring doctor in the
farmhouses and barns, and small
romances of Walter Scott and the
small rural village of Tostes. Almost graveyards typical of the region.

“meanderings of Lamartine,” a
immediately she is disappointed,

His description of the country fair

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DEPICTING REAL LIFE 163
where local dignitaries make
there was an attempt to ban the
pompous speeches, aping the
novel on the grounds of “outrage
urban middle classes, is masterly.

against public and religious

Dramatically, he counterpoises
morality.” It was not only its content
the tedious speeches against the
but also the realism of the style
passionate conversations and

She wanted equally to die
itself that was considered vulgar
actions of Emma Bovary, behind
and to live in Paris.

and shocking. But Flaubert and
a window overlooking the fair.

Madame Bovary
his colleagues were acquitted, and
although the novel initially received

Unattainable dreams
a mixed reception, it went on to

Flaubert introduces other
become a best seller.

characters who live in Yonville,

Madame Bovary and Flaubert’s
among them the town pharmacist,
subsequent novel, Sentimental

Monsieur Homais, an atheist and

Education, with their objective,
self-opinionated individual who
they have), so he also mocks the
detailed, and stark portrayal of
practices medicine without a
unsympathetic and pretentious
everyday life, marked the coming
licence and uses every opportunity
aspirations of the merchant class.

of age of French realism and at
to display his apparent knowledge

Set among the realistic details
the same time its highest point.

in the most pompous manner; and
of everyday routine, Flaubert’s

Within France, Flaubert’s work

Monsieur Lhereaux, a merchant,
descriptions of Emma’s romantic
influenced other major writers,
who callously encourages Emma
hopes and her frustrations within
including Guy de Maupassant,
to run up debts, as she seeks to
her provincial marriage are even
whose economical style and
overcome marital boredom with
more powerful, and appear
approach reflected the realism of
what would today be described as
surprisingly modern. Almost
his mentor; and Émile Zola, who,
retail therapy. Flaubert knew such
inevitably, Emma seeks romance
in novels such as Germinal (1885),
characters very well and portrays
and grand passion outside her
focused on the harsh realities
them in intimate and realistic
marriage, embarking on two
of day-to-day life, and who, like
detail; throughout the novel he
doomed affairs, first with the

Flaubert, often spent months
brilliantly captures their dullness
wealthy landowner and womanizer
researching his subject matter. ■
and their small-minded attitudes,

Rodolphe Boulanger, and then with
while never allowing his writing

Léon Dupois, a young law student,
to become dull. Just as Flaubert
who shares her yearnings for
gently mocks Emma’s completely
glorious landscapes, music, and
unachievable dreams and

Romantic literature. Although
romanticism (and describes
initially excited and apparently
the tragic consequences that
fulfilled, Emma ultimately becomes
disillusioned. As Flaubert writes:

“Adultery, Emma was discovering,
could be as banal as marriage.”

Abandoned by one lover and
rejected by the other, she spirals
into a self-destructive path of

Never touch your idols:

increasing debt and alienation.

the gilding will stick
to your fingers.

Realism on trial

Madame Bovary

Madame Bovary first appeared in
serial form in the Revue de Paris.

Rodolphe Boulanger, Emma’s first

Almost immediately, Flaubert,
lover, recognizes her boredom, her
the printer, and the manager of
frustrated passion, and her willingness
the Revue were brought to trial
to be seduced, and manipulates her
on charges of obscenity, and
expertly into an affair.

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164

I TOO AM A CHILD

OF THIS LAND

I TOO GREW UP

AMID THIS SCENERY

THE GUARANI (1857), JOSE DE ALENCAR

IN CONTEXT

FOCUS

Indianism was a literary and instead falls for Peri, the Guarani artistic movement in mid-Indian of the book’s title. Peri is

19th-century Brazil, in
an idealized creation, exotic yet
which writers and artists cast
noble, who abandons his tribe and

Indianism/Indianismo
the country’s indigenous people,
approves of Christian teachings.

BEFORE
the Indians, in a heroic light.

Alencar’s inclusion of native

1609 Garcilaso Inca de

Two main factors contributed
vocabulary, such as terms for
la Vega, son of a Spanish
to Indianism. First, Brazil had only
flora and fauna, was seen as
recently gained independence from
scandalous by the Portuguese
conquistador and an Incan

Portugal (in 1821–24), so authors
literary establishment, but it freed
princess, writes Comentarios
were expressing the idea that their

Brazil’s literature to develop in its

Reales de los Incas, a prose
new nation was one in which tribes own way. Highly romantic and work about Incan traditions
and Europeans were united and
lyrical, The Guarani is still taught
and customs, and Spain’s
equal. The second factor was the
in Brazilian schools today. ■
conquest of Peru.

arrival in Brazil of Romanticism

1851 Brazilian poet Gonçalves
from Europe, which cherished

Dias publishes one of the
the indigenous people for their
most famous poems of the
perceived innocence and spiritual
purity (views that derived from the

Indianism movement, I-Juca-

18th-century sentimental vision of

Pirama, about a Tupi warrior.

the “noble savage”).

They were brave, fearless men,

The title is in Tupi and means,
uniting with the resources of

“He who must die that is

Romantic idealism
civilized man, the cunning
worthy to be killed.”

José de Alencar (1829–77) is
and agility of the Indian.

1856 A Confederação dos
regarded as the father of the

The Guarani

Tamoios is published. An

Brazilian novel, and The Guarani
epic poem about the Tupi
first brought him to the attention
people by Brazilian poet
of the public. Set in 1604, it tells
and playwright Gonçalves
the story of an early settler whose
daughter, Cecilia, has a suitor but
de Magalhães, it was
commissioned by Brazilian

See also: The Last of the Mohicans 150 ■ The Gaucho Martín Fierro 199

Emperor Pedro II.

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DEPICTING REAL LIFE 165

THE POET IS

A KINSMAN IN

THE CLOUDS

LES FLEURS DU MAL (1857), CHARLES BAUDELAIRE

IN CONTEXT

FOCUS

The work of the French with his personal concerns—
symbolist poets of the
including his ambitions as a poet.

19th century focused

At the book’s heart is ennui, the
on sensation and suggestion
deadening of the soul, as well as an

The French symbolists
rather than plain description and
existential dread and fear of death.

BEFORE
rhetorical effects, and made use of

1852 Enamels and Cameos,
symbols, metaphors, and imagery

A search for meaning
a collection of poems by
to evoke subjective moods. The

In the opening section, a series of
leading symbolists included Paul
poems explores the role of the artist

Théophile Gautier, departs

Verlaine, Arthur Rimbaud, and
as visionary, martyr, performer,
from Romanticism, focusing

Stéphane Mallarmé, but the pioneer outcast, and fool. The poet tries on form rather than emotion.

was Charles Baudelaire (1821–67).

to find meaning through sex, but

AFTER
initial excitement is followed by

1865–66 Stéphane Mallarmé,

Art from decay
disenchantment—to which art
in “The Afternoon of a Faun,”

In Les Fleurs du mal ( The Flowers
offers some consolation. In the
gives a dreamlike account of
of Evil)—the title suggests the
second section, “Parisian Tableaux,”

a faun conversing with two
flowering of moral decay into
which was added for a new edition
nymphs—one representing the
art—Baudelaire turns his back on
of 1861, the poet roams the city as

Romantic outpourings in favor of
a flâneur (an idle observer), finding
material, one the intellectual.

suggestive symbolism and frank
only reminders of his own misery.

1873 Arthur Rimbaud, in
expression. Using the traditional

The old Paris is gone, the new

A Season in Hell, presents
alexandrine meter—in which lines
street scene alienating.

two sides to himself—the
of 12 syllables are divided into two

The following sections describe
poet intoxicated by light and
parts by a pause, or caesura—he
the poet’s resulting flight to drink,
childhood and the down-to-
addresses nontraditional new
sex, and even satanism. The last
earth peasant.

subjects that were shocking at
poem, “The Voyage,” is a miniature
the time, such as prostitution,
odyssey tracing the travels of the

1874 Paul Verlaine brings out
interracial sex, alcohol, and drugs .

soul to its final adventure, where at

Songs without Words, which

Baudelaire paints a pessimistic
last there might be something new
is inspired by his relationship
portrait of modern man, inflected
to experience. ■
with Arthur Rimbaud.

See also: The Picture of Dorian Gray 194 ■ A Season in Hell 199 ■

The Waste Land 213 ■ The Outsider 245

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166

NOT BEING HEARD

IS NO REASON

FOR SILENCE

LES MISÉRABLES (1862), VICTOR HUGO

IN CONTEXT

FOCUS

An immense novel, Les of the country, Mary Barton (1848), Misérables is comprised
contributed to England’s mood of
of five volumes, each of
social reform. Meanwhile, in the
which is subdivided into books

US, Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle

Social protest novel
of several chapters. Victor Hugo’s

Tom’s Cabin (1852) helped mobilize

BEFORE
motivation was also vast—namely,
public opinion against slavery.

1794 English radical writer
to write a novel that protested the

Hugo’s book features a huge

William Godwin deplores an
social conditions existing in France
cast of characters and a vast
at that time. For him, as long as
historical sweep, spanning as it
unjust social system in The
there was “social condemnation,
does the era from 1815 to the June

Adventures of Caleb Williams.

which … creates hells on earth, …

1832 uprising in Paris. It is a

1845 English politician
books like this cannot be useless.”

panoramic novel that embraces

Benjamin Disraeli writes Sybil,

Hugo was not the only writer to
themes of hardship, poverty, greed,
or The Two Nations, which
highlight injustice in an attempt
bitterness, politics, compassion,
shows that England has two
to bring about social change. In
love, and redemption.

worlds: the rich and the poor.

England, his contemporary Charles

Dickens was doing the same, while

Hell in need of humanity

1852–65 English novelist

Elizabeth Gaskell’s portrait of the

The main story in Les Misérables

Charles Dickens criticizes the
poor in the industrialized north
focuses on Jean Valjean, released
poverty and greed of Victorian
after spending 19 years in prison
society in Bleak House, Little
for the theft of some bread. Now

Dorrit, and Our Mutual Friend.

a social outcast, he steals from a

AFTER
bishop, who covers for him and
whose kindness sets him on a path

1870s–80s French writer
toward redemption. Under a false

Émile Zola attacks urban

Social prosperity means man name, Valjean starts a business, poverty and the social system
happy, the citizen free, the
becomes wealthy, and adopts a
in novels such as L’Assommoir
nation great.

young girl, Cosette, whose mother,

(1877) and Germinal (1885).

Les Misérables

Fantine—forced into prostitution

1906 The Jungle, a novel by
by poverty—has died. Despite his

American Upton Sinclair about
efforts, Valjean is haunted by his

Chicago’s meatpacking
criminal past, and he is relentlessly
industry, shocks readers.

pursued by an implacable police
inspector, Javert.

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DEPICTING REAL LIFE 167

See also: Bleak House 146–49 ■ Oliver Twist 151 ■ Uncle Tom’s Cabin 153 ■

War and Peace 178–81 ■ Germinal 190–91

Les Misérables has a large cast of intertwining characters. Although a mix of social classes is depicted, those whose wretched lives are swallowed up in the labyrinth of Paris’s underworld are the focus. At the heart of the book is the fate of Cosette, the orphaned child of a prostitute.

Inspector

Hunts down

Jean

Javert

Valjean

Adopts

Employs

Victor Hugo

Monsieur

Mistreat
and Madame

Cosette

Victor Hugo, one of France’s

Thénardier
leading writers, was born in

1802 in Besançon, eastern

Raised together

Neglected

France, the son of an officer

In love

Mother
children
in Napoleon’s army. Raised in

Paris and well educated, by

Friend

Marius
the age of 20 he had published

Éponine

Fantine

Adores

Pontmercy
his first volume of verse.

Hugo was a prodigious
writer, producing some 20

Sibling

“Friends of ABC” revolutionaries
volumes of poetry, 10 plays,
nine novels, as well as many

Street-urchin
revolutionary
essays. A liberal republican

Gavroche

Enjolras
and supporter of universal
suffrage, he was also active
politically. Following the
revolutions of 1848 that shook

Many other characters weave in

Hugo moves away from the action

Europe, he was elected to the
national assembly. He was,
and out of his story: Marius, an
at the barricades to reflect on the
however, highly critical of
idealistic law student, who falls in
role of revolution in creating a
the Second Empire of Louis
love with Cosette; the Thénardiers,
better society, before returning to

Napoleon and went into
unscrupulous innkeepers, who
the story and its conclusion.

exile in 1851 with his wife,
mistreat Cosette; their neglected

Les Misérables was widely

Adèle, and his long-standing
children, Gavroche and Éponine,
advertised before publication and
mistress, Juliette Drouet.

who live on the streets; and many
caused a considerable stir: several

Returning to Paris as a
revolutionary students. All are
reviewers were critical, accusing
national hero in 1870, Hugo
caught up in a hellish society that

Hugo of being either dangerously
became a senator in the Third

Hugo vividly describes.

revolutionary or overly sentimental.

Republic. He died in 1885 and

From time to time Hugo

However, the book was an instant
was buried in the Pantheon.

digresses to write about related
success, not just in France but also
topics, or to present his opinions.

in Britain and beyond. Although it

Other key works

He writes in detail about such
did not directly bring about change,

1827 Cromwell
subjects as the Battle of Waterloo
its historical sweep and powerful

1831 The Hunchback of

(1815), street urchins, Parisian
description of social injustice meant

Notre-Dame
architecture, the construction of
that, like all great protest novels, it

1859–83 The Legend of the
the Paris sewers, and religious
provoked thought and helped to

Ages
orders. Toward the end of the novel, raise social consciousness. ■

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168

CURIOUSER AND IN CONTEXT

FOCUS

The invention of childhood

CURIOUSER!

BEFORE

1812 Swiss pastor Johann

David Wyss’s Swiss Family

Robinson focuses on four

ALICE’S ADVENTURES IN WONDERLAND (1865),
children who, with their
parents, discover self-

LEWIS CARROLL
sufficiency on a desert island.

1863 The hero of The Water

Babies, by English author

Charles Kingsley, is a young
chimney sweep who learns
moral lessons in a fantastic
underwater realm.

AFTER

1883 Italian Carlo Collodi’s

The Adventures of Pinocchio,
featuring a marionette, is a
moral tale for children.

1894 Characters in English
author Rudyard Kipling’s The

Jungle Book include Mowgli,
a boy raised by wolves, and

Rikki-Tikki-Tavi, a mongoose.

The concept of “childhood”

was really only invented
in the 18th century, when
the middle classes began to see the
value of a child’s innocence and
play. For most of literary history,
children were rarely mentioned,
occasionally appearing in such
works as Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s

Émile and William Wordsworth’s

The Prelude. In the 19th century,

Charles Dickens sometimes placed
children in the foreground of his
stories, but only in books for adults.

Most tales written for, as
opposed to about, children were
adaptations of adult stories, or
morally didactic. In the early 19th
century, the Brothers Grimm’s

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DEPICTING REAL LIFE 169

See also: Robinson Crusoe 94–95 ■ Gulliver’s Travels 104 ■ Children’s and Household Tales 116–17 ■ Fairy Tales 151 ■

Little Women 199 ■ Treasure Island 201

Justice

Power and perversity
prevail over fairness, mirroring

Behavior
the arbitrary nature of adult

Animals

Characters are often
power over children.

Animals have human
rude, aggressive, or
characteristics, though
frustrating, as adults can be,
exaggerated or distorted,
incomprehensibly, in a
functioning as stand-ins
child’s world.

for adults.

Scale

Time

A child can grow or

Clock time has no
shrink, usually as a result of
meaning, reflecting the adult
drinking or eating something,
world of rules, regulations, and
just as children are often
schedules that make no
told to “grow up.”

sense to a child.

In Wonderland, the
laws of both nature and
society are turned on their
heads: time and space
behave unpredictably;
animals talk; at tea parties
and games, anything might
happen. The child’s sense
of threat in an adult world
is evoked through fantasy.

illustrated folktales, originally

Brown’s School Days (1857), by

Dodgson, a young mathematics
collected for adults, were criticized

English author Thomas Hughes,
don, went rowing with a male
as being inappropriate for young
started the tradition of the school
friend and three young sisters on
people because of their sexual and
story; another new genre was the
the Thames near Oxford, and told
violent content—later editions were coming-of-age tale, such as Louisa a story about a girl named Alice—
adapted to be more child friendly.

May Alcott’s Little Women (1868–69) which was also the name of one Hans Christian Andersen, who
in the US. Other classics include
of his passengers, Alice Liddell, ten
wrote his Fairy Tales (1835–37)

Johanna Spyri’s Heidi (1880–81),
years old. So Alice’s Adventures in
specifically for children, caused an
from Switzerland, and Scotsman

Wonderland took shape, appearing
outcry by failing to include a moral. J. M. Barrie’s Peter Pan (1911).

as a handwritten book, and then as

Alice’s Adventures in
a publication under the pseudonym

A golden age

Wonderland is one of the most

Lewis Carroll.

In the late 19th and early 20th
influential books of this flowering.

centuries, writing for children

Regarded as the first masterpiece

A surreal world
enjoyed a golden age, founded
for children in English, its

In the story, seven-year-old Alice
on increasing literacy, the growth
fantastical story is a marked
falls down a rabbit hole and finds
of commercial publishing, and
departure from the prevailing
herself in a surreal universe. She
recognition of the imaginative
realism of literature at the time.

negotiates alone a world of strange
potential of a child’s world. Tom

On a July day in 1862, Charles
creatures, strange attitudes, ❯❯

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170 ALICE’S ADVENTURES IN WONDERLAND
shows Carroll brilliantly inhabiting
a child’s ingenuousness: “No, it’ll
never do to ask: perhaps I shall
see it written up somewhere.”

Alice constantly wonders: about
who she is, what are the rules of

‘Well! I’ve often seen a cat
this peculiar world, and how she is
without a grin,’ thought Alice;
to regain normality; common issues

‘but a grin without a cat!

of childhood. Her bewilderment at

It’s the most curious thing
first focuses on her being the wrong

I ever saw in all my life!’

size, either too big or too small to do

Alice’s Adventures
as she wants. After she meets the
in Wonderland

Caterpillar a new anxiety arises:

the challenge of being repeatedly,

The brusque, hookah-smoking
often rudely, contradicted. Toward

Caterpillar intensifies Alice’s
the end, with the Queen’s repeated
insecurity: she is so confused by
plea for a beheading, the possibility

Wonderland that she cannot even
of violence adds to the tension.

answer his question “Who are you?”

liberating by Victorian adults

Escape from rules
accustomed to convention. One
strange happenings, and strange

The characters that Alice meets
of the attractions of nonsense is
linguistic logic. This is the focus
are mostly animals. Aside from
that it offers a playground for the
of the book and its principal theme.

Alice and her sister, who features
imagination, and arguably for the

Part of the book’s coherence
before and after the adventure,
satisfaction of subliminal needs,
comes from the fact that Alice
the only human characters are the
including occasional escape from
herself entertains unconventional

Mad Hatter and the Duchess, since
social rules.

logic. As she falls down the rabbit
the King and Queen of Hearts are

Alice makes no reference at the
hole she wonders if she is going
playing cards. Parents do not make
end to having learned any lessons
to land in the “Antipathies”

an appearance, nor is there any
from her adventures. However, she

(Antipodes), and imagines herself
reference to them.

does, in the course of the book,
appearing ignorant when she has to

Yet the inversions of everyday
become more forthright, and by the
ask whether she is in Australia or
life that imprison Alice might also,
time of the trial scene near the end

New Zealand. Her next observation at the same time, be seen as she is capable of saying to the

The Harry Potter phenomenon

J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter

The publication schedule of the
novels (1997–2007), featuring
series allowed Harry to grow
the adventures of a young wizard,
up in real time, so that the first
show how powerful children’s
generation of young Harry
writing can be. Rowling owes

Potter readers literally grew
the phenomenal success of the
up along with him, making
books partly to her skillful mixing
their experience of reading the
of genres, combining fantasy,
books particularly powerful.

coming of age, and school story,

Immensely popular with
together with elements of the
children and also garnering a
thriller and romance. Rowling
substantial adult readership,
has stated that death is a major

For Harry Potter,
the books have generated great
mortality lurks
in the shadows: he is a hero fighting
theme in the books, but this does
wealth for their author. More
the forces of darkness, and learning
not prevent them from containing
than 450 million of the seven
life lessons in the process.

a strong vein of humor.

books had been sold by 2013.

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DEPICTING REAL LIFE 171

Queen that her perverse sense of
are memorable characters (such as
justice is “Stuff and nonsense!”

the Walrus and the Carpenter, and

Her final act, by which time she is

Tweedledum and Tweedledee),
child sized again, is to insist that
nonsensical songs, and witty
the playing cards are just that—
aphorisms that flirt with alternative
inanimate things—whereupon they logic. As in Wonderland, meaning fly into the air. By force of character is slippery: a word, claims Humpty she has punctured the illusion.

Dumpty, “means just what I choose

The coda, featuring Alice’s older it to mean.” However, the sequel is sister, is beautifully judged. It starts more menacing than the first Alice with her dreaming “after a fashion,” story, perhaps reflecting Carroll’s since a fully-fledged dream would
grief over the loss of his father.

be less subtle than this elusive
mind state. First, she affectionately The lure of fantasy Lewis Carroll
imagines Alice herself; then the

A line of influence stretches from
weird characters Alice has been
the magical transformations of

Born in 1832 in Cheshire,
describing pass in front of her.

Wonderland through J. R. R. Tolkien’s

England, Charles Dodgson

Finally, she imagines Alice turning

The Hobbit and C. S. Lewis’s Narnia

(best known later by his pen
name, Lewis Carroll) was
into a “grown woman,” but keeping
series, the whimsical rhyming
the son of a clergyman. He
the “simple and loving heart” of her
world of Dr. Seuss, Roald Dahl’s
earned a first-class degree in
childhood, and passing on the story beloved Charlie and the Chocolate mathematics from Christ
of Wonderland to a new generation.

Factory, and J. K. Rowling’s wizard

Church, Oxford, and from
stronghold Hogwarts. Although in

1855 he held a lectureship

The meaning of nonsense
the 21st century a new realism has
there until his death. He was

Fantasy conveyed with as much
entered writing for children, with
also ordained as a deacon.

vividness, wit, and sensitivity as
stories of abandonment,

His first published work, in

Carroll’s has immediate impact but
homelessness, and alienation,

1856, was a poem on solitude.

will raise questions about hidden
fantasy remains perennially

Dodgson was well connected,
meanings. Food in the book often
compelling to young minds.

his friends including the critic

■
triggers unease—did Carroll suffer
and writer John Ruskin, and
from an eating disorder? Since the
the painter and poet Dante
brand of mathematics he taught at

Gabriel Rossetti. He was a

Oxford was conservative, at a time
notable photographer, taking
portraits of the poet Alfred
when more abstract ideas were

Tennyson, the actress Ellen
taking root, some of the weird logic

Terry, and many children. He
may be a satirical sideswipe at the
died in 1898, at 65, as a result
new math. And since the book was
of pneumonia after a severe
a gift for the real Alice, it may
case of influenza. By this
contain private references for her.

time Alice’s Adventures in

Carroll’s sources of inspiration

Wonderland was the most
will never be comprehensively
popular children’s book in
recovered, yet any in-jokes in no

Britain. Queen Victoria was
way diminish the universality of
one of its admirers.

Alice’s adventures, grounded as it
is in the vulnerability of children,

Other key works
a theme as relevant today as it was
in Carroll’s time.

1871 Through the Looking-

Humpty Dumpty, as with characters

Glass, and What Alice

Carroll brought out a second and in Wonderland, has conversations with Found There
similar book about Alice in 1871:

Alice that are characterized by riddles,

1876 The Hunting of

Through the Looking-Glass, and
wordplay, and perverse logic posed
the Snark

What Alice Found There. Here too
as rationality.

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PAIN AND SUFFERING

ARE ALWAYS

INEVITABLE

FOR A LARGE INTELLIGENCE

AND A DEEP HEART

CRIME AND PUNISHMENT (1866),

FYODOR DOSTOYEVSKY

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ARE ALWAYS

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174 CRIME AND PUNISHMENT

IN CONTEXT

FOCUS

Psychological realism is
the depiction in literature
of the personality traits
and innermost feelings of a

Psychological realism
character, shining a spotlight

BEFORE
on their conscious thoughts and

All is in a man’s hands
c.1000–12 Murasaki Shikibu’s
unconscious motivations. The plot
and he lets it all slip
itself often takes a secondary role in

The Tale of Genji offers
from cowardice.

works that focus on psychological
psychological insights into the

Crime and
realism, and is there to set out
lives of its characters.

Punishment
the relationships, conflicts, and

1740 English writer Samuel
physical settings within which

Richardson’s sentimental novel
these mental dramas are played out.

Pamela explores the inner

Delving into the psyche of a
nature of the novel’s heroine.

character in this way marked
a radical departure from Romantic

1830 The Red and the Black,
fiction, in which plots typically
entries were used to give the
by French author Stendhal,
saw wrongdoing punished and
reader an insight into a character’s
is published and is seen by
virtue rewarded. Literary works
intimate thoughts and feelings.

many as the first psychological
had, however, long explored the
realist novel.

workings of the human mind,

Exposing minds

AFTER
though uninformed by the

In his masterpiece Crime and

1871–72
emerging science of psychology.

Punishment, Fyodor Dostoyevsky

George Eliot’s

For example, mental machinations
introduces the reader to his

Middlemarch traces the
are central in the 11th-century
antihero, the student Rodion
psychological landscape of

Japanese story The Tale of Genji;

Romanovich Raskolnikov, also
a provincial English town.

in William Shakespeare’s Hamlet
called Rodya or Rodka by the few

1881 The Portrait of a Lady, by

(1603), it is the inner conflicts of
people who love him. The author

American author Henry James,
the hero that drive the drama;
dissects—by means of a third-
delves into the consciousness
and the 18th century saw the
person narrative—Raskolnikov’s
of the character Isabel Archer.

heyday of the genre known as
psychological motivations in a way
the epistolary novel, in which
that presages the work of Sigmund
personal letters and journal

Freud and other psychoanalysts.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Fyodor Dostoyevsky was born
with creditors prompted his
in Moscow, Russia, in 1821 to
voluntary exile in Western
parents of Lithuanian descent.

Europe. After the death of his

He trained and worked as an
first wife, in 1867 he wed Anna
engineer before writing his first

Grigoryevna Snitkina, who gave
novel, Poor Folk (1846), which
birth to their four children, acted
depicts the mental as well as
as his secretary, and managed
the material condition of poverty.

the family’s finances. Haunted

In 1849, Dostoyevsky was
by infirmity, he died in 1881.

arrested for being a member of
the Petrashevsky Circle, a socialist Other key works
intellectual group. After the
torment of a mock execution by

1864 Notes from
firing squad, he endured several
the Underground
years of hard labor in Siberia,

1866 The Gambler
where he began to suffer from

1869 The Idiot
epilepsy. After his release, issues

1880 The Brothers Karamazov

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DEPICTING REAL LIFE 175

See also: The Tale of Genji 47 ■ The Princess of Cleves 104 ■ Madame Bovary 158–63 ■ Middlemarch 182–83 ■

The Portrait of a Lady 186–87

Summertime in St. Petersburg is
the setting for Crime and Punishment.

The crowded, stifling conditions in
the city mirror the troubled student

Raskolnikov’s feverish inner drama.

It is precisely this opening up of
the protagonist’s mind to the reader
that secured the book’s status as
one of the most important and
influential literary works to emerge
in the 19th century.

Crime and Punishment opens
on a “hot evening early in July” in

St. Petersburg, Russia. Raskolnikov,
a shabbily dressed young man, steps
from his tiny, attic apartment, skips
past his landlady, and slips away
into the heat and the stench of the
city. He is ill and also suffering from
some form of mental dislocation. He
mutters to himself. He is hungry.

He walks the streets, disturbed by
the presence of others. The reader
is drawn ever closer to his innermost
thoughts, fears, and anxieties.

Raskolnikov is poor, and this
apartment block, a thought enters
brought about by his alcoholism.

motif of poverty is pervasive in the
his mind. He stops on the stairs,

Marmeladov acknowledges his vice
text. The reader wanders with him, shocked at himself, and once back and reveals that he is confessing
seeing with his eyes a city that is
on the crowded streets, he walks as this to Raskolnikov, a chance striving to survive—a place in
though in a dream, “regardless of
encounter, rather than the regular
which many struggle against
the passersby, and jostling against
patrons, because in his face he
hunger and mental torment.

them,” until he finds himself by a
can read “some trouble of mind.” ❯❯
flight of steps leading down into a

Inner conflicts
tavern. Although he has never been

Dostoyevsky inserts a variety of
into a tavern before, he enters and
colorful and brilliantly observed
orders a beer, and immediately
characters into the narrative, as

“he felt easier; and his thoughts
seen through Raskolnikov’s eyes.

became clear.” But Dostoyevsky

He ventures to the house of Alyona
informs the reader that Raskolnikov

Only to live, to live and live!

Ivanovna, a local pawnbroker, “a
is far from well, because “even at

Life, whatever it may be!

diminutive, withered up old woman that moment he had a dim Crime and
of sixty, with sharp malignant eyes
foreboding that this happier frame

Punishment
and a sharp little nose.”

of mind was also not normal.”

Raskolnikov has come to pawn his

He has a conversation with a
father’s watch and, poverty
drunken man, Marmeladov, who
stricken, he is forced to accept a
tells a pitiful story of poverty and
pitiful sum for it. As he leaves the
his daughter’s prostitution, both

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176 CRIME AND PUNISHMENT
streets and depraved citizens of
to others, above the law, who feels a

St. Petersburg through his eyes. We disgust for society and the mindless become witnesses as scenes are
behavior of the herds of “ordinary”

played out in his mind, and we lie
people. At one point, Raskolnikov
beside him in his squalid home.

remarks that all great men have

We, too, start to feel the awful sense been criminals, transgressing of the inevitability of the act, from
ancient laws and shedding blood
its imagined conception through
if it were “of use to their cause.”

to its grim and bloody reality.

Dostoyevsky’s exposition of

Just as Freud would later argue
this motive is thought to reflect
that dreams enable understanding
his anguish at the changes he
of waking experience, Dostoyevsky
observed in Russian society—the
offers insights into his antihero’s
rise of materialism, the decline of

Raskolnikov recalls dreams he had
mind through his dreams. In one
the old order, and the popularity
while delirious in the hospital. In one a
dream, Raskolnikov witnesses
of selfish and nihilistic philosophies.

plague of microbes had infected people
drunken peasants beating a horse

Raskolnikov’s crime, and his later
and driven them insane, all convinced
to death. Heavy with symbolism,
unraveling, serve as a caution to
that they “alone had the truth.”

the dream foreshadows the crime
those of Dostoyevsky’s compatriots
he is about to commit, but it is also
inclined to revolutionary change.

Raskolnikov finally returns to his
a reference to his desensitization to
own hovel where he broods all the
atrocity, and to the loss of his free

Guilt and redemption
following day. Dostoyevsky paints a will to act. Much later, he dreams In the unfolding consequences of
desperate picture of destitution and that microscopic bugs cause the murder, we follow Raskolnikov

Raskolnikov’s isolation from society.

insanity, dissent, and a propensity
around the streets of St. Petersburg

The author’s mastery of
to violence in humans—an allusion
in his desperation and fevered
psychological realism fully exposes
to Raskolnikov’s state of mind.

delirium. He stumbles upon the

Raskolnikov’s inner deliberations
drunk, dying Marmeladov who has
and machinations over how to act

The shock of violence
been run over by a carriage and
on his thought, which is to commit

The murder of Alyona Ivanovna
horses, and is drawn closer to
a crime (by killing the pawnbroker,
is portrayed with a powerfully

Marmeladov’s daughter, Sonya,

Alyona Ivanovna), and he draws the visceral actuality. Raskolnikov who is left to support the family
reader tangibly and empathetically
clubs the old woman with an axe
alone. Raskolnikov meets Porfiry
close to Raskolnikov’s mind—the
until her skull is “broken and even
mind of a murderer. We feel his
battered in on one side.” Over the
terror, and we experience the dirty
floor lies “a perfect pool of blood.”

The moments hang in chillingly
real tension as Raskolnikov unlocks
a wooden chest under the bed and
retrieves the riches of “bracelets,
chains, earrings, pins.” And the
scene is not complete. There are

The really great men
more footsteps in the room where
must, I think, have great

Alyona Ivanovna lies. “Suddenly, he
sadness on earth.

jumped up, seized the axe and ran

Crime and
out of the bedroom.” So ends the

Punishment
first part of the novel.

Dostoyevsky presents several
potential motives for this crime,

Tsar Alexander II abolished serfdom
in Russia in 1861. The prostitutes found
the most prominent of which is
in St. Petersburg’s seedy Haymarket

Raskolnikov’s perception of himself
area, a haunt of Raskolnikov, were
as a “superman”—someone superior predominantly desperate peasant girls.

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DEPICTING REAL LIFE 177

Raskolnikov’s motives for killing Alyona Ivanovna are a central theme of Crime and Punishment. Dostoyevsky shows that his antihero’s actions are prompted by a complex interplay of motives, internal dialogues, and unconscious drives that combine social, individual, philosophical, and religious imperatives.

Displaced vengeance

He resents his mother for
restricting his psychological
development; he associates
the old woman with his

Poverty
mother and thus kills the former

He feels that he needs
in an act of unconsciously
to steal the old woman’s
transferred revenge.

money to survive.

Justice

Irreligiousness

He believes he is doing

He lacks belief or any moral
society a favor by eliminating the
framework, and hopes that
evil old woman and using
through punishment he
her wealth for the
will find redemption.

benefit of others.

Power

Madness

He crosses the line to see if

Overburdened by his own
he can become a “superman”—
inner turmoil, he kills in order
beyond guilt and above
to do something to regain
good and evil.

control over himself.

Petrovitch, a detective who
horror, evil, suffering, and brutality
the mid-20th century, including
becomes increasingly convinced
is matched by its examination of

Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus,
that Raskolnikov is guilty of the
guilt, conscience, love, compassion, also owe much to the ground-crime, but lacks the evidence to
relations with our fellow humans,
breaking narrative form created
prove it. Raskolnikov’s nerves are
and the possibilities of redemption.

by Dostoyevsky. ■
in shreds. Would confessing and

Dostoyevsky’s concern for
taking the punishment of the law
representing the reality of the
be preferable to the torture of his
psychological processes in
own conscience? Does his sense of

Raskolnikov’s mind ensured that
remorse suggest that he is ordinary Crime and Punishment became a rather than extraordinary?

significant touchstone for future
novelists. This approach to writing

A hundred suspicions

Representing reality
coincided with—and was arguably
don’t make a proof.

In Crime and Punishment,
influenced by—the rise of the

Crime and

Dostoyevsky masterfully explores
science and practice of psychology.

Punishment
and dissects the immensely

One of the late 19th century’s most
complex nature of the mind of his
psychologically attuned writers,
protagonist. The novel’s powerful
novelist Henry James, was brother
exploration of the meaning of life
of the pioneering psychologist
and the existence in the world of

William. The existential writers of

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178

IN CONTEXT

TO DESCRIBE

FOCUS

Russia’s Golden Age

DIRECTLY THE LIFE

BEFORE

1831–32 The publication of

OF HUMANITY OR

Nikolai Gogol’s Evenings on
a Farm near the Dikanka and

Alexander Pushkin’s Tales of

EVEN OF A SINGLE

Belkin signal developments
in Russian literature away from
the folkloric forms of the past.

NATION APPEARS

1866 Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s

Crime and Punishment brings

IMPOSSIBLE
the science of psychology into
literary realism to explore
human motivation.

WAR AND PEACE (1869), LEO TOLSTOY

AFTER

1880 Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s
novel The Brothers Karamazov
is published—the last great
novel of Russia’s Golden Age.

1898 Moscow Art Theatre
stages The Seagull, which
establishes Anton Chekhov
as the preeminent dramatist
of Russia’s Golden Age.

Russia in the 19th century
was the seat of enormous
creativity in prose, poetry,
and drama. Critics have dubbed
the period the country’s “Golden

Age,” not for any unity of intent
among the authors, but for the
sheer number of literary works of
international significance that
emerged there over a short time.

The literature of the Golden

Age was heavily influenced by
the modernization of Russia in the

18th century. The country, which
had been insulated by culture and
geography from the Renaissance
that affected the rest of Europe
from the 14th to the 17th centuries,
was rapidly Westernized under

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DEPICTING REAL LIFE 179

See also: Eugene Onegin 124 ■ A Hero of Our Time 151–52 ■ Dead Souls 152 ■ Crime and Punishment 172–77 ■

The Idiot 199 ■ Anna Karenina 200 ■ The Brothers Karamazov 200–01 ■ Uncle Vanya 203

Mademoiselle

Old Prince

Princess

Old Count

Old Countess

Bourienne

Bolkonsky

Bolkonskaya

Ilya Rostov

Natalya Rostova

Lise

Prince Andrei

Princess Marya

Nikolai

Petya

Vera

Bolkonskaya

Bolkonsky

Bolkonskaya

Rostov

Rostov

Rostova

Prince Nikolai

Bolkonsky

Vasili

Aline

Sister or cousin

Count Kirill

Kuragin

Kuragina

Bezukhov

Anatole

Hippolyte

Helene

Pierre

Natasha

Kuragin

Kuragin

Kuragina

Bezukhov

Rostova

Princess Anna

Mashenka

Liza

Unnamed

Petya

Drubetskaya

Bezukhova

Bezukhova
daughter

Bezukhov

Tolstoy’s expansive epic War and Peace explores Russian identity Prince Boris
and history through the experiences of, and interactions between, Drubetskoy
the members of five noble families—the Bezukhovs, the Bolkonskys, the Rostovs, the Kuragins, and the Drubetskoys.

Peter the Great, tsar from 1682 to

Russian forms of expression,

Punishment (1866)—a visceral

1725. Peter oversaw the adoption
which often looked back to the
exercise in psychological realism—
of Western customs, learning, and
themes of earlier folktales, and
and Tolstoy’s War and Peace (1869)

even language, to the extent that—
sometimes even challenged the
and Anna Karenina (1875–77). ❯❯
by the early 19th century—the
very concept of writing as art. In
primary tongue spoken by the
the West, the writers of Russia’s

Russian aristocracy was French.

Golden Age were regarded with

The traditional literature of
curiosity—they were certainly

“old Russia,” notably the folk epic,
brilliant, but they were also
was displaced by writing that
considered savage and unschooled.

focused on more modern themes,

The first flowering of the Golden

If no one fought except
and the Russian language itself

Age early in the 19th century
on his own conviction,
developed new literary forms that
included works from writers such
there would be no wars.

carried through to the 19th century. as Alexander Pushkin, Nikolai War and Peace

However, Russian writers did much Gogol, and Ivan Turgenev. A more than ape the conventions of
second blossoming in the 1860s

Western literature. They reacted
and 1870s produced the greatest
to and defied its assumptions, and
works of the period, including
carved out their own uniquely

Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s Crime and

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180 WAR AND PEACE

High-society balls of the early 19th
century, where attendees dressed in
military finery and expensive gowns,
characterize Tolstoy’s depiction of the
shallow liberalism of St. Petersburg.

soirée. While Napoleon’s army
marches through Italy and heads
east, the city’s aristocrats meet to
gossip (in French), gamble, drink,
and flirt. Significantly, the opening
lines of the book, spoken by the
hostess of the soirée, Anna Pavlovna

Scherer, establish the book’s focus
on history, war, and the state of

Within a single life span, Russian

War and Peace spans a period

European affairs: “Well, Prince,
literature had made a series of
of eight years from July 1805,
so Genoa and Lucca are now just
incredible leaps from a folkloric
narrating the events of Napoleon’s
family estates of the Buonapartes.”

tradition to far more complex and
invasion of Russia up to the eventual

Tolstoy uses this gathering
extensive literary styles.

burning of Moscow in September
to introduce readers to some of his

1812. The main narrative follows
leading characters, including Prince

History writing
the rise and fall in the fortunes of

Andrei Nikolaevich Bolkonsky, a

A typically Russian ambivalence
five fictional, aristocratic Russian
handsome, intelligent and wealthy
about Western literary tropes led
families set against the backdrop
figure who will emerge as one

Tolstoy to write that “There is not
of the Napoleonic Wars of the 19th
of the heroes of the book, and
a single work of Russian artistic
century, linking their personal lives

Andrei’s friend Pierre Bezukhov,
prose… that quite fits the form of
to the history of Russia. Alongside
the ungainly and bulky son of a
a novel, a poem, or a story.” He
these fictional characters, Tolstoy

Russian count, through whom
was reluctant to categorize his
casts a series of actual historical

Tolstoy relays his own thoughts and
masterful War and Peace: “[it is] not figures, such as Tsar Alexander and concerns on the best way to live a a novel, even less is it a poem, and

Napoleon, as key players in his epic. moral life in an immoral world.

still less a historical chronicle,” he

Tolstoy’s narrative then moves
stated in 1868. Tolstoy’s concern

Introductions
to Moscow, where both the city and
was that all historical records had

The book begins in the most
its people have more traditionally
their pitfalls and that the “truth” of

Westernized of Russian cities—

Russian qualities. Here, the reader
history was hard to grasp without

St Petersburg—at a high-society
is introduced to more characters,
an omniscient view. He attempted
including Countess Rostova and
to achieve such a wide perspective
her four children, one of whom is
in War and Peace by exploring the

Natalia Ilyinichna (Natasha)—
experiences of a vast cast of

“black-eyed, wide-mouthed” and
characters—more than 500 in all—

“full of life”—whose vibrant energy
from across society. Some of the
flits through the pages of the book.

characters were inspired by people

There’s nothing stronger than

Tolstoy knew in real life: Natasha
those two old soldiers—

Russia at war

Rostova, for example, was based on

Time and Patience.

Soon, Russia is at war. Napoleon’s

Tolstoy’s wife’s sister. Many of the

War and Peace
forces march toward Moscow
aristocratic characters were given
and are met by the Russians
authentic, but slightly bastardized
some 70 miles (100 km) west of
names: the name of reckless and
the city at the Battle of Borodino on
willful Bezukhov, for example,

September 7, 1812. Tolstoy paints
translates as “earless.”

a vivid image of the bloodbath in

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DEPICTING REAL LIFE 181
which more than 25,000 men were
has fled and the war is over, with
killed in a single day. He presents
peace finally restored to Russia
the thoughts and actions of real-life
and her people.

characters, such as Napoleon and
his Russian counterpart Kutusov,

The small actions of many
alongside those of imagined

After finishing the stories of his
characters like Andrei and Pierre,
fictional characters, Tolstoy
allowing readers to see the chaos
reappraises the historical roles
and brutal truth of war from every
played by Napoleon and Tsar
perspective. The battle—which

Alexander. He concludes that
was an indecisive victory for the
history is not driven by the actions

French—marks the turning point
of great leaders, but by many, small
of the war.

and ordinary events: “History is

While life for St. Petersburg’s
the life of nations and of humanity.”

Leo Tolstoy
aristocrats continues almost

In War and Peace that vast scale
unaffected, Moscow is sacked and
is finely observed, and Tolstoy’s

Leo Tolstoy was born near
burned by Napoleon’s Grand Armée penetrating vision into everyday Moscow in 1828 to a noble
before it retreats. Napoleon’s forces
truths makes the book the vast,

Russian family. After leaving

Kazan University early, Tolstoy
suffer enormous hardships as they
grand work that it is.

led a dissolute life in Moscow
withdraw: facing freezing conditions

War and Peace captured the
and St. Petersburg, running up
and starvation, they are slaughtered essence of an era. In 1875, it was significant gambling debts.

in their thousands by the Russians. described by the Russian novelist He toured Europe in 1860–61,

In the book’s two-part epilogue,

Ivan Turgenev as “the vast picture
meeting the novelist Victor

Tolstoy tells of life in 1813 and
of the whole nation’s life.” A century

Hugo and the political thinker
beyond, after Napoleon’s army
after its publication, Ernest

Pierre-Joseph Proudhon. Both

Hemingway declared that it was
inspired Tolstoy to return to
from Tolstoy that he had learned to

Russia to write and educate

The Battle of Borodino is a key
the impoverished serfs. In
moment in Tolstoy’s War and Peace.

write about war, for no one wrote

1862, Tolstoy married Sophia

In his account, it is the chaos of battle,

“about war better than Tolstoy did.”

rather than the orders of leaders, which

Nor indeed, have many written

Andreevna Behrs with whom
decide the conflict’s outcome.

better on peace.

he had 13 children. Sophia

■
took care of their financial
matters, although their
marriage became increasingly
unhappy. After completing

War and Peace and Anna

Karenina, Tolstoy sought
spiritual and moral truth
through his Christianity and
by espousing pacifism,
influencing figures such as

Gandhi and Martin Luther

King. He died of pneumonia
in 1910 at 82.

Other key works

1875–77 Anna Karenina

1879 A Confession

1886 The Death of Ivan Ilyich

1893 The Kingdom of God

Is Within You

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182

IT IS A NARROW MIND

WHICH CANNOT LOOK

AT A SUBJECT FROM

VARIOUS POINTS OF VIEW

MIDDLEMARCH (1871–1872), GEORGE ELIOT

IN CONTEXT

FOCUS

The omniscient (all knowing) writers of the period—Charles narrator writes from a

Dickens, Victor Hugo, and Leo
perspective outside the

Tolstoy, for example—often wrote
story but knows everything about
in the third-person omniscient, and

The omniscient narrator
the characters and events in the
the narrative device was ideal for

BEFORE
story. This authorial voice was

George Eliot in Middlemarch, as it

1749 Henry Fielding’s
widely used by 19th-century
helped her draw her readers into
omniscient narrator in Tom
novelists in the context of social

“watching keenly the stealthy
realism. Many of the best-known
convergence of human lots.”

Jones exposes the process
of constructing a narrative.

1862 The omniscient voice in

The narrator’s point of view

Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables
comments on politics, society,
and the characters in the text.

The narrator can be…

…“you” the reader

1869 War and Peace by

(second person).

Leo Tolstoy includes an
omniscient voice to enable

“philosophical discussion.”

AFTER

1925 The omniscient narrator

…a character within the story

…outside of the story

(first person).

(third person)…

in Mrs. Dalloway lets Virginia

Woolf create characters with
great “inner space” and depth.

2001 Third-person omniscient
narration by Jonathan Franzen,
in The Corrections, suggests

…with no access

…with access to

…with full access
that cultural commentary and
to the characters’

the thoughts and
to the characters’

authority is a revived function
thoughts and
emotions of one
interior lives
of literary fiction.

emotions
or two characters

(objective).

(limited).

(omniscient).

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DEPICTING REAL LIFE 183

See also: Pride and Prejudice 118–19 ■ The Three Musketeers 122–23 ■ Vanity Fair 153 ■ Les Mis é rables 166–67 ■

Crime and Punishment 172–77 ■ War and Peace 178–81 ■ Tess of the D’Urbervilles 192–93

Through the intertwining story lines refines and fictionalizes this tenet, of a large cast of characters—who
proposing that women play a
live in the provincial English town
unique and significant role in the
of the title— Middlemarch explores
trajectory of progress and change.

tensions between marriage and

In particular, Eliot (as omniscient
vocation. In particular, it focuses
narrator) poses the question of how

What do we live for, if
on the dreams of two idealistic
to do this as a woman in the real
not to make life less
individuals, the intelligent and
and changing world.

difficult to each other?

philanthropic heiress Dorothea

Middlemarch

Brooke, and the talented but naive

An invitation to think
doctor Tertius Lydgate.

There are many discussions about
the role of women, between the

A world of hard choices
novel’s characters, as well as in the

Eliot steers clear of conformist
authorial asides. Male characters
happy endings—a fantasy that she
describe a range of qualities that
considered the territory of “silly”

are expected of women, from

Although Eliot has been accused
lady novelists. Her ambition was to

Dorothea’s husband Mr. Casaubon’s by critics of authorial bullying—
create a portrait of the complexity
ideal of “self-sacrificing affection”

Henry James read the novel as
of ordinary human life: minor flaws
to Lydgate’s daydream of beautiful

“too clever by half”—she succeeds
and failings, small tragedies, quiet
companionship, “reclining in a
in sustaining a discursive tone,
triumphs, and moments of dignity.

paradise with sweet laughs for
particularly in interjections by

It is the omniscient voice that
bird-notes.” Yet there is a reluctance the omniscient narrator.

regularly turns our focus back to
to promote a single, conclusive

George Eliot remains faithful
this ambition.

opinion regarding women’s lot in
to her own conviction that we

Eliot admired the German writer society. Instead, the authorial must concern ourselves with real-Johann Wolfgang van Goethe, and
voice invites us to reach our own
life issues by inviting readers to
also shared his philosophy that the
conclusions by posing questions
perceive their own interconnected
efforts of each single individual are
such as, “Was [Dorothea’s] point
web of complex and often opposing
essential to the overall progress of
of view the only possible one with
tendencies in all people, whether
humankind. In Middlemarch she
regard to this marriage?”

those people are fictional or real. ■

George Eliot

George Eliot was born Mary Ann

Lewes, who was separated but

Evans in 1819 in Warwickshire,
could not divorce. In 1854, they

England. Unusually for a girl,
chose to live together openly,
she was educated at private
and Evans began writing her
schools until the age of 16; after
novels, using a male pseudonym
her mother died in 1836, she
to lend authority to her work.

became housekeeper for her

Her writing ended after Lewes
father. After his death, in 1849,
died in 1878. In 1880 she

Eliot traveled to Geneva, then
married John Walter Cross, but

London, where she settled and in
died just seven months later.

1851 became editor of John Bray’s
journal, The Westminster Review.

Other key works

She formed a number of
unreciprocated attachments,

1859 Adam Bede
including to philosopher Herbert

1860 The Mill on the Floss

Spencer, but found true love with

1861 Silas Marner
fellow intellectual George Henry

1876 Daniel Deronda

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184

WE MAY BRAVE HUMAN

LAWS BUT WE CANNOT

RESIST NATURAL ONES

TWENTY THOUSAND LEAGUES UNDER THE SEA

(1870), JULES VERNE

IN CONTEXT

FOCUS

The term “scientific action-packed adventure, playing romance” originated in the
with the possibilities of exploration.

19th century to describe

From journeying into the air, Verne
speculative writings about natural
turned terrestrial with Journey to

Scientific romance
history or to condemn scientific
the Center of the Earth (1864), but it

BEFORE
ideas as fanciful. But over time,
was in the oceans that he achieved

1818 Frankenstein, by the
as scientific knowledge meant
his greatest success in the genre.

English author Mary Shelley,
that ideas about the future grew

In the 1850s Verne began to
more plausible, the label came to
develop the idea of an underwater
is published; it is often seen
be applied to fictional works that
boat, which became Nautilus, the
as the first fictional work with
incorporated aspects of scientific
ship of Captain Nemo in Twenty
a scientific focus.

wonder in the plot.

Thousand Leagues Under the

1845 The term “scientific

This was an era in which

Sea. Verne’s narrative relates the
romance” is used for the

Europeans—now obsessed with
fabulous tale of Nemo and his crew;
first time, in a review of the
technology, social progress, travel,
of their spectacular submarine
anonymously authored 1844
and adventure—dominated the
adventures finding kelp forests and
work Vestiges of the Natural
world, and it was hoped that
giant squid in the watery regions of

History of Creation, to describe
science could help to transform
the world. The wonderfully creative
its unconventional scientific
an era of grime and squalor into

Verne gave his travelers diving
ideas as literary fiction.

one of comfort and wealth.

suits and “air-guns” to use under
water—an amazing vision of

AFTER

Science and exploration
the potential power of scientific

1895 The Time Machine,

Frenchman Jules Verne (1828–1905) development to enable exploration H. G. Wells’s first science-fiction
is the best remembered of the
of the farthest reaches of the world.

novel, popularizes the concept

19th-century scientific romance

In the early 20th century,
of time travel and offers a
writers, demonstrating in his works “scientific romance” was largely dystopian view of the future.

a prescient and imaginative taste
superseded by the term “science
for futuristic travel. Verne’s
fiction,” and the focus shifted to

1912 Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s
travelogue Five Weeks in a Balloon
outer space and the future rather

The Lost World extends the

(1863) established his style of
than “terra incognita.” ■
genre of scientific romance
by envisioning dinosaurs in

See also: Frankenstein 120–21
contemporary South America.

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DEPICTING REAL LIFE 185

IN SWEDEN ALL WE DO

IS TO CELEBRATE JUBILEES

THE RED ROOM (1879), AUGUST STRINDBERG

IN CONTEXT

FOCUS

The roman à clef, or “novel elite—and, disheartened, he soon with a key,” is literature
realizes that Swedish society is
that depicts real people or
riddled with deceit and corruption.

events thinly disguised as fiction,

The title of the novel refers to

Roman à clef
the “key” being the relationship
a room in a Stockholm restaurant

BEFORE
between the real and the fictitious.

where bohemians gathered. Here,

1642–69 Readers would

Such works often use satire and

Falk seeks solace with artists
have recognized depictions
humor to comment on politics,
and writers to contemplate the
scandals, and controversial figures.

vicissitudes of life. The comic
of important society figures
descriptions of the characters he
in the roman à clef novels of

Deceit and corruption
encounters provide a sense of the

French writer Madeleine de

The Red Room, a novel by Swedish
tensions between bohemian and

Scudéry, such as Clelia.

author August Strindberg (1849–
bourgeois life in Stockholm. ■

1816 The characters in the

1912), who was also a much
scandalous novel Glenarvon,
admired playwright, is a satire of
by the English aristocrat

Stockholm society, akin to the work

Lady Caroline Lamb, are
of English writer Charles Dickens
thinly disguised versions of
in its biting critique. Considered to
her ex-lover Lord Byron and
be the first modern Swedish novel
others in her own privileged
in its style and content, the book

Train yourself to regard the

London social circle.

introduces Arvid Falk, Strindberg’s
world from a bird’s-eye view,
alter ego and a naive idealist.

and you will discover how

AFTER

Falk is a young civil servant
petty and insignificant

1957 On the Road, by Jack
when we meet him, so frustrated
everything is.

Kerouac, continues the tradition
by the bureaucracy and drudgery

The Red Room
of the roman à clef, detailing
of his job that he gives it up to
his travels in North America.

become a journalist and author. He
encounters characters from theater,

1963 American writer Sylvia
politics, and business, drawn from

Plath’s semiautobiographical
real personalities in the Stockholm

The Bell Jar depicts a young
woman’s descent into mental

See also: Bleak House 146–49 ■ On the Road 264–65 ■ The Bell Jar 290 ■
illness.

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas 332

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186

SHE IS WRITTEN

IN A FOREIGN

TONGUE

THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY (1881), HENRY JAMES

IN CONTEXT

FOCUS

Much has been made the 18th century had seen a political of the supposed
and economic breach in Anglo–
psychological and

American relations that led to
cultural differences between

American independence in 1776,

Transatlantic fiction

Europeans (notably the British)

there remained a strong, though at

BEFORE
and Americans—whether in
times antagonistic, bond between

1844 In Martin Chuzzlewit,
language, humor, or social
the two. As a nation, the US gained

Charles Dickens offers an early
etiquette. In Europe, the debate
confidence, and saw a growth in
often centers on Americanisms
the affluent classes and an increase
piece of transatlantic fiction,
that are seen to be creeping into
in tourism and transatlantic travel.

set in England and the US.

European cultures.

1875 The Way We Live Now,

Similar preoccupations have

Innocents abroad
a satirical novel by English
been reflected in literature, with

One prominent example of an
writer Anthony Trollope,
early transatlantic fiction often

American with a taste for travel
follows corrupt European
exploring cultural differences,
and an eye for cultural difference
financier Augustus Melmotte
but with a particular focus on the
was the expatriate Henry James.

and his American investments.

impact of the Old World (Europe)

He viewed his fellow Americans
on American sensibilities. Although with detachment, and his novels AFTER
examined in depth what it meant

1907 American author Edith
to be an American.

Wharton’s Madame de

Like so many of his works, The

Treymes revolves around

Portrait of a Lady depicts a cast of

Americans living in France.

mainly American characters in a

European setting. The self-made

1926 In The Sun Also Rises,

If we’re not good

Caspar Goodwood is a symbol

American author Ernest

Americans we’re certainly
of his nation—enterprising and

Hemingway presents a group
poor Europeans; we’ve no
forthright. He is contrasted with
of young American and British
natural place here.

Gilbert Osmond, who has adopted
expatriates in Paris and Spain.

The Portrait of a Lady

European manners and values,

1955 In Vladimir Nabokov’s
a morally corrupt man who poses

Lolita, European Humbert
as an aesthete, a man of taste.

Humbert pursues the young

It is through the novel’s central

Lolita across the US.

character, Isabel Archer, that the
tensions between Old and New

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DEPICTING REAL LIFE 187

See also: The Turn of the Screw 203 ■ Lolita 260–61

USA

Europe

Early transatlantic literature typically

A young, independent
contrasted American vulgarity and enthusiasm

Older, complex societies,
outlook based on belief in
with European sophistication and cynicism.

rigid with tradition, and

Europe remained compelling and attractive

“Life, liberty, and the
tainted by despotism
to Americans, in both real life and fiction.

pursuit of happiness.”

and decadence.

Culturally barren, coarse,

Culturally rich,
vulgar, and unrefined.

refined, elegant,
and sophisticated.

Meritocratic values rooted

Restrictive values,
in optimism, dynamism,
world weariness
and individual ambition.

and cynicism, fear of
loss of privilege.

World values are most starkly
and sincerity make her attractive to the seductions of sinister Gilbert played out. Isabel is an intelligent,
suitors, but she believes marriage

Osmond, as Old World cunning
imaginative woman, who reflects
will curtail her freedom. To secure
ensnares New World innocence.

the optimism and individualism
her independence, her cousin Ralph

James continued these themes
of the US. Traveling to England and Touchett persuades his father to in his later works, including The
then to Europe, Isabel, despite her
bequeath a large inheritance to

Ambassadors and The Wings
independent spirit, also desires to

Isabel, so that she will never have
of a Dove, and inspired several
conform to the social proprieties
to marry for money. Ironically, her
authors, such as Edith Wharton,
she encounters abroad. Her charm
fortune renders her vulnerable to
to focus on similar concerns. ■

Henry James

New York-born Henry James
sketches, and reviews as well

(1843–1916), the son of wealthy
as novels, and was nicknamed
intellectual Henry James Sr., spent “The Master” by his friend his childhood traveling across

Edith Wharton. In his writing,

Europe. After returning to the US
he remained very much an
to attend Harvard University, he

American, with his greatest
decided he wanted to be a writer,
characters being from his birth
and published his short stories
nation. In 1915 he became a
and reviews in periodicals.

British citizen.

From 1875 James settled in

Europe, eventually moving to

Other key works

London. His nomadic childhood
and life abroad as an adult

1879 Daisy Miller
allowed him to critique both

1886 The Bostonians

American and European society.

1902 The Wings of a Dove

He was a prolific writer, producing 1903 The Ambassadors short stories, plays, essays, travel

1904 The Golden Bowl

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188

HUMAN BEINGS CAN

BE AWFUL CRUEL

TO ONE ANOTHER

THE ADVENTURES OF HUCKLEBERRY FINN (1884),

MARK TWAIN

IN CONTEXT

FOCUS

With little history to speak no other. Mark Twain’s Huck Finn of and few literary
relates his adventures in regional
traditions to anchor
dialect, salted with philosophical
them, American writers in the 19th
musings and homespun wisdom,

American voices
century were engaged in holding
and along the way becomes one of

BEFORE
up a mirror to the varied, complex
the first authentic voices in

1823 The Pioneers, the first of
populations of their rapidly evolving American literature.

James Fenimore Cooper’s saga
nation. One author blazed a trail,

What is it about The Adventures
locating his story specifically in the of Huckleberry Finn that led Ernest the “Leatherstocking Tales,”

Mississippi Valley in the Midwest

Hemingway to declare it to be the
offers conflicting views of life
with a poor white boy narrator like
starting point for all American
on the frontier in one of the
first original American novels.

1852 Harriet Beecher Stowe

The Country of the Pointed Firs (Jewett, 1896, Maine)

creates multiple vernacular

“’Tain’t worthwhile to wear a day all out before it comes.”

voices in Uncle Tom’s Cabin, a
sentimental story that inflames
the antislavery debate.

The Grapes of Wrath

Uncle Tom’s Cabin

(Steinbeck, 1939, Oklahoma)

(Stowe, 1852, Kentucky)

AFTER

“There ain’t no sin and there ain’t no virtue.

“It don’t look well, now, for a feller

There’s just stuff people do.”

to be praisin’ himself.”

1896 In The Country of the

Pointed Firs, Sarah Orne

Jewett paints a vivid picture
of life in an isolated fishing
village on the coast of Maine.

The Sound and the Fury

(Faulkner, 1929, Mississippi)

1939 John Steinbeck’s Pulitzer

“Hush, now. We be gone in

Prize-winning novel The
a minute. Hush, now.”

Grapes of Wrath mixes local
color with social injustice

The use of regional dialect
in an epic story of a family’s
in notable examples of 19th- and

Huckleberry Finn (Twain,

1884, Mississippi Valley)

journey west in the midst of
early 20th-century American literature

“Say, who is you? Whar is you?

gave a voice—and thereby a form of
the Great Depression.

Dog my cats ef I didn’

representation—to races, regions, cultures, and
hear sumf’n.”

classes that had previously been denied one.

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DEPICTING REAL LIFE 189

See also: Uncle Tom’s Cabin 153 ■ The Sound and the Fury 242–43 ■

Of Mice and Men 244 ■ The Grapes of Wrath 244 ■ To Kill a Mockingbird 272–73
literature? For a start, it empowered “Yes—en I’s rich now … I owns generations of American writers
myself, en I’s worth eight hund’d
to shift literature from its center
dollars. I wished I had de money.”

in the New England colonies and

Living on the raft in idyllic self-
site their works on home soil with
sufficiency, Huck and Jim are cast
local color and vernacular speech.

adrift from their social order, and

But what is also remarkable is the
a friendship develops. Later, as
radical heart of this free-flowing

Huck wrestles with a Southern

“boy’s own” story. Twain’s novel
ideology that demands he should
was published after the American
turn Jim in, he can remember the

Civil War (1861–65), but is set 40 to
man only as a friend: “we a floating

Mark Twain

50 years earlier, when slaveholding
along, talking, and singing, and
persisted in the South and settlers
laughing … somehow I couldn’t

Born on November 30,
were scrabbling for land in the
seem to strike no places to harden

1835, Samuel Langhorne

West. Huck’s ingenuous thoughts
me against him…” By the time

Clemens grew up in Hannibal,

Missouri, which served as
reflect the numerous contradictions Tom Sawyer, the eponymous hero the model for “St. Petersburg”

at the heart of American society.

of Twain’s earlier novel, steps onto
in Huckleberry Finn.

the page, Huck’s emotional

After the death of his

Adventures down the river
development is almost complete.

father, Clemens left school at

Early on in the narrative, Huck

Although it was condemned as
the age of 12; he worked as
introduces himself to the reader

“coarse” when it was first published
a typesetter and occasional
as an established character from
in 1884, Huckleberry Finn injected
writer, and in 1857 became
a previous novel by Twain, The

American writing with a new
a steamboat pilot on the

Adventures of Tom Sawyer, which
energy, style, and color. Its focus on

Mississippi. During the Civil
gives his account the credibility
the speech of real Americans

War he prospected for silver in
of social history. He feigns death
stretched on through the voices

Nevada, then started writing
to escape the civilizing folk of
of John Steinbeck’s dispossessed
for newspapers, adopting the

Missouri and the brutality of his
farmers in The Grapes of Wrath
pen name Mark Twain.

father, and begins his journey down (1939) to recent first-person In 1870 Clemens married
the Mississippi on a raft, in the
narratives such as Drown (1996),

Olivia Langdon; they settled
in Connecticut and had four
company of Jim, a runaway slave.

Junot Díaz’s stories of Dominican-
children. Despite the success

As they drift south, the barbarous

Americans in New Jersey. ■
of his novels, a series of poor
reality of backwoods society
investments bankrupted him,
encroaches whenever they make
but from 1891 he lectured
contact with the shore. In these
widely, enjoyed international
one-horse towns, lynch mobs
celebrity, and restored his
and gangs administer justice;
finances. As Mark Twain,
tricksters play to the weakness of
he wrote 28 books, and many
the crowd; loudmouthed drunks are

You feel mighty
short stories, letters, and
summarily shot; and a young
free and easy and
sketches. He died in 1910.

gentleman who befriends Huck
comfortable on a raft.

is murdered in a family feud.

Other key works

The Adventures of

In a text that is peppered

Huckleberry Finn
with the offensive word “nigger,”

1876 The Adventures
of Tom Sawyer
subversion is played out through the

1881 The Prince and
talks between Huck and Jim. Newly
the Pauper
escaped from being sold down the

1883 Life on the Mississippi
river by his mistress, Jim concludes:

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190

HE SIMPLY WANTED

TO GO DOWN THE MINE

AGAIN TO SUFFER

AND TO STRUGGLE

GERMINAL (1885), ÉMILE ZOLA

IN CONTEXT

FOCUS

Naturalism was a literary principles of objectivity and movement that evolved in
observation to examine how
mid-19th-century France,
characters react when placed in
in reaction to the sentimental
adverse conditions. In effect, all

Naturalism
imagination of Romanticism. Rather naturalist fiction is also realist, BEFORE
than depicting an idealized world,
but the reverse is not always true.

1859 On the Origin of Species,
naturalism focused on the harsh
by English naturalist Charles
lives of those in the lowest social

Documentary realism
strata. It had much in common with The leading figure of the naturalist Darwin, has a profound impact
realism, which sought to present an movement was the French writer on numerous literary works,
accurate evocation of ordinary life,

Émile Zola. Germinal is Zola’s 13th
encouraging a belief in
as exemplified in Gustave Flaubert’s novel in the 20-volume Rougon-physiological determinism.

Madame Bovary. Naturalism had

Macquart series, subtitled “The

1874 Thomas Hardy’s Far
similar literary ambitions and used
natural and social history of a family

From the Madding Crowd,
detailed realism, but was rooted in
under the Second Empire,” in which
with its fatalistic portrayal of
the theory that humans are unable
he studies the deterministic effects
the inequitable condition of
to transcend the impact of their
of heredity and environment on
humankind, foreshadows
environment. Therefore, naturalist
different characters within a single

French naturalism.

authors applied quasi-scientific
extended family. In the new French
revolutionary calendar, “Germinal”

AFTER
was the name of the spring month,

1891 English novelist George
when plants begin to sprout: the

Gissing’s New Grub Street
title thus refers, optimistically, to
looks at the damaging effect
the possibility of a better future.

of poverty on creativity.

Zola depicts the life of a

Blow the candle out.

mining community in northern

1895 Set during the American

I don’t need to see what

France, portraying the struggle

Civil War, Stephen Crane’s The
colour my thoughts are.

between capital and labor as well

Red Badge of Courage presents

Germinal
as the inexorable workings of the
with psychological naturalism
environment and heredity on his
an inexperienced soldier’s
frequently ill-fated characters. He
reactions to the bloodshed.

researched the background to his
story minutely, inspired in part by
miners strikes in 1869 and 1884.

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DEPICTING REAL LIFE 191

See also: Tess of the D’Urbervilles 192–93 ■ Far from the Madding Crowd 200 ■

A Doll’s House 200 ■ The Red Badge of Courage 202 ■ Sister Carrie 203

Claude Lantier

Jacques Lantier

The Masterpiece (1886)

La Bête humaine

(1890)

Jean Macquart

The Earth (1887),

The Debacle (1892)

Étienne Lantier

Germinal (1885)

Émile Zola

Gervaise Macquart

L’Assommoir (1877)

Émile Zola was born in Paris

Anna Coupeau
in 1840; his father died in 1847,

Nana (1880)

leaving the family to struggle
financially. In 1862 Zola got

Antoine

Macquart
a job at the publishing firm

The Fortune of the

Lisa Macquart

Hachette and supplemented

Rougons (1871)

The Belly of

Pauline Quenu
his income by writing critical

Paris (1873)

The Joy of Life
articles for periodicals. Three

(1884)

years later, his reputation
established, he made the

Adelaïde

In Zola’s Rougon-Macquart series, the main
decision to support himself

Fouque
characters are all descended from a single matriarch,
by literary work alone, and

The Fortune of the

Adelaïde Fouque. Through them, Zola explores his
in 1865 published his first

Rougons (1871)

theories of heredity—the way in which inherited traits,
novel, Claude’s Confession.

such as alcoholism or mental illness, play themselves out

In 1898 Zola famously
differently but inexorably in generation after generation.

intervened in the Dreyfus

Affair, in which a Jewish

Zola deploys a forensic realism to
plight of the people. As the novel
army officer was wrongfully
evoke the mine, which becomes
progresses, poverty and working
convicted of treason: Zola
wrote an open letter critical of
almost a character in itself. The use conditions worsen, to such an the general staff that became
of imagery and metaphors give it a
extent that the workers go on
known as “J’Accuse.” This act
heightened reality—it is an ogre, a
strike, with the idealistic Étienne
led to his being found guilty
voracious monster, sucking in and
as their leader; when riots and
of libel and he fled to England.

devouring the insectlike workers.

violent repression ensue, the miners

He was allowed to return to
blame him. Despite the brutality

France in 1899. Zola died in

Hope for the future
and desolation, Étienne retains his

1902, from carbon monoxide

The novel’s main protagonist is
belief in the potential germination
poisoning due to a blocked
the educated but volatile Étienne
of a better society.

flue. Some believe that his

Lantier, the son of an alcoholic, who

Dominated by Zola, literary
death may not have been an
loses his job after assaulting his
naturalism was a relatively short-
accident, but instead the
boss. Étienne arrives in Montsou,
lived movement in Europe, but it
work of anti-Dreyfusards.

where he finds work in the mine.

went on to flourish in the US, where

Wary of an inherited propensity for
authors such as Stephen Crane,

Other key works
violence, he tries to avoid alcohol.

Jack London, Theodore Dreiser, and

1867 Thérèse Raquin

His position as an outsider allows

Upton Sinclair explored in diverse

1877 L’Assommoir
him to evaluate the suffering and
ways the effects of environment on

1890 La Bête humaine
injustice he sees, and to pity the
their characters. ■

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192

THE EVENING SUN

WAS NOW UGLY TO HER

LIKE A GREAT INFLAMED

WOUND IN THE SKY

TESS OF THE D’URBERVILLES (1891),

THOMAS HARDY

IN CONTEXT

FOCUS

A strong connection with the forces, which are depicted not only landscape and nature runs as destructive but also more broadly through the works of the
as indicative of human suffering.

English writer Thomas Hardy. This

Through Hardy’s use of pathetic

Pathetic fallacy
relationship was a reflection of the
fallacy, Tess Durbeyfield is shown

BEFORE
author’s tremendous love of Dorset,
as being in harmony with nature,

1807 William Wordsworth
the county where he was born, and
which reflects her character and
employs pathetic fallacy in his
where he set all of his major novels.

moods. The term “pathetic fallacy”

In Tess of the d’Urbervilles, nature
was coined by art critic John
poem “I wandered lonely as a
represents the authenticity and

Ruskin in 1856, and refers to the
cloud / That floats on high o’er
spontaneity of traditional, rural
attribution of human behavior and
vales and hills.”

life: if nature suffers, then Hardy
emotions to nature; this device was

1818 “It was on a dreary
is pointing to powerful “modern”

often used in 19th-century novels.

night in November….” Mary

Shelley opens Chapter 5 of

Pathetic fallacy is used by Hardy and other writers to link human Frankenstein with foreboding
emotions to aspects of nature—for example, using references to the elemental forces.

weather to indicate mood: sunshine suggests happiness, rain misery, and a storm inner turmoil.

1847 Wuthering Heights by

Emily Brontë uses the weather
on the moors to represent
human emotion.

AFTER

1913 In Sons and Lovers by

English novelist D. H. Lawrence,
the moods of characters are
reflected by evoking the
environment around them.

1922 The opening of T. S.

Eliot’s Modernist poem The

Waste Land portrays the
season of spring as “cruel.”

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DEPICTING REAL LIFE 193

See also: Frankenstein 120–21 ■ Wuthering Heights 132–37 ■ Bleak House 146–49 ■ Far From the Madding Crowd 200 ■ The Waste Land 213

Tess is first shown as an innocent.

that she was “more sinned against

She is dancing—a “maiden” in
than sinning.” Hardy no longer
white—as part of a May Day
represents her in nature, working
celebration, and captures the
in the fields or with animals—he
attention of Angel Clare, whom
places her in the new and lonely
she too notices. Although the
environment of a town, Sandbourne,
author asserts in his subtitle ( A
living as a kept mistress.

Pure Woman) that Tess is “pure,”

evoking a Christian sentiment,

The inevitability of fate
she appears at first to be the

When Angel finally accepts that
embodiment and celebration of
he wants to be with Tess, the

Thomas Hardy
the pagan, feminine, and natural.

lovers are reunited and experience

The series of misfortunes that
a short-lived pastoral bliss before

Thomas Hardy was born in
shapes Tess’s story is precipitated
darkness sets in again. They retreat

Dorset in 1840, the son of a
by the suggestion that she is
to the New Forest, where, like
stonemason and builder, and
at the age of 16 became an
descended from an aristocratic
nymphs, “they promenaded over
architect’s apprentice.

Norman family, the d’Urbervilles.

the dry bed of fir-needles, thrown

When he was 22 he moved

This revelation distances Tess from into a vague intoxicating to London, but after five years,
her natural self—Angel’s “new-
atmosphere at the consciousness
concerned for his health and
sprung child of nature”—and
of being together at last….” Here
yearning to write, he returned
eventually leads to consequences.

Hardy again suggests Tess’s
to Dorset. Hardy set all his

As events unfold, and Tess’s
oneness with nature. The forest
major novels in the southwest
life becomes entangled with Alec
atmosphere evokes a joyful, pure
of England, and named his
d’Urberville, she is depicted in
love, which triumphs even over
fictional landscape “Wessex”

more disturbing settings, such as
the prospect of death. The stone
after the medieval Anglo-
beneath an “inflamed” sun or in
circle at the end of the novel

Saxon kingdom. Although
bewildering, mist-shrouded forests. represents both paganism and many of the novels’ locations

In an intense example of pathetic
nature; and Tess’s sleep on the altar
are real, he always gave
fallacy, she wakes in a woods to
stone symbolizes her final, willing
them fictional names.

find herself surrounded by dying
surrender to her fate.

Hardy was disposed to

■
write about suffering and
pheasants, hunted and abandoned,
tragedy. The death of his
and she is forced to show mercy by
estranged first wife, Emma, in
ending their agony. Reflecting on

1912 led him to write some of
her own misery, she is humbled by
his finest love poetry. After his
the suffering of the birds.

death in 1928, his ashes were
interred in Poets’ Corner at

Virtuous victim

The atmosphere turned pale,

Westminster Abbey while his

But Tess’s love for Angel is pure
the birds shook themselves in
heart was buried with Emma.

and Hardy shows that they can
the hedges, arose and
overcome adverse circumstances.

twittered; the lane showed all

Other key works

They marry, but their happiness is
its white features and Tess
disrupted; a cock crowing in the

1874 Far from the
showed hers, still whiter.

afternoon after their marriage

Madding Crowd

Tess of the d’Urbervilles
ceremony is a bad omen.

1878 The Return of the Native

1886 The Mayor of

Angel is compelled by his

Casterbridge
background and upbringing to turn

1887 The Woodlanders
against Tess after she confesses to

1895 Jude the Obscure
a turbulent past, despite agreeing

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194

THE ONLY WAY TO GET

RID OF A TEMPTATION

IS TO YIELD TO IT

THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY (1891),

OSCAR WILDE

IN CONTEXT

FOCUS

When the dandy Lord excess is a destructive one and he Henry first seduces the
leaves many victims in his wake.

title character of Oscar

His is not a straightforward tale

Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray
of aesthetic pleasure, but, like the

Aestheticism
into a life of debauchery, his advice

Aesthetic movement, it questions

BEFORE
to yield to temptation summarizes
the bourgeois morality of the 19th

1884 In French writer Joris-
the basic tenets of Aestheticism.

century, which required art to serve

Karl Huysmans’ Against

The Aesthetic movement developed a higher purpose. Wilde’s portrayal in late 19th-century Europe and
of Aestheticism attacks this by

Nature, the eccentric aesthete

Britain, emphasizing the primacy
suggesting that art should be
antihero, Jean des Esseintes,
of “art for art’s sake” rather than for
removed from morality. Wilde saw
loathes middle-class morality.

its social, political, or moral “value.”

his celebration of amoral sensuality

AFTER
and destruction as a critique of the

1901 German novelist Thomas

In pursuit of pleasure
middle-class ideology that, he felt,

Mann’s Buddenbrooks details

In Wilde’s novel, the beautiful
was stifling art with its didacticism.

the decline of bourgeois

Dorian lives the life of the ideal
culture in the 19th century.

aesthete, embracing all forms

Beauty and decay
of hedonism in pursuit of new

Just as Dorian superficially thrives

1912 Thomas Mann’s novella
sensations. As he enters further
while his painting decays, the

Death in Venice charts the
into a life of dissipation and
façade of Aestheticism disguised
succumbing to temptation
corruption, behind closed doors
the loss of a middle-class social
of Gustav von Aschenbach,
his magical portrait conceals the
order in the waning of the British
an artist who goes down a
horrors of his sins, his painted

Empire. The beautiful decay
self-destructive path of erotic
image becoming older and uglier
that so “fascinates” Lord Henry
infatuation and excess.

while he remains young and
represents the society from which
unblemished in the flesh.

it stems, where temptation is overly

1926 The novella Dream Story,

While the story is considered
indulged as a symbol of a world in
by Austrian writer Arthur
a prime example of the creed of
decline. Beauty might reign, but

Schnitzler, is published; it is
appreciating art and life for sensual at a terrible cost—for Dorian, the considered a key piece in the
pleasure alone, Dorian’s path of
ultimate price is his soul. ■
turn-of-the-century Viennese
decadence movement that is

See also: Death in Venice 240
associated with Aestheticism.

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DEPICTING REAL LIFE 195

THERE ARE THINGS OLD

AND NEW WHICH MUST

NOT BE CONTEMPLATED

BY MEN’S EYES

DRACULA (1897), BRAM STOKER

IN CONTEXT

FOCUS

Stories of the supernatural Ripper murdered several women in and the macabre, set within

1888, would still have been fresh
ruins and wild landscapes,
in readers’ minds).

characterized the gothic novel of

All that is modern—gas lights,

Urban gothic
the late 18th to early 19th centuries. science, technology, the police—is BEFORE

The later urban gothic novel turns
no help in the face of this ancient

1852–53 In Charles Dickens’

city settings into places of horror,
invader from lands of myth and

Bleak House, urban fog is
playing on the anxieties of the
folklore. Count Dracula is depicted
time, such as moral degeneration.

as a foreign, dark, animalistic
used to signify claustrophobia

Dracula, by the Irish novelist
force. Contagion, sexuality, and
and confusion; it becomes a

Abraham (Bram) Stoker (1847–1912), degeneration, associated with the key symbol of mystery and
takes the reader into the heart of
squalor of urban living, feature too,
terror in urban gothic fiction.

Victorian London, where a vampiric as the count threatens to spread his 1886 The Strange Case
foreign count threatens middle-
curse of the undead. ■
of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, by
class society. Living for the most

Scottish writer Robert Louis
part undetected, he is free to

Stevenson, puts a horrific
choose his victims—the novel
spin on the tedium of middle-
reveals the horror that comes
class decency.

with urban anonymity.

1890 With its fixation on social

Horror from the east

What manner of man
degeneration and mortality,

Dracula is about east versus west:

is this, or what manner

The Picture of Dorian Gray by
the count comes from the east
of creature is it in the

Irish author Oscar Wilde is a

(Transylvania), lands on England’s
semblance of a man?

classic urban gothic novel.

east coast, and resides in Purfleet,

Dracula
to the east of London. This, for the

AFTER

Victorian reader, would associate

1909 French writer Gaston
him with foreigners, violence, and

Leroux’s The Phantom of the
crime (the horrors of Whitechapel,

Opera takes the gothic novel to

East London, where Jack the
the heart of Paris. Stage and
screen adaptations later bring

See also: Bleak House 146–49 ■ The Picture of Dorian Gray 194 ■
the story to a huge audience.

The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde 201–02 ■ The Turn of the Screw 203

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196

ONE OF THE

DARK PLACES

OF THE EARTH

HEART OF DARKNESS (1899), JOSEPH CONRAD

IN CONTEXT

FOCUS

During the 19th century, For example, Rudyard Kipling’s imperialism reigned
work subtly challenges the image of
supreme, and many
the benevolent British Empire. But

European countries wielded
nowhere are the themes of colonial

Colonial literature
immense power over their distant
exploitation and intolerance seen

BEFORE
colonies. Western writers often
more clearly in the literature of this

1610–11 Prospero enslaves
held fiercely colonial attitudes,
era than in the works of Joseph

Caliban in Shakespeare’s
and the sense of superiority felt

Conrad, in particular in his short
by the colonizing nation can be
novel Heart of Darkness.

The Tempest, one of the
seen in novels of the period.

earliest fictional works to

But at the turn of the 20th

The darkness within
depict colonial attitudes.

century, colonialism, and its brutal

Africa, the setting of the novel,

1719 In Robinson Crusoe,
effects on subjugated peoples, was
was for Victorian Britain “the dark

Daniel Defoe’s hero teaches
starting to be questioned. Authors
continent.” Conrad uses this image
the native Friday the “superior”

moved away from imperialist
of darkness throughout the book—
ways of the Western world.

perspectives to explore the
he refers, for example, to the river
complexities of colonialism, and

Thames leading out toward “the

AFTER
the rights and wrongs of empire.

heart of an immense darkness.” Yet

1924 E. M. Forster’s A Passage

London was also “one of the dark
to India questions whether
places of the earth.” The novel
there can ever be a true
suggests that this darkness can
understanding between the
exist within as well as without—
colonizer and the colonized.

a white man operating beyond
the confines of the European

1930s The Négritude literary

Going up that river
social system, such as the book’s
movement, led by Aimé
was like travelling back
enigmatic ivory trader Kurtz,

Césaire and L-S Senghor,
to the earliest beginnings
might begin to glimpse the
rejects French colonial racism
of the world.

darkness in his own soul.

for a common black identity.

Heart of Darkness

At the beginning of the novel,

1990s The study of colonial
a group of friends sit in a boat
representation in literature—
moored in the Thames. One of
postcolonialism—becomes
them, Marlow, tells the story
popular in literary theory.

of his time in the Belgian Congo,
prefacing it with thoughts about

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DEPICTING REAL LIFE 197

See also: Robinson Crusoe 94–95 ■ The Story of an African Farm 201 ■

Nostromo 240 ■ A Passage to India 241–42 ■ Things Fall Apart 266–69
what he calls “the conquest of the
to suppress “savage customs” ends,
earth,” which is “Not a pretty thing

Marlow discovers, with a scrawled
when you look into it too much.”

sentence: “Exterminate all the

Conquest relies on dispossession,
brutes!” Conrad here suggests that
on taking “from those who have a
under the surface of the supposed
different complexion or slightly
mission to “civilize” Africa lies an
flatter noses than ourselves.”

urge to exterminate those of a

Marlow’s journey up the Congo
different complexion.

reads like a voyage into hell: black

But just as Marlow realizes his

Africans dying of overwork and
kinship with his cannibal crew
malnutrition; white Europeans

(“good fellows,” he calls them), so

Joseph Conrad
going slowly insane; his boat under
he understands his kinship with
attack from those who live in the

Kurtz. Conrad, a contemporary of

Joseph Conrad was born Jozef
jungle. He is obsessed with stories
psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud,

Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski
about Kurtz, who has amassed
offers the suggestion that the
on December 3, 1857, in the

Polish Ukraine. After his
huge amounts of ivory but has

“heart of darkness” may lie inside,
mother’s early death and
embraced the darkness around
that Marlow’s voyage deep into the
his father’s political exile to
him—or within him. The report

African continent can be read as a

Siberia, Conrad was brought
that Kurtz has written about how
voyage into the human psyche. ■
up by his mother’s brother
in Kraków. At the age of 17,
he moved to France and made
many bohemian friends; he

Marlow’s journey up the Congo
took work at sea as a pilot,
and his observations during
this time laid the groundwork
for much of the detail in his
novels. Conrad later settled
in England, with the intention

Africa is exploited by imperial conquerors
of becoming a naval officer.

for natural resources.

He spent 20 years as a sailor,
slowly learning English
and beginning to write.

He became a British subject
in 1886 and began his first

The mistreatment of Africans lays bare the
novel, Almayer’s Folly, in
racism inherent in imperialism.

1889. The time he spent in
command of a steamship
named Le roi des Belges in
the Belgian Congo in 1890
provided the outline for Heart

Marlow’s cannibal shipmates are
of Darkness. Conrad died in
less savage than Europeans.

1924 at the age of 67.

Other key works

1900 Lord Jim

The journey up the river

1904 Nostromo
is a journey into the darkness

1907 The Secret Agent
of the human psyche.

1911 Under Western Eyes

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198

FURTHER READING

A TALE OF TWO CITIES
raised by a harsh sister and her
kindly husband, blacksmith Joe

Wilkie Collins

(1859), CHARLES DICKENS

Gargery, encounters an escaped
convict. Time passes and Pip’s life

Born in London in 1824, the

One of only two historical novels
changes dramatically with news
son of the landscape painter
written by the prolific English writer of “great expectations” from an William Collins, Wilkie Collins
discovered a gift for devising

Charles Dickens (see p.147), A Tale
anonymous benefactor, who enables
tales as a teenager while at
of Two Cities is set in London and
him to become a gentleman. Written
boarding school, thanks to a

Paris before and during the 1789
with perhaps the finest examples
bully who demanded a story

French Revolution. Notable for its
of Dickens’ much-loved humor, the
before allowing him to sleep
lack of humor, it tells the story
plot features many unforgettable
each night. He was introduced
of Dr. Manette; his granddaughter
characters: faded and embittered
to Dickens in 1851 and became

Lucie; her husband, émigré Charles

Miss Havisham; cold and haughty
protégé to the literary colossus,

Darnay; and Darnay’s lookalike,

Estella, her adopted daughter; and
with whom he collaborated

Sydney Carton. Describing the
convict Abel Magwitch. Ultimately
and formed a close friendship
plight of the peasantry, the
the discovery of his benefactor’s
that grew over the next two
storming of the Bastille, and the
identity turns Pip’s life upside down.

decades. In the 1860s Collins
horrors of the guillotine, Dickens
wrote his most celebrated and
creates suspense when a long-
enduring works, becoming
buried secret is revealed, putting

THÉRÈSE RAQUIN
established as the pioneer of
mystery stories and suspense

Darnay’s life at risk.

(1867), EMILE ZOLA
fiction, a genre that later gave
rise to the detective novel. He

GREAT EXPECTATIONS

Initially serialized, Thérèse Raquin
died in 1889 of a stroke.

by French writer Zola (see p.191)

(1860–1861), CHARLES DICKENS
tells the tragic story of the heroine,

Key works

Thérèse. Unhappily married to her

One of Dickens’ greatest critical
sickly cousin Camille, she embarks

1859–60 The Woman in White
and popular successes, Great
on a torrid love affair with Laurent,

1868 The Moonstone

Expectations opens on the misty
a friend of her husband’s. The two

(see below)

Kent marshes where Pip, an orphan lovers murder Camille, an act that haunts them for the rest of their
lives, turning their passion to
novel,” The Moonstone by Wilkie
hatred. Remarkable for Zola’s

Collins concerns the mysterious
scientific study of “temperament,”

theft of a priceless Indian diamond
the novel, which was criticized by
from an English country house.

some for being “putrid,” helped to

It utilizes the same method of

We need never be ashamed of establish him as a great writer.

multiple narrators that Collins
shedding tears … they are rain
had deployed to great effect in his
on the blinding dust of earth …

earlier work The Woman in White.

Great Expectations

Charles Dickens

THE MOONSTONE

First published in serial form, the

(1868), WILKIE COLLINS
book established what would later
become the classic detective novel

Described by T. S. Eliot as “the
elements: suspense, misleading
first, the longest and the best
clues and happenings, a bungling
of the modern English detective
local policeman, a brilliant but

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DEPICTING REAL LIFE 199
idiosyncratic detective (Sergeant
writer and philosopher Dostoyevsky
conventions, escape into the forest

Cuff), false suspects, a locked room, (see p.174) intended “to depict a to live as hunters. Combining
and a dramatic denouement.

completely beautiful human being.”

Romanticism, realism, and a great

The result was Prince Myshkin,
deal of humor, the novel was

LITTLE WOMEN
the protagonist and “idiot” of the
harshly received by critics, which
novel, a nobleman with almost
may have contributed to Kivi’s early

(1868–1869), LOUISA MAY ALCOTT Christ-like compassion, but who death. Today it is regarded as a
is ultimately naive. Returning from
masterpiece and the first significant

Originally published in two volumes, a Swiss sanatorium, Myshkin finds novel to be written in the Finnish

Little Women by American author
himself torn between romantic
language, breaking the dominance

Alcott (1832–88) is set in New
love for Aglaya Yapanchin and
of Swedish literature in Finland.

England during the American Civil
compassionate love for Nastassya

War of 1861–65. It traces the

Filippovna, a kept and oppressed
various activities and aspirations of woman. His goodness is tested THE GAUCHO MARTÍN
four sisters—Meg, Jo, Beth, and
but ultimately there is no place for

FIERRO

Amy—as they develop into young

Myshkin’s compassion and integrity (1872), JOSÉ HERNANDEZ
women. The book was an enormous in an increasingly corrupt society.

success on both sides of the

Largely social protest, The Gaucho

Atlantic, establishing a genre that

Martín Fierro by Argentinian poet
approached young womanhood in a A SENTIMENTAL

Hernandez (1834–86) is an epic
new and modern way, rejecting

EDUCATION
poem that describes the way of
traditional feminine roles. Alcott’s

(1869), GUSTAVE FLAUBERT
life of the gauchos, cattle ranchers
characters, although sometimes
whose traditional life on the grassy
seen as sentimental, are strong-

Set during the period of the 1848
plains of the pampas is threatened
minded women, particularly Jo, a

Revolution and the ensuing Second
by industrialization and political
tomboy who challenges conformity.

French Empire of Napoleon III,
manipulation. Through the poem,

A Sentimental Education by French Martín Fierro, a payador ( gaucho THE IDIOT
novelist and playwright Flaubert
minstrel), sings of his oppressed life

(see p.160) recounts the activities
and the starkness of the pampas.

(1868–1869), FYODOR DOSTOYEVSKY of a young and somewhat rootless Hernandez championed the cause
lawyer, Frédérick Moreau, and his
of the gauchos and his poem, with

Writing The Idiot—considered to
infatuation with an older married
its nostalgic view of a vanished life,
be one of the most brilliant works of
woman, Madame Arnoux. Calling
was a literary and popular success.

Russia’s literary “Golden Age”—
on events from his own life, Flaubert
writes in a sparse, objective, and
occasionally ironic style to create

A SEASON IN HELL
a realistic picture of bourgeois

(1873), ARTHUR RIMBAUD
society that existed in France at
the time, which he criticizes for its

Written by French prodigy Rimbaud
posturing and lack of refinement.

(1854–91) at the age of just 19, A

They had both failed in

Season in Hell is a complex work
their objects—the one who
dreamed only of love, and

SEVEN BROTHERS
of prose and verse that reflects the
poet’s tumultuous life. Arranged in
the other of power.

(1870), ALEKSIS KIVI
nine sections, the poem consists

A Sentimental Education
of scenes in which the narrator

Gustave Flaubert

Ten years in the writing, Seven
examines the hells through which he

Brothers by Finnish writer Kivi
has traveled, mirroring Rimbaud’s

(1834–72) describes the boisterous
moral crisis and reflective state
and often disastrous adventures of
of mind following the breakdown of
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200 FURTHER READING
neighboring farmer Boldwood,
an unhappy marriage; the second

Henrik Ibsen
and the dashing Sergeant Troy.

describes Daniel Deronda, a wealthy

Creating evocative descriptions
and compassionate man who, by

Considered to be the “father
of rural life, Hardy explores the
rescuing a young Jewish woman—
of realism” and seen as one of
themes of rejection, poverty, faithful Mirah Lapidoth—discovers his the trailblazers of Modernism
love, and unprincipled passion.

own Jewish roots. After Deronda
in theater, Ibsen was born in
and Gwendolen meet by chance,

Skien, southern Norway, in

1828. He began writing plays
when he was 15, and was

ANNA KARENINA
their lives begin to intertwine.

Deronda’s decision to support the
determined to make this his

(1875–1877), LEO TOLSTOY

Jewish cause enables Gwendolen
career. His play Brand (1865)

to seek her own freedom.

gained him recognition, while

A novel described by Dostoyevsky
the plays that followed, with
as “flawless,” Anna Karenina by
their biting social realism,

Russian author Leo Tolstoy (see

A DOLL’S HOUSE
established him internationally.

p.181) traces the adulterous liaison

(1879), HENRIK IBSEN

Most of his dramas are set in
between Anna, the beautiful and

Norway, although he spent his
intelligent wife of Aleksy Karenin,

A three-act play by Norwegian
most productive years, from
and Count Vronsky, a young
playwright, poet, and theater

1868 onward, working in Italy
bachelor. Karenin discovers his
director Henrik Ibsen, A Doll’s
and Germany, returning to
wife’s affair but, desirous of

House sparked outrage and

Norway in 1891 as a national
maintaining his public position, he
controversy when it was first
hero. Following a series of
refuses to divorce his wife. The
performed. The play portrays an
strokes he died in 1906.

lovers move to Italy, have a child, and ordinary family—Torwald Helmer, live troubled lives. Having broken the a bank lawyer, his wife Nora, and Key works
social codes of the day, Anna is
their three children. However, the

1879 A Doll’s House (see right)

shunned by society. Running parallel play also expresses Ibsen’s critical 1881 Ghosts
to Anna’s story is that of country
opinion of conventional marriage

1884 The Wild Duck
landowner Levin—a character that
when, after a serious disagreement

1890 Hedda Gabler

Tolstoy based on himself—and Kitty, with her husband, Nora leaves both 1892 The Master Builder
who is related to Anna by marriage
him and their children to seek
and who was originally infatuated
independence and self-fulfillment.

with Vronsky. Following a difficult
artist Paul Verlaine. The book was
courtship, Levin and Kitty ultimately
to prove an inspiration to the
have a happy and fulfilling

THE BROTHERS
symbolist movement, and to future
marriage, reflecting Tolstoy’s belief

KARAMAZOV
generations of poets and writers.

in the simple, pastoral life.

(1880), FYODOR DOSTOYEVSKY

FAR FROM THE

DANIEL DERONDA

Some two years in the writing, The

Brothers Karamazov by Russian

MADDING CROWD

(1876), GEORGE ELIOT
writer Dostoyevsky (see p.174) was

(1874), THOMAS HARDY
the author’s final novel, and is often

Daniel Deronda is the last work
considered to be his masterpiece.

The English author’s first popular
that English novelist Eliot (see p.183) Recounted by an unnamed first-success, and the first to be set in
completed. Notable for its exposure person narrator, the novel tells the Wessex, Far from the Madding
of anti-Semitism in Victorian
story of irresponsible wastrel

Crowd by Thomas Hardy (see p.193) Britain and its sympathetic Fyodor Karamazov and his sons from
centers on Bathsheba Everdene, an
treatment of Jewish ideals, the
two marriages—Dimitri, a
independent and bold woman who
novel incorporates two strands.

hedonist; Ivan, a rationalist and
attracts three contrasting suitors:

The first concerns Gwendolen
atheist; Alyosha, a man of deep
devoted shepherd Gabriel Oak,

Harleth, stifled and frustrated in
faith—and an illegitimate son,

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DEPICTING REAL LIFE 201

Smerdyakov, who is morose and
title—a pun in Spanish meaning
epileptic. Describing family

“the woman in command”) who,
struggles over an inheritance, a love
living in a provincial town, seeks
rivalry between Dimitri and Fyodor,
fulfillment through religion and
and introducing the theme of
adultery. Rich in characters, such as
patricide, Dostoyevsky creates a

Nothing is despicable—
the cathedral’s priest and the local
complex novel in which he explores
all is meaningful; nothing
casanova, Alvaro Mesia, the novel
profound questions of faith and
is small—all is part of a whole. presents a remarkable picture of doubt, the problem of free will, and

The Story of an
provincial life as well as exploring
the issue of moral responsibility.

the psychology of the characters

African Farm

Dostoyevsky died within four

Olive Schreiner
by allowing them to narrate events.

months of the novel’s completion.

THE STRANGE CASE OF

TREASURE ISLAND

DR. JEKYLL AND MR. HYDE

(1881–1882), ROBERT LOUIS

(1886), ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON

STEVENSON
against convention. Schreiner’s

The defining novel that cemented

First serialized in a children’s
portrayal of Lyndall won her both
its author’s reputation and ensured
magazine, Treasure Island by
feminist acclaim and notoriety,
his celebrity, The Strange Case of

Robert Louis Stevenson is a
while her use of a fictionalized

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert
masterpiece of children’s literature,

South African landscape was

Louis Stevenson is best known for
featuring pirates, buried treasure,
regarded as pioneering.

its remarkable portrayal of what is
and a swamp-ridden tropical island.

sometimes described as a “split

Creating a gripping read that has
entertained children around the

LA REGENTA
personality.” The book initially
relates the mystery of two men—
world, Stevenson also interweaves

(1884–1885), LEOPOLDA ALAS
respectable and social Dr. Henry
a coming-of-age novel, as teenager

Jekyll and the vice-ridden, brutal

Jim Hawkins gains sensitivity and

Published initially in two volumes,
murderer Edward Hyde—who
maturity. The author also explores

La Regenta by Spanish novelist
appear to be connected in some
moral issues with his descriptions

Alas (1852–1901) tells the story of a
way. As the story progresses the
of the ever-changing character of
magistrate’s wife ( la Regenta of the
reader learns that Jekyll has created
one-legged pirate Long John Silver.

Robert Louis Stevenson bedridden, he wrote some of his THE STORY OF
best-known work, much of it for

AN AFRICAN FARM

When living in Samoa, Robert
children. After leaving Europe

Louis Stevenson took the
for the US in 1887, in search of

(1883), OLIVE SCHREINER
nickname Tusitala, or “Teller of
more favorable climes to suit his

Tales,” a perfect description for
poor health, Stevenson set out

Feminist South African writer Olive
the man who wrote some of the
with his family in 1888 on a

Schreiner (1855–1920) set The Story
world’s most famous adventure
voyage to the South Seas. He
of an African Farm in the South
stories. Born in Edinburgh in
settled in Samoa in 1890, where

African veld—the grassy scrubland

1850, Stevenson decided early in he died four years later.

on which the region’s Dutch settlers
life to make a career in writing,
reared cattle—where she grew up.

although he agreed to study law

Key works

Reflecting her strongly held views,
to please his father. Dogged by
ill health, he was nevertheless

1881–82 Treasure Island (see left)

the novel features a young woman,
an avid adventurer and traveler,

1886 Kidnapped

Lyndall, who challenges the Bible-
visiting the US and spending

1886 The Strange Case of Dr.

led restrictions of Boer society, and
time in France where, although

Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (see above)

her suitor Waldo, who also rebels

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202 FURTHER READING
a potion to suppress hedonistic
secret affair with a local womanizer.

aspects of his personality, only to

HUNGER

Six years later, the affair—long-since
create Hyde, seemingly an evil

(1890), KNUT HAMSUN
ended—comes to light and, with
manifestation of the darkest
the characters bound by a strict
attributes of his character.

Norwegian writer Knut Hamsun

Prussian social code so well

(1859–1952) was 30 when his first
depicted by Fontane, the story

THE MAIAS
successful novel, Hunger, was
moves toward its tragic end.

published. He had previously spent

(1888), EÇA DE QUEIRÓS
many impoverished years traveling
and working in various jobs, and his

JUDE THE OBSCURE

Regarded as the masterwork of one
novel reflects those experiences. Set (1895), THOMAS HARDY
of the greatest European realist
in Kristiania (Oslo), it describes the
novelists, Eça de Queirós, The Maias poverty and psychological despair In his fatalistic Jude the Obscure,
is set in fin-de-siecle Lisbon. Notable of a young man so bent on success English writer Hardy (see p.193)

for its satire and realism, its central
as a writer that he becomes almost
tells the story of Jude Fawley, a
character, Carlos Maia, is a wealthy demented. The novel’s portrayal of villager with scholarly ambitions
and talented doctor eager to do good obsession and alienation established that are never achieved. Married work, but lives a dissolute life. Maia it as a literary landmark.

reluctantly and under false pretence,
embarks on an affair with a

Jude falls in love with his cousin,
mysterious woman, but a shocking

Sue Bridehead, who then marries a
discovery ends the relationship.

THE JUNGLE BOOK
local schoolmaster. Repelled by sex

(1894–1895), RUDYARD KIPLING
within her marriage, Sue turns to

Jude. They live together but poverty

Eça de Queirós

A collection of stories, linked by
and society’s disapproval take a

Considered Portugal’s greatest
poems, The Jungle Book by English dreadful toll. Critics and readers novelist, Eça de Queirós was
writer Kipling (1865–1936) is most
were so shocked by the novel’s
also a political activist. Born
famous for its tales of Mowgli, an
sexual frankness and pessimism
in northern Portugal in 1845,

Indian boy raised by wolves and
that Hardy wrote no further novels,
he studied law but his real
taught the laws of the jungle by
turning from fiction to poetry.

interest was literature, and his

Baloo, the brown bear; Bagheera,
short stories and essays soon
the panther; and the wolves of the
began appearing in the press.

pack. Kipling, who lived in India

THE RED BADGE

By 1871 he was part of the
for many years, used the animals

OF COURAGE

“Generation of 70,” a group of
in the tales—which are effectively
rebellious intellectuals who

(1895), STEPHEN CRANE
fables—to present moral lessons
were committed to social and
about good behavior by contrasting

One of the great war novels and
artistic reform; he denounced
irresponsible humans with animals
noted for its realism, terse style,

Portuguese literature as
that follow a strict jungle code.

and modern approach, The Red
unoriginal. He served as consul
in Cuba, England—where he

Badge of Courage by American
wrote the satirical novels for
which he is best known—and

EFFI BRIEST
author Crane (1871–1900) is set
during the American Civil War

Paris, where he died in 1900.

(1894–1895), THEODORE FONTANE

(1861–65). The protagonist is Henry

Fleming, a young private in the

Key works

Considered to be a landmark of

Union Army. He dreams of glory

Prussian realism, Effi Briest by
but, when faced with the stark and

1876 The Crime of Father

German writer Fontane (1819–98)

terrifying reality of fighting on the

Amaro
tells the story of its 17-year-old
battlefield, flees from the advancing

1878 Cousin Bazilio
protagonist, who is married to

Confederate forces. Overwhelmed

1888 The Maias (see above)

Geert von Innstetten, an ambitious
by his shame, he seeks redemption
nobleman twice her age. Effi has a
and meaning in a heroic act.

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DEPICTING REAL LIFE 203
some critics suggested that the

UNCLE VANYA
governess was hysterical rather

Anton Chekhov

(1897), ANTON CHEKHOV
than haunted—the story has been
influential, paving the way for

Celebrated as one of the

A masterly study of aimlessness
subsequent tales of innocent
greatest Russian playwrights,

Anton Chekhov was born in
and hopelessness, Uncle Vanya is
children possessed by evil spirits.

1860. He became a doctor
thought by many to be Chekhov’s
and, despite writing prolifically,
finest work. Set on a country estate
continued practicing medicine,
in turn-of-the-century Russia, the

THE AWAKENING
once describing the latter as
play focuses on estate manager

(1899), KATE CHOPIN

“his lawful wife” and literature

Voynitsky (Uncle Vanya), estate
as his “mistress.” Initially it
owner Professor Serebvryakov

Set in New Orleans, The Awakening
was short stories that brought
and his second wife Yelena and
by American writer Kate Chopin
him fame—in 1888 he won the
daughter Sonya, and Sonya’s

(1851–1904) tells the story of Edna

Pushkin Prize for his short story
unrequited love for local physician

Pontellier and her struggle to break

The Steppe. From the 1890s he

Astrov. Vanya, frustrated by his
free from the restrictions imposed
produced the plays for which
wasted life and failure to seduce the upon her by both marriage and he is remembered, which were
beautiful Yelena, attempts to shoot
motherhood. Pontellier seeks her
performed at the Moscow Art

Serebvryakov but fails. The play

“awakening” through two sexual

Theatre. He married actress
ends with nothing having changed. affairs, but more importantly through Olga Knipper in 1901 but died
of tuberculosis in 1904.

independent thinking, art, music,
and swimming. With its explicit

THE TURN OF THE SCREW

Key works
portrayal of marital infidelity and

(1898), HENRY JAMES
female independence, the novel

1897 The Seagull
shocked readers and critics, and

1897 Uncle Vanya (see left)

A novella by American writer Henry was censored on its first publication.

1904 The Cherry Orchard

James (see p.187), The Turn of the

Today it is regarded as a landmark

Screw is one of the best-known
feminist novel and an early example
ghost stories ever written. Narrated of Southern literature.

mainly through the diary of a

SISTER CARRIE
governess, the story describes her
struggle to save her young charges, LORD JIM

(1900), THEODORE DREISER

Flora and Miles, from the demonic

(1900), JOSEPH CONRAD

The first novel by American novelist,
clutches of two deceased former
journalist, and socialist Theodore
servants. Ambiguous in approach—

Lord Jim, by Polish-born English

Dreiser (1871–1945), Sister Carrie
novelist Joseph Conrad (see p.197),
concerns the young woman of the
describes the efforts of Jim, a young title, Carrie, who leaves her home in British seaman, to overcome an act

Wisconsin for Chicago. She finds
of unwitting cowardice that leaves
work in a shoe factory, but after two
his name tarnished. Helped by a
affairs—one with a married man—
sea captain, Marlow, who narrates
finally achieves success and wealth

Whatever I had seen, Miles
much of the story, Jim becomes
in a stage career. Dreiser’s publisher,
and Flora saw more—things

“Tuan” (lord) of Patusan—a fictional

Doubleday, accepted the book but
terrible and unguessable …

South Seas country—and
considered the subject matter so

The Turn of the Screw
ultimately overcomes his guilt
shocking in the moralistic climate

Henry James
through self-sacrifice. The novel is
of fin-de-siecle America that they
notable not just for its exploration of delayed publication, altering the idealism and heroism, but also for
text and agreeing to only a limited
its sophisticated use of a frame
print run. An uncut version did not
narrative structure.

appear until 1981.

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BREAKING

WITH TRADITION

1900–1945

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BREAKING

WITH TRADITION

1900–1945

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206 INTRODUCTION

The Qing (Manchu)

Austrian neurologist
dynasty in China is

“Dulce et Decorum

Sigmund Freud develops
overthrown, and a

Franz Kafka’s existential

Est” and other war
his theories of the
constitutional republic
novella Metamorphosis,
poems by British
unconscious and invents
declared, ending
a nightmarish tale of
soldier Wilfred Owen
the clinical treatment
around 4,000 years of
alienation, is published
are published
known as psychoanalysis.

dynastic rule in China.

in Germany.

posthumously.

1890S

1912

1915

1920

1901

1914–18

1917

1922

The Hound of the

The Great War, later

In March the Russian

James Joyce’s Ulysses

Baskervilles, by Arthur
known as World War I,

Revolution topples the
uses a stream of

Conan Doyle, is serialized
rages in Europe, with an
tsar, and by November
consciousness
in The Strand Magazine.

unprecedented loss of
a radical Bolshevik
technique to describe
life among a generation
government has seized
a day in the life of
of young men.

power under Lenin.

Leopold Bloom..

The dawn of the 20th carnage of World War I, and then, emerging in the field of psychology, century was characterized
after a brief period of hedonistic

Franz Kafka created a fantastic
by an almost worldwide
confidence, dashed by a global
and often nightmarish world of
feeling of optimism that this was
economic depression and the rise
the alienated individual in modern
a cultural turning point—a stately
of Nazism and fascism, which
society, while in Japan Natsume
progress from the pessimism that
resulted in World War II.

So¯seki pioneered a similar genre
typified the end of the 19th century
of first-person “I-novel.”

toward a more vibrant, modern

Modernism

Another form that was adopted
era. Industrialization and empire-

In the world of literature, the new
by modernist novelists was the
building had brought prosperity—
century was characterized by a

“stream of consciousness” novel.

to the Western world at least—and
move away from gritty realism to

Although this approach was not a
with it the hope of creating a better, distinctly modern forms and genres. new idea, it was given a particular more fair society. At the same time, Taking their cue from the French boost by psychological theories,
new scientific ideas, such as
symbolists, poets such as Ezra
and it provided Irishman James

Sigmund Freud’s concept of the

Pound developed a new style that

Joyce with the framework on
unconscious and Albert Einstein’s
stretched the conventions of verse.

which he built his modernist style,
theory of relativity, influenced the

In 1922 The Waste Land, by Anglo-
first in Ulysses and then more
way that people thought about

American poet T. S. Eliot, captured
experimentally in Finnegans Wake.

themselves and the world.

the disillusionment of the age.

Modernism also featured in

However, the new century

Novelists also found a variety
more conventional prose narratives.

turned out to be a turbulent one,
of new means of expression.

German author Thomas Mann, for
as hopes for the future were first

Influenced by existentialist
example, took the Bildungsroman,
shattered by the catastrophic
philosophy and the new theories
or formative, rite-of-passage story,

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BREAKING WITH TRADITION 207

The Wall Street crash

Raymond Chandler’s

Left-wing nationalist

F. Scott Fitzgerald’s
marks the starting
first novel, The Big

Exiled in the US
writer Lu Xun
social commentary
point of the Great

Sleep, introduces
during World War II,
produces a collection
on life in America

Depression, ending
hard-boiled

Antoine de
of stories in the
during the Jazz
the boom years of the
private detective

Saint-Exupéry

Chinese vernacular,

Age, The Great

“Jazz Age” and

Philip Marlowe in a
writes the novella

Call to Arms.

Gatsby, is published.

Roaring Twenties.

dark, complex plot.

The Little Prince.

1922

1925

1929

1939

1943

1924

1929

1937

1939–45

Thomas Mann

Alfred Döblin

Their Eyes Were Watching

Allied forces fight
completes his
uses a variety

God, by Zora Neale
against Nazism in
complex epic
of experimental

Hurston, presents a

Europe and imperial

Bildungsroman
techniques in his
realistic picture of the life

Japanese militarism

The Magic Mountain.

Weimar-era novel Berlin
of a young black woman
in the Pacific region

Alexanderplatz.

in 20th-century America.

during World War II.

and reshaped it into a modern form, Twenties in The Great Gatsby, writing. In China the end of four
first in the novella Death in Venice,
evoking a mood that anticipates
millennia of dynastic rule inspired
and later in his masterpiece The
the Great Depression of the coming a generation of nationalist writers.

Magic Mountain.

decade. The 1920s also saw the rise
of a generation of African-American The detectives

A warring world
writers, whose authentic depictions Popular fiction flourished in the It was not only ideas that shaped
of their lives contrasted with the
first half of the 20th century and
the literature of the 20th century,
popular portrayal of the black
the detective genre in particular
but also events. World War I (1914–
entertainers of the Jazz Age.

appealed to a mass readership.

18) inevitably had a profound effect,

In Germany and Austria too,

Pioneered by Victorian writers
which is most obviously seen in the there was a brief period of postwar such as Wilkie Collins in the UK
work of poets, such as Wilfred
optimism that was captured vividly and Edgar Allan Poe in the US, Owen, who served in the British
by novelists such as Alfred Döblin,
detective fiction really came into its
army. However, there was also the
but this was as short-lived as
own with Scotsman Arthur Conan

“lost generation” of American
elsewhere in Europe and the US.

Doyle’s creation of Sherlock Holmes.

writers who had come of age

Hitler’s rise to power forced many

This marked the beginning of a
during the war, which included
writers and artists to flee into exile
long line of fictional sleuths, as

T. S. Eliot, Ernest Hemingway, and
until the end of World War II. The
diverse as British writer Agatha

F. Scott Fitzgerald. Although
repressive Nazi regime was hostile

Christie’s genteel Miss Marple and
writing ostensibly about the heady
to “degenerate” modern art, and so

Hercules Poirot, and the hard-boiled
days of the 1920s, Fitzgerald
too was the newly formed Soviet

Philip Marlowe, hero of American
portrays the world beneath the

Union under Stalin, drawing to a
author Raymond Chandler’s dark and
superficial and ephemeral Roaring
close a century of great Russian
tangled noir novels of the 1940s. ■

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208

THE WORLD IS FULL OF

OBVIOUS THINGS WHICH

NOBODY BY ANY CHANCE

EVER OBSERVES

THE HOUND OF THE BASKERVILLES (1901),

ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE

IN CONTEXT

FOCUS

The sleuth, who uses acute many of which were serialized in powers of observation

The Strand Magazine. The Hound and deduction to solve
of the Baskervilles was the third
nearly impossible puzzles and
full-length novel to feature Holmes.

Detective fiction
catch wrongdoers, appears in
comes of age
earlier texts from several cultures.

Foul play

BEFORE

However, detective fiction as a

The story centers on a strange

1841 American writer Edgar
distinct genre emerged only in
crime on Dartmoor: Sir Charles
the 19th century, with the stories

Baskerville has apparently been

Allan Poe’s hero detective in
of American author Edgar Allan
terrified to death on his own

The Murders in the Rue Morgue

Poe featuring C. Auguste Dupin,
estate by a ghostly hound. Foul
applies observation, deduction,
and reached its zenith in interwar
play is suspected, and Holmes
and intuition to solve a murder.

Britain. At its heart was the
investigates. The main story, and

1852–53 Inspector Bucket
detective: cerebral, often at the
a subplot involving an escaped
investigates a murder in
expense of social skills; usually
criminal on the moor—are told

Bleak House, by the English
accompanied by an assistant (who
by Dr. Watson, Holmes’s friend
writer Charles Dickens, sifting
is often also the narrator); and
and ally and the book’s narrator.

through a variety of suspects.

possessed of an ability to identify

Like most other works of early
and decipher clues that baffle the
detective fiction, The Hound of the

1868 English author Wilkie
police. Sherlock Holmes—created

Baskervilles features a dastardly

Collins’ The Moonstone is
by Scottish writer Arthur Conan
crime (a murder), a closed group
published, arguably the

Doyle (1859–1930)—epitomized this of suspects, an inspired sleuth first full-length detective
modern detective.

who arrives to carry out an
novel in English.

Conan Doyle trained as a
investigation, and a solution that
doctor in Scotland and pursued his
readers may arrive at themselves

AFTER
medical career even after writing
through logical deduction. The

1920 English writer Agatha
had brought him acclaim. His true
appeal of the novel lies as much

Christie publishes her first
interest was writing historical
in its plot—the triumph of reason
detective novel, The
fiction, but he found far more
over evil and superstition—as in

Mysterious Affair at Styles,
success with his detective stories,
its eerie, gothic atmosphere. ■
marking the beginning of the
often called “Golden Age” of

See also: Bleak House 146–49 ■ The Moonstone 198 ■ The Big Sleep 236–37
detective fiction.

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I AM A CAT. AS YET

I HAVE NO NAME.

I’VE NO IDEA WHERE

I WAS BORN

I AM A CAT (1905–1906), NATSUME SO¯ SEKI

IN CONTEXT

FOCUS

The “I-novel” is a Japanese humans. The autobiographical literary genre that emerged element of the I-novel comes
at the beginning of the
through the cat’s owner (Mr.

20th century. Although called

Sneaze) who, like all the humans

I-novel
the I-novel, the genre has little
in the book, is mercilessly mocked,

BEFORE
in common with the Western
and is based upon Soˉseki himself.

1890 Mori O¯gai’s short story
concept of a novel; it is a form of

It is through the eyes of the cat

The Dancing Girl, in which a
confessional literature in which
that Soˉseki paints his self-portrait.

the story’s contents are usually

I Am a Cat was first published

Japanese student in Germany
autobiographical. The genre takes
in installments in the literary
has a doomed relationship,
its name from the first-person
magazine Hototogisu, which had
heralds a trend for revelatory
perspective, “I”; narrators are
mainly showcased haiku verse.

autobiographical writing.

always sincere (and never

Most of the installments can stand

1906 In Toˉson Shimazaki’s
unreliable). The Western practice
on their own as short stories. ■

The Broken Commandment a
of using multiple viewpoints to
fearful teacher struggles for
tell the narrative was considered
self-realization as he tries to
misleading, because a writer could
keep secret the fact he belongs
not tell the objective truth about
to the outcast social class.

anyone’s perspective but their own.

AFTER

Heartless humans

Living as I do with human

1907 Tayama Katai’s Futon,

Natsume Soˉseki (1867–1916) is
beings, the more I observe
the confessional tale of his
arguably the greatest writer in
them, the more I am forced to
unconsummated passion for
modern Japanese history and his
conclude that they are selfish.

a student, is the first overtly

I Am a Cat is a major (and witty)

I Am a Cat
factual and autobiographical
example of the I-novel. The cat
example of an I-novel.

narrator’s tone is snooty and
supercilious, as though he regards

1921–37 Shiga Naoya’s A Dark
himself a nobleman, looking down

Night’s Passing is an I-novel
upon the errant behavior of
with poetic spirit depicting the
inner struggle of a tormented

See also: The Temple of the Golden Pavilion 263
man in search of serenity.

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210

GREGOR SAMSA FOUND

HIMSELF IN HIS BED,

TRANSFORMED INTO A

MONSTROUS VERMIN

METAMORPHOSIS (1915), FRANZ KAFKA

IN CONTEXT

FOCUS

The main proposition story Metamorphosis, and staged of existentialism is
in front of a cast of unsympathetic
that anxiety forms the
characters. While there are clearly
foundation of human feeling and
literal discomforts associated with

Existentialism
thinking; this condition is triggered Gregor Samsa’s waking form as BEFORE
when we recognize the absurdity
a verminous, beetling insect, at

1864 Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s
and meaninglessness of our
the core of Kafka’s tragic novella

Notes from the Underground is
existence. Existentialism has
is the response of his family and
roots in 19th-century northern
acquaintances to his absurd
published; it is later celebrated

European philosophy—with key
predicament, as opposed to the
as early existentialist writing.

terms such as “angst,” or anxiety,
impositions of changed physicality.

1880 Dostoyevsky’s The
coined by Søren Kierkegaard,

Brothers Karamazov focuses
a Danish thinker whose works

Hell is other people
on the father–son relationship.

influenced Franz Kafka.

Gregor is rendered utterly

Confusion and anxiety are
dysfunctional and can no longer

1883–85 Contempt for human
represented by an extreme
work as a salesman or support
pity and compassion, a typical
metaphor in Kafka’s disturbing
his vulnerable family. Rather
existentialist theme, is a major
than offer compassion, his family
focus in Friedrich Nietzsche’s
appear hugely inconvenienced and

Thus Spoke Zarathustra.

disgusted. So Gregor as a beetle

AFTER
is treated as abject and alien, and

1938 Jean-Paul Sartre

Kafka deftly exposes the barbaric
publishes Nausea, considered
and inhumane response of the

For the first few days
so-called civilized, rational world
a great existentialist novel.

especially, there was no
that they represent. In the words

1942 The Outsider by Albert
conversation that was not
of the existentialist philosopher

Camus explores people’s futile
about him in one way or
and writer Jean-Paul Sartre, “Hell is
search for meaning in life’s
another, if only in private.

other people.” His phrase perfectly
disordered events.

Metamorphosis
describes Kafka’s absurd depiction
of a family in crisis.

1953 Waiting for Godot by

Gregor is reduced to scuttling

Samuel Beckett depicts the
over the walls and ceiling of his
absurd lives of two tramps.

room in the family apartment—or
retreating under the sofa—to pass

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See also: The Waste Land 213 ■ The Trial 242 ■ The Book of Disquiet 244 ■

The Outsider 245 ■ Waiting for Godot 262
the hours. Although he ultimately
works, such as The Trial and The
abandons any attempt at dignity,

Castle, describe unresolved quests,
and refuses to appeal to his family
defined by paradox and instability
or assert his inner humanity, he is
of meaning and interpretation.

momentarily moved by his sister’s

Metamorphosis, although illogical
violin playing and lured from his
and nightmarish, is a departure
room to listen. With this episode,

(arguably in a more “existential”

Gregor briefly refutes his outward
direction) because even the drive

“beastliness” and attempts to
to solve the puzzle and finish
assert his authentic self, but this
the quest is abandoned. Gregor
becomes another opportunity for
experiences a kind of revelation

Franz Kafka
the family (and their lodgers) to
through surrender in the
revile and abuse him—the hostile
denouement of the novella.

Franz Kafka was the eldest
audience contributing further to

Interestingly, Kafka is not
of six children of Ashkenazi
his sense of shame and alienation.

known to have declared himself

Jewish parents in Prague.

Born in 1883, he was educated

an existentialist, although he

Surrender to the absurd
in a German elementary
acknowledged the influence of
school followed by the state

Kafka’s heroes do not usually

Kierkegaard and Dostoyevsky,
gymnasium (selective school).

conquer angst; instead, they
two key figures in existentialism.

He studied law at university
continually seek empirical solutions It was Sartre and Camus who in Prague, where he met Max
to outlandish puzzles, often under
appropriated Kafka into the

Brod, who posthumously
extraordinary conditions. His longer movement after his death. ■
edited and published most
of Kafka’s works.

By 1908 Kafka was working
in an insurance company but

Metamorphosis in the novel
focusing on his writing. His
work was interrupted by poor
health and he was diagnosed

Gregor

The most obvious metamorphosis
with tuberculosis in 1917.

in Kafka’s book is Gregor’s physical

Kafka’s personal life
transformation into an insect,
was troubled: his Letter to
though this is paralleled by the

His Father portrayed an
psychological changes as he
learns to deal with his new state.

authoritarian father who
alienates his son; and he
had a series of unsuccessful
relationships with women. In

Grete

The book also charts the

1923 he moved from Prague to
metamorphosis of Gregor’s sister

Berlin to live with a lover, but
from a girl into a woman, and the
worsening poor health meant
change in her attitude toward
a return to his family in
taking care of Gregor—from love
and kindness to duty.

Prague, where he died in 1924.

Other key works

1913 The Judgement

The Samsa family

1922 A Hunger Artist

During the course of the book,
the fortunes of Gregor’s family

1925 The Trial
change from hopeless to hopeful.

1926 The Castle

1966 Letter to His Father

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212

DULCE ET DECORUM EST

PRO PATRIA MORI

POEMS (1920), WILFRED OWEN

IN CONTEXT

FOCUS

Poets of many nations Some poems focus on the surreal wrote of their experiences
nightmare. In “The Show,” his
of combat in World War I.

soul looks upon the aftermath of

They bore witness to the harrowing battle, where dying men crawl World War I poets
events; many of them died young.

like caterpillars over the ground. In

BEFORE

Among those most admired are the “Strange Meeting,” the poet meets, 1915 Rupert Brooke, a poet of

English poets: Siegfried Sassoon,
in hell, a loquacious stranger who
war’s noble sacrifice, writes

Rupert Brooke, and Wilfred Owen.

claims to be the enemy he “jabbed
and killed.” Owen, when he was
in his sonnet “The Dead” that

The pity of war
killed at 25, was still learning his

“dying has made us rarer gifts

Owen (1893–1918) worked as a tutor craft. He is valued for his moral and than gold”—a sentiment
in France before joining the army.

artistic integrity in powerful poems
echoed in another sonnet,

At first his work was patriotic:

about man’s inhumanity to man. ■

“The Soldier.”

“Anthem for Doomed Youth” tells

1916 While serving in the
of men “who die as cattle” but

Foreign Legion, Alan Seeger,
closes with “bugles calling for
the “American Rupert Brooke,”

them from sad shires”—a plaintive
writes “I Have a Rendezvous
note of tribute. The slaughter on
with Death”—a high-flown,
the Somme, and the influence of
solemn, prophetic poem later

Sassoon, toughened up his verse. In

What passing-bells for these
admired by President Kennedy.

“Dulce et Decorum Est,” observing
who die as cattle?

blood “gargling from the froth-

– Only the monstrous anger

1916 A “sardonic rat” scurries
corrupted lungs,” Owen knew that
of the guns.

among the dead and the
a witness to the horror would not

“Anthem for Doomed
wounded in Isaac Rosenberg’s
repeat to “children ardent for some

Youth”

vivid, unrhyming poem “Break
desperate glory, / The old Lie: Dulce
of Day in the Trenches.”

et decorum est /Pro Patria mori” (“It
is sweet and fitting to die for one’s

1917 The archetype of the
country”). “The poetry,” he said in
affable but incompetent leader
a draft preface, “is in the pity.”

of men is satirized by Siegfried

Sassoon in “The General.”

See also: The Waste Land 213 ■ Catch-22 276

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RAGTIME LITERATURE

WHICH FLOUTS

TRADITIONAL RHYTHMS

THE WASTE LAND (1922), T. S. ELIOT

IN CONTEXT

FOCUS

Modernist poetry in early several languages, and its shifting 20th-century Europe
voices as a brilliant reflection of the
and the US embodied
disorders of the postwar world and
a feeling that the prevailing poetic
its metaphorical barrenness. The

Modernist poetry
ethos, with its firm attachment
critic Clive Bell, brother-in-law of

BEFORE
to Romantic subjectivity and

Virginia Woolf, saw the influence

1861–65 In Massachusetts,
traditional forms, was poorly suited
of the Jazz movement in the poem,

Emily Dickinson privately
to a modern cosmopolitan culture of calling it a “ragtime literature revolutionized science, technology,
which flouts traditional rhythms.”

writes her many masterpieces:

and social values. The Modernist

The title of the poem refers
short, unconventional poems
poets moved away from making
to the Arthurian legend of the
of religious doubt, anticipating
personal statements toward a more

Fisher King—a king tasked with
the visionary originality of Ezra
intellectual objectivity, and gave up taking care of the Holy Grail, whose Pound and T. S. Eliot.

any attempt to imagine a pastoral
impotence affects not just his

1915–62 Ezra Pound’s Cantos,
idyll or turn away from the
ability to father children, but the
a poetic epic, is akin to The
complexities of the city.

fertility of his entire kingdom,

Waste Land in its erudite,
which becomes an arid wasteland.

magpie complexity and direct,

Rhythmical grumbling

Water and thirst, and death implied
unsentimental language.

T. S. Eliot (1888–1965) described
within growth, are major themes
his Modernist masterpiece
of Eliot’s poem: from its very

1915 Eliot’s “The Love Song

The Waste Land as “just a
beginning, even the coming of
of J. Alfred Prufrock,” the
piece of rhythmical grumbling.”

spring holds no promise.

monologue of a disillusioned

An American who transformed

The poem creates the effect of
man, is a milestone on the way
himself, in London, into an
looking through a rapidly turned
to full poetic Modernism.

English man of letters, he wrote
kaleidoscope of spiritual (and
much of it while recuperating from
psychological and social) anxiety.

AFTER
a breakdown. But contemporaries

Both lyricism and magnificence

1923 Harmonium, a collection
such as American poet Ezra Pound
feature in the quotations and
by American poet Wallace
saw its pessimism, its fragmented
pastiches—but only as ironic

Stevens, brings a vivid yet
forms, its unmarked quotations in
counterpoints to desolation. ■
philosophical imagination
to Modernism, spinning

See also: Les Fleurs du mal 165 ■ Ulysses 214–21 ■ A Portrait of the Artist as a poems of elusive beauty.

Young Man 241

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THE HEAVENTREE OF STARS

HUNG WITH HUMID

NIGHTBLUE

FULYSSRU

ES (1922), JAMES J I

OYCE T

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216 ULYSSES

IN CONTEXT

FOCUS

Literary critic and poet Ezra

Pound declared 1922 to
be the start of a new era,
asserting that the old one had

Stream of consciousness
ended when James Joyce wrote

BEFORE
the last words of his novel Ulysses.

Dislike that job. House of

1913–27 Marcel Proust, in

The “year that changed everything”

mourning. Walk. Pat! Doesn’t
was bookended by the publication
his seven-volume In Search
hear. Deaf beetle he is.

of Ulysses and of T. S. Eliot’s poem
of Lost Time, delves deep into

Ulysses

The Waste Land, two towering
memory and the free-floating
achievements of Modernist literature.

associations that help to shape

Exploding the genres of realist
the content of consciousness.

fiction and poetry, both works mined,

1913–35 Fernando Pessoa
out of the depths of their authors’

labors on The Book of Disquiet,
astonishing originality and serious
the existential meanderings of
artistic and moral purpose, a new
epistolary novel Pamela (1740) by
a Lisbon clerk—illuminating
kind of literary ore. In the bleak

Samuel Richardson, fiction at the
fragments of thought and art.

years after World War I, Joyce, Eliot,
turn of the 20th century went further.

and other writers began to form a

Henry James and Marcel Proust

AFTER
new culture out of the fragmented
moved toward greater subjectivity

1927 In To the Lighthouse
remains of the old. Literature would of viewpoint, in terms of both subject Virginia Woolf moves back
never be the same again.

matter and its formal treatment.

and forth between narrative

The first full-fledged use of interior
omniscience and stream of

Stream of consciousness
monologue in fiction is thought to
consciousness.

One approach Modernist writers
have been in a short novel, Les
adopted to disrupt narrative realism Lauriers sont coupés (“The laurels 1929 William Faulkner uses
was stream of consciousness.

are cut down”), by Édouard Dujardin,
stream of consciousness in

In fiction, stream of consciousness
published in 1887. Joyce famously

The Sound and the Fury,
is a representation of the flow of a
picked up a copy of this book at a
entering the minds of three
character’s thoughts, perceptions,

Paris railroad station kiosk in 1903.

very different brothers.

and feelings. While long passages

The style has been linked with
of introspection can be found
the rise of psychology as a science,
in much earlier works such as the
and indeed the phrase “stream of

James Joyce

Born in a suburb of Dublin, Ireland,
this novel appeared in the
in 1882, James Joyce was brought

American journal The Little
up in poverty after his father lost

Review, the magazine was put
his job as a tax collector. Joyce
on trial for obscenity. In 1920,
studied English, French, and Italian Joyce moved to Paris, where he at University College Dublin, then
lived for 20 years. Here he wrote
moved to Paris, intending to study his dreamlike late masterpiece, medicine. He returned to Dublin

Finnegans Wake. In 1940, Joyce
after his mother died, scraping a
fled the Nazi invasion and went
living reviewing and teaching.

to Zurich, where he died in 1941.

Joyce eloped with Nora Barnacle
in 1904 and the couple moved to

Other key works

Zurich. Later, he got a teaching
job in Trieste. His book of short

1914 Dubliners
stories, Dubliners, was published

1916 A Portrait of the Artist
in 1914, the year before he began
as a Young Man
writing Ulysses. When sections of

1939 Finnegans Wake

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BREAKING WITH TRADITION 217

See also: Odyssey 54 ■ The Waste Land 213 ■ In Search of Lost Time 240–41 ■ A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man 241 ■

Mrs. Dalloway 242 ■ The Sound and the Fury 242–43 ■ The Book of Disquiet 244

Ulysses takes place on a single day,

June 16, 1904, in Dublin, in the course
of which its three protagonists cross
paths with each other and a variety of
other characters the city.

consciousness” was coined by
the philosopher and psychologist

William James (brother of Henry) in

The Principles of Psychology (1890).

The term was first applied in a
literary context to an early stream-
of-consciousness novel in English,

Dorothy Richardson’s Pointed Roofs

(1915), which used the technique to
explore the idea of a feminine prose.

With Ulysses—the most famous
and influential example of stream-of-
consciousness writing—Joyce made
the sustained literary leap out of
unconscious thought, these writers

Molly, a singer, 34, whom Leopold
traditional narrative techniques
followed loose, often metaphorical,
rightly suspects of having an affair
into conveying the mind of the
associations of words and phrases,
with a man-about-town known as
character directly, unmediated
as well as inserting ungrammatical

“Blazes” Boylan. The novel teems
by the author. Virginia Woolf, too,
constructions and omitting definite
with other characters, too, and a
began experimenting with stream
or indefinite articles.

kaleidoscopic portrait of Dublin
of consciousness soon after, notably

Joyce abandoned complete
emerges out of the inner lives
in Mrs. Dalloway (1925).

coherence for the realism of the
of Stephen, Bloom, and Molly, in

To register the complexity and
interior monologue, although the
a quarter of a million words of
subtlety of the interior mental
flow of thoughts may indirectly
microscopically detailed invention.

process, from conscious to almost
evoke action. “Postal order stamp.

The principal settings are a

Postoffice lower down. Walk now”

habitable defensive tower, a school,
suggests that Leopold Bloom,
a beach, a house, a butcher’s shop, a
walking through the city in Ulysses, graveyard, a newspaper office, a is reminding himself of what he
library, a funeral parlor, a concert
needs to buy and where to buy it.

room, a tavern, a hospital, a brothel,
and a cabman’s shelter, as well

Every life is many days, day

A June day in Dublin
as Dublin’s city streets.

after day. We walk through

The entire action of Ulysses takes

Laying bare the multiplicity of
ourselves, meeting robbers,
place in and around Dublin on
thoughts, emotions and actions
ghosts, giants, old men,

June 16, 1904 (now celebrated

(including bodily functions) that
young men, wives, widows,
as “Bloomsday”), as three main
take Stephen, Bloom, and Molly
brothers-in-love.

characters cross paths: Stephen
through their day and night, Ulysses

Ulysses

Dedalus, a teacher and would-be
makes the private public on a scale
writer, 22 years old; Leopold Bloom
never before undertaken in fiction.

(usually just referred to as Bloom in

The opening chapters form a
the text), an advertising canvasser,
bridge with Joyce’s earlier, auto-
half Hungarian-Jewish and half
biographical novel, Portrait of the

Irish, 38 years old; and his wife

Artist as a Young Man, which is ❯❯

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218 ULYSSES

The 18 episodes of Ulysses in Dublin

6

2 The School:

10 The Streets:

Stephen walks from the

11 am The Graveyard

In this central episode,

Tower, where he lives,

4

19 characters pursue
to Mr. Deasy’s School in

10

17 18
mini-odysseys through

Dalkey to teach a lesson.

3 pm The Streets
the streets of Dublin.

8 am, 2 am

4, 17, 18 The House:

The House, The Bed

12 The Tavern:

“Bloomsday” starts and

Bloom is accosted by an
ends at Leopold and

Irish nationalist “citizen”

15

Molly Bloom’s house,

5 pm The
when he stops for a drink

No. 7 Eccles Street.

Tavern

12 noon

12 midnight
in Barney Kiernan’s pub.

The Newspaper The Brothel

12

5 The Bath:

7

16

14 The Hospital:

Wandering in a drowsily

1 am The Shelter

A group of drunken men,
complacent state, Bloom
among them Bloom and

11

RIVER L
picks up a letter, then

IFFE

Stephen, wait for Mina

4 pm The

Y 5
heads to the Turkish baths.

Purefoy to give birth.

Concert Room

10 am The Bath

6 The Graveyard:

15 The Brothel:

8

Bloom and three friends

After a hallucinatory
share a carriage for the

1 pm The Lunch
walk through Nighttown,

14
funeral procession from

Bloom and Stephen meet

9

10 pm The Hospital

3

Paddy Dignam’s House.

in a brothel.

2 pm The Library

11 am The Strand

13

7 The Newspaper:

8 pm The Rocks

16 The Shelter:

Stephen and Bloom cross

Bloom and Stephen take
paths, as Bloom chases
refuge in a cabman’s
advertising and Stephen
shelter. Fellowship is soon
places Mr. Deasy’s letter.

undermined as the gulf
between their views

The numbers on the

1

8 am The Tower 1
becomes apparent.

map plot the events
of June 16, 1904

10 am The School 2
the story of Stephen Dedalus gaining
consciousness to varying degrees
although Joyce’s spiritual ancestor
the confidence to liberate his talents to relate the experiences of Stephen, was less Zola, whose naturalism from the conformist pressures of the Bloom, and Molly, although to move was pessimistic and didactic, than

Catholic Church, his upbringing,
the action forward in any particular Zola’s 16th-century compatriot and country. In Ulysses, Stephen is
passage, he skillfully interweaves

François Rabelais—a writer whose
first shown in the morning, verbally stream of consciousness and third-broad comedy and fascination with
jousting with cynical quasi-friend
person narrative.

the excesses of the carnival Ulysses

Buck Mulligan, in the tower where
parallels in certain sections.

they live on Sandycove. He thinks

Bloom and the real world

Leopold Bloom is one of the
back to his mother on her deathbed Naturalism, or “scientific” realism, most fully realized characters in
and guiltily reflects on his refusal,
had become the lifeblood of the
all fiction. He is what the French
on atheistic principle, to pray for
novel in mid-19th-century France,
call “un homme moyen sensuel”—
her. He then teaches a history
especially in the fiction of Émile
an average man with the usual
lesson and walks on the beach.

Zola, who presented life’s seamier
appetites—intelligent but far

The novel then shifts back in
aspects in meticulous detail. Later
from intellectual. He has a genial
time to 8 am and enters full “stream-

French writers such as Henri
character and shows a liking
of-consciousness” mode as the reader Barbusse, in Under Fire (1916), for comfort and a desire to avoid
follows Leopold Bloom planning
deployed brutal realism to describe
confrontation. When he is first
breakfast at home, shopping at the
the appalling horrors of World War I. introduced, the easy relationship butcher’s, and then cooking the

Ulysses, which Joyce began
he enjoys with his own bodily
meal and taking a tray upstairs to
writing in 1915, belongs to this
functions and with at least some

Molly. Joyce uses stream of
tradition of novelistic candor—
people within his social milieu sets

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BREAKING WITH TRADITION 219

There follows an episode that
takes the form of a catechism—
an extended question-and-answer
dialogue—that is used to convey
an account of Bloom and Stephen
repairing together to Bloom’s house
for cocoa. It is here that Bloom and

Stephen come closest to empathy.

The analytical, exhaustively
cataloguing manner in which
events are related acts as a
counterpoint to the subtle affinity
the two feel toward each other.

Molly Bloom’s soliloquy

The final chapter of Ulysses

The Martello Tower with its “gloomy, literary styles, a pastiche of English is a masterpiece of stream-of-domed livingroom” is where Stephen
literature that draws on Anglo-
consciousness writing. It reveals

Dedalus pursues a writer’s life with

Saxon, Chaucer, Samuel Pepys,
the intimate thoughts of Molly

“stately, plump Buck Mulligan” and
and Thomas De Quincey. For some

Bloom in the night, lying in bed

“ponderous Saxon” Haines.

readers, this is Joyce at his most
on the verge of sleep. Until this
alienatingly erudite.

point, Molly has been seen through
him apart from the cerebral, spiky

Episode 15 is a phantasmagorical
the eyes of her jealous husband,

Stephen, whose monologue on the
play set in Dublin’s red-light district, Leopold. The shift in viewpoint, beach in the third episode begins:

Nighttown, where Bloom’s repressed to the feminine, is one of the most

“Ineluctable modality of the visible:

masochistic fantasies and Stephen’s brilliant in modern literature.

at least that if no more.” Compare
guilt over his mother are reflected

Having depicted the city’s
the first sentence of Bloom’s stream in vivid, dreamlike tableaux. In its patriarchal culture, in which
of consciousness: “Another slice of
dissolution of space and time and its women play an indispensable role bread and butter: three, four: right.

rapid succession of hallucinations –
as wives, mothers, and prostitutes –

She didn’t like her plate full.”

for example, Bloom giving birth
sources of emotional nourishment
to “eight male yellow and white
and physical satisfaction—without

Panoply of styles
children,” and the poet Tennyson
their voices being heard, Joyce ❯❯

As the novel progresses, many
appearing in a Union Jack blazer
other prose styles interweave
and cricket whites—the fantasy
with stream of consciousness and
is deeply unsettling. In a nightmarish
naturalism. Episode 13, for instance, scene, Bloom acts as Stephen’s parodies sentimental women’s
protector when he is gripped by a
fiction, beginning with the words,
petrifying hallucination at a brothel.

Id have to get a nice pair of red

“The summer evening had begun

In part, Joyce was inspired by
slippers like those Turks with
to fold the world in its mysterious

Dada—a surrealist movement that
the fez used to sell or yellow
embrace.” Bloom, relaxing at dusk
rejected reason and logic, which
and a nice semitransparent
on the beach, masturbates at the
the young artists of the Cabaret
morning gown that I badly
sight of a young woman knowingly

Voltaire founded in Zurich (Joyce’s
want like the one long ago in
revealing her legs. The narrative’s
home at the time) in 1916. The

Walpoles only 8/6 or 18/6…

formulaic, rose-tinted romanticism
influence is particularly evident

Ulysses
provides an ironic counterpoint to
in this episode. Like the Dadaists,
his seedy voyeurism.

Joyce set out to shock the public

In the following episode, when
with a deliberate offensive against

Bloom visits a maternity hospital,
conventional standards of taste

Joyce uses a sequence of different
and propriety.

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220 ULYSSES
adventurer, before returning home.

In episode 12, the Cyclops, a one-

Joyce identifies Leopold Bloom with eyed giant from whom Odysseus Odysseus, and equates Stephen
escapes in the Odyssey, takes the
with the king’s son, Telemachus,
form of an aggressively xenophobic
who in the first four books of the
patriot who argues vociferously with

Listen: a fourworded

Odyssey searches in vain for his

Bloom. The narrow chauvinism of the
wavespeech: seesoo,
lost father. He associates Molly

“citizen” mirrors the Cyclops’ limited
hrss, rsseeiss, oos.

with Penelope, Odysseus’s wife,
vision. Later, the unnamed narrator

Ulysses
who believes that her husband is
tells of a chimney sweep who “near
still alive and will return to her.

drove his gear into my eye.”

Each of the 18 episodes of the

The thematic value of the
novel (sometimes called chapters)

Homeric parallels is strongest in
corresponds with an adventure
the mythic roles given to Stephen
from Homer’s epic. The first three
and Bloom. Stephen is unconsciously
episodes focus on Stephen, and
seeking a supportive father figure,
now restores the balance by giving
follow a structure that echoes the
so he can become a father himself,

Molly her own voice. Allowing

Odyssey. In the third episode,
both of children and of art. Passages
his female protagonist to have

Stephen questions the institution of on the Holy Trinity, which contains the last word (an affirmative “yes,”

fatherhood while thinking about a
repeating the connective “yes”

discussion in a library. The passage
she starts with) is a testament to
translates Telemachus’s predicament

In Odysseus and Circe (1590) by

Bartholomeus Spranger, the witch

Joyce’s all-inclusive imagination.

as a son without a father into an
goddess uses her powers to seduce

However, some feminist critics see
abstract debate on modern notions
the hero—paralleled by Bella Cohen’s

Molly, in her passivity, as a creature of the father–son relationship.

teasing of Bloom in Ulysses.

of male misconceptions.

As Molly lies in bed, away from
all stimuli, the interior monologue
can attain its purest form, without
narrative interruptions. Punctuation
is abandoned. Recollections jostle
together. Frank language, with
earthy colloquialisms, gives way to
a memory of her youth in Gibraltar
and her later passionate courtship
by Bloom, expressed in the style of
romantic fiction. This style is not
purely a literary device but part
of the inner language of Molly’s
romantic, though fleshly, sensibility.

Myth and modernity

Linguistic experimentation is
not the only literary technique that
underpins this multilayered book.

The title, Ulysses, is the clue to an
elaborate symbolic substructure.

“Ulysses” is the Latin-derived name
for Odysseus, the Greek king of

Ithaca, who, in Homer’s epic poem
the Odyssey, spends 10 years after
the Trojan War as a wandering

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BREAKING WITH TRADITION 221
the most complex of all father–son
relationships, and on Shakespeare’s

Homeric parallels in Ulysses

Hamlet—torn apart by vengeful

HOMER’S ODYSSEY

JAMES JOYCE’S ULYSSES
thoughts about his father’s murderer,
who is now his own stepfather—

Telemachus is the son of Odysseus

Stephen Dedalus, an intellectual and
add layers of meaning to Stephen’s
and Penelope, who searches in vain
artist lost in a maze of his own self-
quest. Conversely, Bloom (whose
for his lost father in an epic subplot.

absorption, searches for a father figure.

son, Rudy, died 11 years earlier,
a few days after his birth) has a

Calypso is a beautiful goddess-nymph,

Molly Bloom, later the dutiful wife,
deep psychic need for a son. This
who enthralls Odysseus and holds him
is portrayed in an early episode as the
adds poignancy to the Odysseus–
captive for seven years.

immortal nymph who enchants Leopold.

Telemachus dynamic.

Bloom and Stephen, after

Odysseus travels to Hades, the

Bloom attends Paddy Dignam’s
several near misses, encounter
underworld, to ask the spirit of blind
funeral, his thoughts wandering in at
each other by chance at the Holles
prophet Tiresias the way home.

times humorous and inappropriate ways.

Street Maternity Hospital; the
associations of the place with birth

Circe is a beautiful witch-goddess, who

Stephen and Bloom wander through
and parenthood are no accident.

drugs Odysseus’s men and turns them

Nighttown to visit a brothel operated by

Bloom in due course saves Stephen
into swine. Odysseus becomes her lover.

Bella Cohen, a modern-day Circe.

from getting arrested after a fracas
in Dublin’s red-light area. When,

Penelope keeps suitors at bay while

Molly dallies with a lover but, although
later that night, they sit drinking
waiting for the return of Odysseus,
bored with her husband, Leopold, she
cocoa together in Bloom’s kitchen,
missing and presumed dead at sea.

awaits his homecoming.

Stephen glimpses the past in Bloom,
while Bloom sees the future in

Stephen. It is typical of Joyce’s

This is the heroism, or antiheroism, a bloody civil war, the Irish Free fictional subtlety that this mutual
of the everyday, conducted largely

State was formed. Reflecting these
recognition is a fleeting suggestion
within the mind, the arena of an
political realities, the characters of
rather than an obvious climax.

individual’s fears and longings. It

Joyce’s fictional Dublin are full of

Joyce’s Homeric framework, as
is here that he combats jealousy,
anxieties about their relationship
well as providing a set of symbolic
anger, boredom, shame and guilt,
with institutions: Irish nationalism,
correspondences, also allowed him
and cherishes the hope and love
the British Empire, the Catholic
to imply that Bloom, the ordinary
that give life its meaning.

Church, and the Irish Literary
man and good citizen, could be

Revival. While Ulysses presents
credited with a heroic dimension.

Exile and belonging
the details of individual experience

After the closing paragraph of the
with unprecedented frankness, it is
novel, Joyce left a reminder of his
also unflinching in its portrayal of a
own Odyssean journey as its writer: restless microcosm of Irish society.

“Trieste–Zurich–Paris, 1914–1921.”

However, all themes in Ulysses

While aware of himself as an artist
are subordinate to the living
operating in a cosmopolitan milieu, richness of its fictional world. The He heard then a warm heavy he also felt the tug of exile. Living vitality of the novel comes from the
sigh, softer, as she turned over abroad made it possible for him to life invested in it, which fights back
and the loose brass quoits of
recreate Dublin in all its vulgarity
against the book’s elaborate literary
the bedstead jingled.

and vibrancy as the home of his
artifices. At the core of this—the

Ulysses
imagination. Back in 1904, when the most self-consciously artful novel book is set, political feelings were
since the playful experiments of
running high, after the failure of

Laurence Sterne’s Tristram Shandy
home rule—an attempt to make
in the mid-18th century—are the

Ireland self-governing. In the year
lives and loves of Dubliners, realized
of Ulysses’ publication (1922), after
with amazing verisimilitude. ■

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222

WHEN I WAS YOUNG

I TOO HAD MANY

DREAMS

CALL TO ARMS (1922), LU XUN

IN CONTEXT

FOCUS

The Baihua literary and Party, which he supported, though cultural movement in
he never became a member. Call

China, initiated in 1917
to Arms is Lu Xun’s first collection
by the scholar and intellectual Hu
of writing, and brings together

Baihua literature

Shi, went hand in hand with the
his two earliest and most famous

BEFORE

May Fourth Movement—a political
stories: “Diary of a Madman” and

1917 Hu Shi publishes “A
and cultural crusade that grew out

“The True Story of Ah Q.”

Preliminary Discussion of
of a student uprising in Beijing in

An ironic attack on traditional

1919 and spearheaded a new sense
culture, “Diary of a Madman” tells

Literature Reform” in New
of Chinese nationalism.

of a villager—the “madman”—who

Youth magazine, calling for

Followers of the movement
believes that his friends and family
a new approach to literature
rejected traditional beliefs, and
are practicing cannibalism, and
that does not rely on old forms.

promoted a shift toward Western
also becomes convinced that the

1918 Lu Xun publishes “Diary
ideas of democracy and modern
classic Confucian texts contain
of a Madman,” considered the
science. They also encouraged a
encouragement of the practice.

first modern Chinese story.

move away from writing in classical

“The True Story of Ah Q” is

Chinese (understood by only a tiny
a novella about an ignorant and

1921–22 Lu Xun’s “The True
minority) and toward the use of
deluded peasant who considers

Story of Ah Q” (later included

“baihua”: a written vernacular
himself to be wise, and shows the
in Call to Arms) is serialized
language that was understood by
backwardness and complacency
in Beijing Morning News.

everyone. Baihua language was
of the old generation.

AFTER
soon used in Chinese newspapers

Both these stories mark the

1931–32 “Turbulent Stream,”

and textbooks, revolutionizing the
beginning of Baihua literature,
education of the peasantry.

embodying it not only in their use
by Ba Jin, is published in serial
of vernacular language but also
form, later appearing as a

New ways of thinking
in addressing concerns of the May
single volume, The Family. A

Lu Xun (1881–1936) was the first

Fourth Movement, such as the
novel about the clash of old
modern author to write in the
outdated strictures of Confucian
and new ways, it was hugely
vernacular script. His work was
thought and the unthinking
popular with Chinese youth.

championed by the Communist
acceptance of rusty traditions. ■

1935 Lu Xun publishes Old

Tales Retold, recasting popular

See also: Quan Tangshi 46

Chinese myths.

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BREAKING WITH TRADITION 223

LOVE GIVES NAUGHT

BUT ITSELF AND

TAKES NAUGHT BUT

FROM ITSELF

THE PROPHET (1923), KAHLIL GIBRAN

IN CONTEXT

FOCUS

Colonial empires began their In this book, Gibran uses a style inevitable decline in the
familiar in religious scripture and
aftermath of World War I,
sermons to deliver short speeches
thanks partly to the war’s impact
spoken by the prophet Almustafa

Modern Arabic voices
on the centers of Western culture.

to a diverse crowd as he is about

AFTER

Literary orientations, topics, and
to depart by boat from the city of

1935 Prolific writer and
themes began to reflect the new

Orphalese. The 26 essays range
scholar Taha Hussein, the
shift in the balance between
from reflections on love, passion,
colonizers and colonized. Among
children, and eating, to thoughts

“Dean of Arabic Literature,”

the many postcolonial narratives to
on justice, time, evil, and death.

tells of an Egyptian author’s
emerge, those emanating from the

The essays emphasize human
struggle between Arab and

Arab world of North African and
relationships and encompass

European culture in his novel

Middle Eastern countries came to
themes of diversity and a universal

A Man of Letters, played out
international prominence.

love that is free from the bounds of
between Cairo and Paris
a single belief system. ■
during World War I.

Diversity of ideas

1956–57 Naguib Mahfouz’s

Lebanese writer, philosopher, and

The Cairo Trilogy follows a
artist Khalil Gibran (1833–1931; also

Cairene family from the 1919
known as Kahlil) was one of the

Egyptian Revolution against
most acclaimed authors to emerge

British colonial rule to nearly
out of the blossoming pool of Arab
the end of World War II in 1944,
intellectuals. His own Christian

These things move within
upbringing and his interest in the
highlighting the personal,
you as lights and shadows
teachings of Islam, Sufism, and
social, and political struggle of
in pairs that cling.

Judaism represented a break
a changing city and country.

The Prophet
from the traditional link between

1985 The Sand Child, written
geographical and spiritual beliefs,
in French by Tahar Ben
and were the major influences on

Jelloun, explores and critiques
his English collection of illustrated
issues of traditional Islamic
prose poems titled The Prophet.

values, gender politics, and the
construction of identity in a

See also: One Thousand and One Nights 44–45
postcolonial Moroccan setting.

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224

IN CONTEXT

CRITICISM MARKS

FOCUS

Bildungsroman

THE ORIGIN OF

BEFORE

1795–96 Johann Wolfgang

PROGRESS AND
von Goethe publishes Wilhelm

Meister’s Apprenticeship, often
called the first Bildungsroman.

ENLIGHTENMENT

1798 German author Ludwig

Tieck publishes Franz

Sternbald’s Wanderings, a

THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN (1924), THOMAS MANN

Romantic novel with hallmarks
of the Bildungsroman.

1849–50 Charles Dickens’

partly autobiographical book

David Copperfield is published.

1855 Swiss author Gottfried

Keller publishes Green Henry,
a crucial Bildungsroman, and
also partly autobiographical.

1916 A Portrait of the Artist
as a Young Man, by James

Joyce, shows that the

Bildungsroman has a place
in Modernist literature.

Widely considered to
be Thomas Mann’s
masterpiece, The Magic

Mountain has many claims to
greatness: it is regarded as one
of the best German novels of all
time; one of the finest works of
the 20th century; a sublime dark
comedy and rumination on death
and disease; and a key work of

Modernism. It is also a fine example
of a Bildungsroman (“novel of
formation”), a genre that had its
roots in 18th-century Germany,
and is still going strong today.

Although earlier examples are
sometimes cited, many studies
place the birth of the genre at the
publication of Johann Wolfgang von

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BREAKING WITH TRADITION 225

See also: Jane Eyre 128–31 ■ David Copperfield 153 ■ Little Women 199 ■ A Sentimental Education 199 ■ Death in Venice 240 ■ A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man 241 ■ To Kill a Mockingbird 272–73 ■ Midnight’s Children 300–05

Goethe’s novel Wilhelm Meister’s
in Venice, which he had published

The “magic mountain” on which

Apprenticeship in 1795–96. It
that year. However, it expanded in
the Berghof is located is a symbol of
contains all of the key ingredients,
the telling, since, with the outbreak the sanatorium’s metaphorical distance being the story of a young artist’s
of World War I in 1914, Mann
from the rest of the world: a secluded
place where even time flows differently.

formation, or Bildung: his struggle
became very aware that the world
to find expression and happiness,
he was describing was coming to a
and his eventual acceptance of
sudden and violent end. His views
in size. After the war Mann revised
his place in society. Over the
on both nationalism and bourgeois
the text for many years, eventually
succeeding decades and then
society were greatly changed by
publishing the novel in 1924, when
centuries, many other great writers
the conflict, in which he saw the
it was hailed as a masterpiece.

felt a desire to tell a story roughly
values of so-called civilization

The Magic Mountain tells the
similar to their own: in France,
driving society blindly toward mass story of a young man called Hans Gustave Flaubert published A
death and destruction. The novel

Castorp, who goes to the Swiss

Sentimental Education; in England,
had thus taken on greater

Alps to visit his cousin Joachim in

Charles Dickens wrote David
significance, and continued to grow a sanatorium (a hospital dedicated Copperfield; and the Irish writer
to the treatment of people who have

James Joyce offered A Portrait of
a chronic illness, often tuberculosis)

the Artist as a Young Man. The
called the Berghof. Hans has good
genre’s influence spread across
prospects, and is about to take

Europe and then the world.

a job in the shipbuilding industry.

With its clear air, spectacular

Inspired by sickness

All interest in disease and
surroundings, few visitors, and

The Magic Mountain had its
death is only really another
quiet, peaceful atmosphere, the
beginnings in Thomas Mann’s
expression of interest in life.

hospital exists in its own small,
visit to a high-altitude sanatorium

The Magic Mountain
enclosed world. Once he is there,
in Davos, Switzerland, in 1912,

Castorp himself begins to display
where his wife was recovering
symptoms of tuberculosis, and
from a lung infection. It was at
is persuaded to stay until he has
first intended to be a slim volume
recovered. He ends up remaining
to accompany the novella Death
in the sanatorium for seven years. ❯❯

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226 THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN

The book serves as both a major
example of a Bildungsroman and a
parody of the genre. The essential
elements of the Bildungsroman are
all present: a young, impressionable

Ludovico Settembrini
hero who is setting out in life; an
represents humanism, intellect, and the
education process that is often
rational values of the Enlightenment.

difficult, but which he comes
through in one piece; and at last,
a venturing forth. Castorp must go
through the experience of sickness

Hans Castorp
and recovery to arrive at a true

Hans represents the
appreciation of life. Therefore the

Mynheer
typical blank slate of a

Leo Naphta
book unquestionably belongs to

Peeperkorn
central character in a
stands for
symbolizes hedonism,

Bildungsroman, who absorbs
radicalism,
the genre. Yet Mann parodies or
the pleasure principle,
irrationality,
the influences of those around
challenges it on almost every level.

and the superiority of
and religious
him. In his case, however, he
emotion over reason.

fundamentalism.

remains ambivalent,

Layers of parody
passive, and unable to

On one level, there are the various
commit himself.

lessons that Castorp receives.

Different characters offer views
of the world that contradict each
other, and it is not clear whether

Mann approves of any of them. In
earlier Bildungsromans, the lessons
learned and the values gained by

Joachim Ziemssen

Clawdia Chauchat
the central character are intended
typifies faithfulness, duty, a committed
embodies love, sex,
to be approved of, or agreed with,
and uncomplicated response to life.

sensual pleasure.

by the reader. So, for example,

David Copperfield in Dickens’ novel

The plot of the novel revolves
to sway Castorp toward his own
might learn not to take people at
around the various patients who
way of thinking, meaning that a
face value. The Magic Mountain
he meets, and the relationships
great part of the book is taken up
rejects this formula. As a modern
he develops with them.

with philosophical debates. There
novel it is aware that there are
is a woman, too, called Clawdia
many ways of looking at the world,

An education in life

Chauchat, with whom Castorp
and none of them is necessarily

It is from the other patients in the
falls in love, thereby receiving his
sanatorium that Hans Castorp
necessary education in romance
receives the education—in art,
and erotic temptation.

politics, love, and the human

Where most Bildungsromans
condition—that all Bildungsroman
involve a physical as well as an
heroes must gain. Mann uses the
emotional journey, The Magic
characters as representatives of the Mountain makes a point of staying I, for one, have never
different ideas and belief systems
geographically in one place—the
come across a perfectly
of pre-World War I Europe. We meet Berghof; and the journey it offers healthy human being.

Leo Naphta, a Jew-turned-Marxist
is through Western (and to some

The Magic Mountain

Jesuit; Ludovico Settembrini, an
extent Eastern) ideologies. It is

Italian secular humanist; and
almost as if the height of the

Mynheer Peeperkorn, a hedonistic
mountain itself provides the young

Dutchman with a tropical disease.

Castorp with a view across all of

Each of these characters attempts

Europe at this crucial juncture.

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BREAKING WITH TRADITION 227
adopts. It is important to our idea of
a Bildungsroman that an education
should be an ongoing process, a
story told in sequence. Yet Mann
deprives Castorp (and the reader)

It is love, not reason, that
of this structure, or perspective on
is stronger than death.

events. Incidents are loose in time,

The Magic Mountain
and we cannot pin them down:

each successive chapter covers
an increasing amount of time,
from one day to six years.

The Magic Mountain is thus
deeply disparaging toward its own
genre. It contains all the contents

Thomas Mann
the right one. Considering this
of a Bildungsroman while showing
as Mann’s viewpoint, the whole
them (in the cold light of Modernist

Thomas Mann was born to
purpose of the book as a novel of
thought) to be a sham, or that their
a wealthy family in Lübeck,
education is revealed to be parody.

benefits are at best impossible to
northern Germany, in 1875.

He first came to attention

Deep down, the Bildungsroman
calculate. It is not surprising, then,
with his early masterpiece
genre had always been an earnest
that the book has inspired relatively

Buddenbrooks, published
enterprise and it is this that Mann
few imitators; it is too much like the
when he was just 26, a novel
is making fun of. For example, the
last word in the genre, and perhaps
about the decline of a wealthy
narrator maintains an aloof attitude too grand and brilliant in scope and family much like Mann’s own.

toward Castorp himself, thereby
sweep, for anyone to want to follow

In 1905 he married Katia
reminding the reader that he is a
in its footsteps.

Pringsheim, the daughter of a
mediocre young man. And whereas

Writers have nonetheless
wealthy Jewish industrialist;
the Bildungsroman hero should be
continued to find new uses for
they had six children, three
fully formed by the end of the book,
the genre, exploring themes that
of whom became writers.

in fact Castorp emerges with no
range from postcolonialism and

In 1929, Mann was awarded
real sense that he has learned
modern history (as in Salman
the Nobel Prize in Literature.

anything from the lessons in life

Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children) to

In 1933, Mann left Germany
and philosophy he has received
sensual and sensory awakenings
for Switzerland, and on the
over the course of seven years.

( Perfume by Patrick Süskind).

eve of World War II he moved

■
to the US, where he taught at

Adrift in time

Princeton University before
settling in California and

Mann undercuts the purpose of
becoming an American
the Bildungsroman in other ways,
citizen. During the war he
in particular in regard to the theme
made a number of anti-Nazi
of time and its relation to narrative
speeches recorded in the US
progression. The passage of time
and broadcast from Britain to
is a crucial matter to those who

Germany. After the war he
are sick and dying, and yet in the
returned to Europe; he died in
hermetically sealed environment of

Switzerland in 1955, at 80.

the sanatorium time is something
that is very hard to keep track of.

Other key works

The patients calculate the amount
of time that has passed only in

1901 Buddenbrooks

Chronically ill patients at high-

1912 Death in Venice
units of one month. Any past event, altitude sanatoria in the Swiss Alps 1933–43 Joseph and
however long ago, is said to have
lived in a rarefied atmosphere, with

His Brothers
happened “just the other day”—a
events in the world “down there”

1947 Doctor Faustus
habit Castorp himself eventually
barely impinging on their lives.

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LIKE MOTHS AMONG THE

WHISPERINGS

AND THE CHAMPAGNE AND

THE STARS

THE GREAT GATSBY (1925),

F. SCOTT FITZGERALD

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230 THE GREAT GATSBY

IN CONTEXT

FOCUS

The author and literary
hostess Gertrude Stein,
talking with Ernest

Hemingway, spoke of a “lost

The Lost Generation
generation” of the young—those

BEFORE
who had served in World War I.

‘Can’t repeat the past?’

1920 F. Scott Fitzgerald’s short

Hemingway claimed that Stein
he cried incredulously.

first heard the words from a garage
story “Bernice Bobs Her Hair”

‘Why of course you can!’

owner who had serviced her car,
looks at the tension between

The Great Gatsby
an anecdotal detail that resonates
traditional feminine values and
suggestively with the garage
the liberation of the Jazz Age,
scenes in The Great Gatsby. “Lost”

themes the author revives in
in this context means disoriented

The Great Gatsby.

or alienated, as opposed to

1922 T. S. Eliot’s The Waste
disappeared. After Hemingway’s

Land prefigures Lost
use of it in the epigraph to his novel the same time being keenly aware Generation writing in

The Sun Also Rises, the phrase
of its defective moral values and the
its exploration of the

“Lost Generation” came to refer
emptiness of its promise of a better
to a group of young American
life for all. His most famous novel,
disintegration of culture—
expatriate writers in the creative

The Great Gatsby, tells a personal
including empty sex and
melting pot of Paris in the 1920s,
story of Gatsby’s doomed dream
loss of spiritual meaning.

which included F. Scott Fitzgerald,
of love. However, at the same time

AFTER

John Dos Passos, Ezra Pound, and
it is a story about the doomed

1926 Ernest Hemingway, in

Hemingway himself. World War I

American Dream—its promise of

The Sun Also Rises, delves
had left its mark, and they were
a better world revealed as a sham.

into the themes of love, death,
restless and cynical, searching
and masculinity.

for meaningful experience in love,

New money, new values
writing, drinking, and hedonism.

Fitzgerald saw the Jazz Age as an

1930–36 John Dos Passos

Fitzgerald, one of the Lost
era of miracle and excess. A new
explores the American

Generation’s most important
postwar prosperity was centered

Dream with the stories of 12
writers, found himself seduced by
on Wall Street, where huge fortunes
characters in his U.S.A. trilogy.

the scintillating surfaces of the
were made trading stocks and

“Jazz Age” of the 1920s, while at
bonds. The ideal of the self-made

F. Scott Fitzgerald

Francis Scott Fitzgerald was born

Great Gatsby. The couple later
in 1896 in Saint Paul, Minnesota.

shuttled between France and

In 1917 he dropped out of
the US. Fitzgerald had a

Princeton University to join the
troubled relationship with
army. He fell in love with Zelda
alcohol; after Tender Is the Night

Sayre, the daughter of a judge,
came out in 1934, he struggled
marrying her after his first novel,
for two years with drinking and

This Side of Paradise, brought
depression. In 1937 he tried his
him success, at the age of 24. He
hand at writing for Hollywood,
supported the family (they had
and died of a heart attack there
one daughter) by writing stories
in 1940 at 44.

for popular magazines. His second
novel, The Beautiful and Damned,

Other key works
confirmed his reputation as chief
chronicler and critic of the Jazz

1922 The Beautiful and Damned

Age. In 1924 he moved with Zelda

1922 Tales of the Jazz Age
to the French Riviera to write The

1934 Tender Is the Night

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BREAKING WITH TRADITION 231

See also: The Waste Land 213 ■ Of Mice and Men 244 ■ The Grapes of Wrath 244 ■ The Outsider 245
man was an attractive antidote
to the power of old money passed
on by inheritance and marriage
among the “best” families. The

1920s in America seemed to offer
a new social mobility, healing class
wounds and challenging snobbery.

Those who had sought their
fortunes in the West now came

East again, to make their fortunes
and to spend their wealth on
magnificent homes, fine things,
and high living—such was the
dream, anyway. But the reality
was that wealth for some led to
the impoverishment of others, and
at the same time gave rise to a
culture of surface glitter that was
morally and spiritually empty at its
core. Fakery of all kinds abounded
and snobbery still existed—it had

Jay Gatsby owns a colossal

Gatsby’s wild, opulent parties,
just found new targets.

mansion, in the style of a French
depicted in this 1949 movie adaptation

After the passing of the 18th
hôtel de ville (city hall), in West
of the book, brought together the

Amendment in 1919, which

Egg, on the shore of Long Island,
old-moneyed socialites from East Egg
and their brash West Egg neighbors.

prohibited the sale of alcohol,
outside New York. Gatsby is an
many entrepreneurs channeled
enigma, an newcomer from the
their talents into bootlegging—the

Midwest around whom many

Nick’s cousin, and who is now
smuggling of illegal liquor, much
rumors circulate—that he has
married to Tom, a wealthy college
of it sold in speakeasies (illegal
killed a man; that his claim to
friend of Nick’s. Daisy is the reason
bars). Racism was rife too; in the
an Oxford education is a lie; that

Gatsby bought his mansion on the
first chapter of The Great Gatsby,
he made his money bootlegging.

opposite shore from the Georgian

Tom Buchanan expresses the

Every Saturday he throws decadent Colonial house she shares with supremacist view that “if we
parties, with hundreds of guests,

Tom. All Gatsby’s wealth, acquired
don’t look out the white race will
as described by the novel’s narrator, from shady business dealings with be—will be utterly submerged.”

Nick Carraway, who rents a small
a mafioso-style crook called Meyer
house next door. There is hilarity

Wolfshiem, is paraded with the sole

Radiance and rottenness
and jazz in these revels, but also
intention of winning back his lost

Fitzgerald saw his novel as “a
a great deal of drunkenness and
love, now that he finally has the
purely creative work—not trashy
falling out, especially between
capital to support her.

imaginings as in my stories but
couples. Indeed, men and women
the sustained imagination of a
speak to each other throughout the

The importance of place
sincere and yet radiant world.”

book in dialogue that is flippant

The novel’s themes are mapped out

That radiance, reflected in a
and insincere.

in its highly symbolic topography.

sensuous prose style suffused

Nick gets to know Gatsby and

East Egg, home to Daisy and Tom
with a romantic glow, is seen in
learns his secret: that for five years
as well as most of Gatsby’s party
the dazzling glamour of fashionable he has been obsessively in love guests, stands for traditional values

East Coast society that Fitzgerald
with the beautiful socialite Daisy
and old money; West Egg where
takes for his subject.

Buchanan, who happens to be

Gatsby lives, for fashionable ❯❯

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232 THE GREAT GATSBY

Geography of The Great Gatsby

The valley of

East Egg

New York City is

West Egg
ashes is a
symbolizes
the playground of
symbolizes false
wasteland, linked
traditional values,
easy money and
glamour, built on
with adultery,
founded on
easy pleasure.

enterprise and
ugliness, poverty,
new money.

bloodlines and
and death.

old money.

affluence, the nouveau riche. A
poem The Waste Land, whose
hues denoting his desperate need
short distance away is New York,
title refers to the ancient myth of a
to make an impression. One of the
teeming with dubious deals and
kingdom blighted by a curse. It is
book’s most prevalent symbols is
clandestine pleasures. In between
here that Tom’s mistress, Myrtle
green, the color of the light at the
lies a patch of terrain where the

Wilson, lives with her sad, passive,
end of Daisy’s mooring dock, which
bleakness underlying the glamour
garage-owning husband, near

Gatsby gazes at yearningly from
is depressingly apparent: the
a giant billboard advertising an
across the water. In the final pages,

“valley of ashes.” This desolate
optician’s business. The glasses on
alone in Gatsby’s empty garden,
region recalls T. S. Eliot’s Modernist the sign are ironic, since nobody is Nick has a vision of the “fresh,
clear sighted in Gatsby’s world—
green breast of the new world,”

not even Nick, who thinks of
glimpsed by the first settlers to
himself as “inclined to reserve
reach Long Island; he then muses
all judgements” but in fact feels
on Gatsby’s belief in that symbolic
superior to everyone, including his

“green light, the orgastic future
cynical girlfriend, a professional
that year by year recedes before

I was within and without,
golfer named Jordan Baker.

us.” It is here, in the green light
simultaneously enchanted and
and the green land, that the novel’s
repelled by the inexhaustible Color and time
concerns with individual and
variety of life.

Jordan and Daisy are first seen in
national destiny converge.

The Great Gatsby
white dresses, but neither is as

At the end of the book, feeling
innocent as this choice of color
that the East is haunted after the
might suggest. Color in The Great
book’s final tragedy and “distorted

Gatsby is symbolic of the book’s
beyond my eyes’ powers of
themes: Gatsby wears a pink suit
correction,” Nick returns to his
and drives a yellow Rolls-Royce—

Midwestern home. In his shifting,

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BREAKING WITH TRADITION 233
worldly, highly nuanced perceptions
superbly cadenced description; its
and sympathies, Nick is as much
brilliantly telling dialogue, capable
the novel’s subject as Gatsby. The
of revealing a moral vacuum in
thought he leaves us with is that
the briefest of exchanges; and its
the past pulls us back irresistibly:

structural accomplishment—for
dreams of progress are fool’s gold.

example, in the placing of Jordan’s

So we beat on, boats against
account of Gatsby’s backstory,

Belated acclaim
the current, borne back
which is both a flashback (telling

When he was planning his novel
ceaselessly into the past.

of past events) and a flash-forward
in 1923, Fitzgerald wrote that he

The Great Gatsby

(because Tom tells of Jordan’s
wanted to produce “something
revelations out of sequence).

extraordinary and beautiful and

Like the rest of the Lost
simple and intricately patterned.”

Generation, Fitzgerald may have

He achieved this ambition with
been reacting to the mood of his
panache, but the book initially
times—disillusionment, a loss
received mixed reviews and sold
of moral bearings, and the focus
poorly. By the time of his death
on the material rather than the

Fitzgerald thought of himself as a
narrative that fictionalizes strands
spiritual—but his novel transcends
failure: during the last year of his
in Fitzgerald’s deeply troubled life,
the moment of its creation. This is
life only 72 copies of his nine books
including adultery, mental illness,
in part because of its continuing
were recorded as sales in his
and an acute sense of personal
relevance in today’s climate of
royalty statements.

and creative failure.

celebrity, corporate greed, and a

Nowadays, The Great Gatsby

The Great Gatsby is the more
world economy driven by inflated
and Fitzgerald’s subsequent work,
acclaimed of the two novels. It is
asset prices. But the book is also

Tender is the Night, are widely
particularly admired for its forensic
timelessly important because
regarded as among the greatest
exposure of a flawed milieu; its
every aspect of it, aesthetically,

American novels ever written.

finely judged prose, combining
bears witness to Fitzgerald’s

Tender is the Night follows a
first-person informality with
unassailable mastery of his art. ■

Jordan

Friends

Daisy

Spouse

Tom

Baker

Buchanan

Buchanan

Dating

Cousins

Loves

Loved

Dislikes

Love affair

Nick

Friends

Jay

Myrtle

Carraway

Gatsby

Wilson

Criminal partners

Spouse

The characters in the novel are fleshed
out by the book’s narrator, Nick Carraway,
who has come to New York to seek his
fortune. He befriends Gatsby, who is in love

Meyer

George
with Nick’s beautiful cousin, Daisy, who is in

Wolfshiem

Wilson
turn married to the boorish Tom Buchanan.

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234

THE OLD WORLD MUST

CRUMBLE. AWAKE,

WIND OF DAWN!

BERLIN ALEXANDERPLATZ (1929),

ALFRED DÖBLIN

IN CONTEXT

FOCUS

Although the 15 years after takes the form of newspaper the end of World War I saw stories, street ballads, speeches, hyperinflation and mass
and extracts from fictional books.

unemployment in Germany, it was

The narrative incorporates stream

Weimar-era
also a time of a great flourishing
of consciousness and a mixture of
experimentalism
in the arts and sciences, known
first- and third-person viewpoints.

BEFORE
as Weimar culture. Many leading

Through this complex experimental

1915 Metamorphosis, a key
intellectuals were Jewish, and
technique, 1920s Berlin itself is
the period came to an end with
given vivid expression, leading
early antirealistic text by

Hitler’s ascent to power in 1933

Berlin Alexanderplatz to be seen as

Franz Kafka, influences several
and the rise in anti-Semitism, when one of the great Großstadtromane, other modern German-thousands of Jews fled Germany.

or “big city novels,” which focus
language writers.

on life in urban areas. ■

AFTER

New forms for a new world

1931–32 Austrian author

While the Weimar era lasted,

Hermann Broch’s trilogy The

German-language literary

Sleepwalkers experiments
experimentalism was ambitious
with form, changing genre
in its attempts to express the
complexities of the modern world,
according to the plot.

and Berlin Alexanderplatz by Alfred

German fellow-citizens,

1930–43 Austrian Robert

Döblin (1878–1957) was a key work.

never has a nation been

Musil’s novel The Man Without

It is the story of a low-level pimp,
betrayed more ignominiously

Qualities is structured as a

Franz Biberkopf, who struggles
and more unjustly than
tour of ideas through which
to make his way in the criminal
the German people.

the central character attempts
underclass after being released

Berlin Alexanderplatz
to define himself.

from prison. The characters speak
in the almost untranslatable argot

1943 Herman Hesse’s use of
of the slums of interwar Berlin,

Jungian psychoanalysis and
and the novel is a dazzling exercise

Eastern mysticism in The
in literary montage. At times it

Glass Bead Game results in
a combination similar to the

See also: Metamorphosis 210–11 ■ The Magic Mountain 224–27 ■
later genre of magic realism.

The Man Without Qualities 243

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BREAKING WITH TRADITION 235

SHIPS AT A DISTANCE

HAVE EVERY MAN’S

WISH ON BOARD

THEIR EYES WERE WATCHING GOD (1937),

ZORA NEALE HURSTON

IN CONTEXT

FOCUS

The Harlem Renaissance African-American and women’s of the 1920s and ‘30s—or
literature. Her best-known novel,
the “flowering of Negro

Their Eyes Were Watching God, is

Literature,” as the American author
about a poor black woman, Janie

The Harlem Renaissance
and civil rights activist James

Crawford, in the Southern states

BEFORE

Weldon Johnson put it—was an
in the early 20th century. The story

1923 Jean Toomer publishes
important awakening of African-
is bookended by her return to
his first novel, Cane—a key

American cultural pride and identity. Eatonville, Florida—America’s The movement centered in Harlem,
proud first all-black city—where

Modernist work evoking black

New York, and began in 1924 when

Hurston herself grew up.

life in the South. Of mixed

Opportunity magazine held a party

Like other Harlem Renaissance
race, Toomer preferred to be
to introduce black writers to white
texts, the novel differs from earlier
termed an “American writer”

publishers, giving them access to
works about African-American
rather than a “black writer,”

mainstream exposure.

life by being honest and realistic
but was a central figure in

Emerging out of a burgeoning
rather than overtly sentimental.

the Harlem Renaissance.

urban black middle class, the

Hurston’s innovative use of the

1923 At 21 years old, Countee

Harlem Renaissance also embraced rural Southern black dialect is a Cullen wins an award from
theater, music, and a new political
notable feature of the text. The
awareness. Although the Great
book also focuses on Janie’s
the Poetry Society of America

Depression brought the movement
marriages to three husbands,
for his poem “The Ballad
to an end, it marked a significant
each of whom dominates her life
of the Brown Girl,” about a
step forward in self-respect for
and undermines her status, and
doomed interracial romance.

black America, and laid the
against whom she rebels.

He becomes a key figure in
groundwork for the civil rights

Their Eyes Were Watching
the Harlem Renaissance.

movement after World War II.

God is an early and defiant voice

1934 Harlem Renaissance
on several crucial issues that
writer Langston Hughes

A defiant voice
have lost none of their relevance
publishes his first short

Zora Neale Hurston (1891–1960),
or resonance in the modern
story collection, The Ways
was a Harlem Renaissance writer
world—notably racism, poverty,
and a prominent figure in both
and gender inequality. ■
of White Folks, focusing on
race relations; the title is
intended to be mocking.

See also: Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass 126–27 ■

Invisible Man 259 ■ Beloved 306–09

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236

DEAD MEN ARE

HEAVIER THAN

BROKEN HEARTS

THE BIG SLEEP (1939), RAYMOND CHANDLER

IN CONTEXT

FOCUS

Hard-boiled detective The hard-boiled detective, although fiction brought realism,
intelligent, is a man of action.

sex, violence, and fast,

Battling organized crime and police
colloquial dialogue to the crime
corruption, he gets dragged into

Hard-boiled fiction
genre. It began with the short-
violence. Guns are among the

BEFORE
story form, especially those stories
hazards he faces, and in certain

1930 The Maltese Falcon, by
published in the popular pulp
situations he needs to carry one,

American author Dashiell
magazines of the 1920s to 1940s,
and sometimes use it. These
the leading exponent being Black
experiences harden him into

Hammett, introduces sleuth

Mask. Raymond Chandler’s most
cynicism—hence the phrase

Sam Spade, whose strong
illustrious predecessor was Dashiell “hard-boiled.” Yet at the same time, ethics were an inspiration for

Hammett, whose first hard-boiled
he has his principles. Chandler’s

Chandler’s Philip Marlowe.

detective story, Red Harvest, came
detective, Philip Marlowe, ordering

1934 The Postman Always
out a decade before Chandler’s
a young woman to get dressed in

Rings Twice, by American

The Big Sleep and was originally

The Big Sleep after refusing her
writer James M. Cain, gains
serialized in Black Mask.

advances, looks down at his
notoriety for its sex and
brutal violence.

Raymond Chandler

18 years his senior. He started

AFTER
writing in earnest after losing

1943 Another novel by Cain,

Born in Chicago, Illinois, in 1888, his job at an oil company in Raymond Chandler was taken
the Great Depression. His first

Double Indemnity, tackles the
to England at the age of 12 by
published story appeared in
theme of a femme fatale plotting
his divorced mother. He was

Black Mask magazine in 1933.

to kill her husband, the motive
schooled at Dulwich College,

The Big Sleep was his first
in this case is the life insurance.

South London, and later studied
novel; he went on to write six

1953
others. In 1959, the year before

In Chandler’s The Long
international law in France and

Germany. Returning to the US in he died, he became president of Goodbye, which has Marlowe

1912, he lived in California,
the Mystery Writers of America.

as its hero, two characters,
working, among other jobs, as

Roger Wade, a hard-drinking
a tennis-racket stringer. He

Other key works
writer, and Terry Lennox,
joined the Canadian Army after
another alcoholic, are partly

World War I broke out, and

1940 Farewell, My Lovely
autobiographical.

served in France. In 1924 he

1949 The Little Sister
married Cissy Pascal, a woman

1953 The Long Goodbye

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BREAKING WITH TRADITION 237

See also: Bleak House 146–49 ■ The Moonstone 198–99 ■ The Hound of the Baskervilles 208 ■

The New York Trilogy 336

Philip Marlowe

Tries to seduce

Employed by

Tries to seduce

Carmen

Father of

General

Father of

Vivian Sternwood

Sternwood

Sternwood

Regan

In love with

Employed by

Blackmails

Blackmails

Owen Taylor

Joe Brody

Married to

Tries to
seduce

Partners with

Employed by

Arthur Geiger

Agnes Lozelle

“Rusty” Regan

Lover of

Partners with

Runs away with?

Carol Lundgren

Harry Jones

Mona Mars

Married to

Two intertwined plots linked by
sexual attraction provide The Big Sleep

Employed by
with its story line, revolving around an

Lash Canino

Eddie Mars
elderly ex-general’s two wayward
daughters, missing persons, blackmail,
murder, and double crosses. The result
is a complex but well-controlled tale.

Both plots

Blackmail plot

Disappearance plot
chessboard and sees that he has

Sleep is told by Marlowe in the first
his client; however, he spends the
made a mistake with a knight
person, and the language is sharply rest of the book tying up a loose move. “Knights,” he says, “have no
idiomatic—colloquial not only in
end, and putting himself in more
meaning in this game.” But they
the dialogue but also the narration.

danger to discover how deep into
do: Marlowe, for all his faults, is a

But the prose has a jewel-like
evil an arch-villain has fallen.

modern knight, among the kings
precision, with terse, beautifully

Throughout, Marlowe remains
and queens of crime and their
crafted sentences. There are witty
one step ahead of everybody else,
pawns. He is loyal to clients, hates
or amusingly exaggerated similes,
and able, like the chess knight, to
liars, cheats, and thugs, and fights
such as doors “which would have
outwit his enemies by unexpected
back with wit and courage.

let in a troop of Indian elephants,”

moves. The big sleep of the title
but they are not overdone.

is death, and is the subject of a

New uses for pulp

The story has a tight plot, with
poignant coda in which Marlowe,

Part of Chandler’s achievement
one situation flowing naturally into
showing self-understanding far
was to apply literary sophistication
the next. Two-thirds of the way in,
beyond Sherlock Holmes, implicates
to pulp-fiction subjects. The Big

Marlowe has solved the mystery for himself as “part of the nastiness.” ■

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238

IT IS SUCH A SECRET

PLACE THE LAND

OF TEARS

THE LITTLE PRINCE (1943),

ANTOINE DE SAINT-EXUPÉRY

IN CONTEXT

FOCUS

Many writers were forced about. Saint-Exupéry’s book has to flee their homelands
been read in numerous ways: as
before and during World
a general moral and philosophical

War II, and a somber, wistful, and
fable; as a children’s fairy tale; as

Writers in exile
elegiac tone is often evident in the
an autobiographical story that has

BEFORE
literature produced in exile by such
been reimagined as fantasy; and as

1932 The Jewish-Austrian
writers, who include Joseph Roth,
a direct reflection of its times.

writer Joseph Roth writes The

Bertolt Brecht, Stefan Zweig, and

These interpretations have all

Paul Celan. Also among this exodus been made of other works of exile Radetzky March, which details
was Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, who literature, which commonly lament Austria–Hungary’s decline, a
wrote The Little Prince in New York a lost way of life.

year before he leaves Germany
after he had left France, following
for Paris. He remains in exile for
its occupation by the Nazis.

State of dislocation
the rest of his life.

Like many of the great literary

Given its genesis in a time of

1939 Bertolt Brecht’s antiwar
works from this era, The Little
displacement, it is not surprising
play Mother Courage and Her

Prince is not strictly a “war” novel
that the title character of Saint-

Children is written a few years
but it is shaped by the political and

Exupéry’s novel is an alien boy who
after he flees Nazi persecution.

social context that the war brought
falls to Earth in the eerie landscape
of the Sahara Desert. The narrator,

1941 Published just before
a pilot who has crash-landed,
his suicide in Brazilian exile,
encounters the boy there.

Austrian author Stefan Zweig’s

Abandonment, wandering,
novella The Royal Game
escape, and instability characterize
criticizes the brutality of the
the narrative of The Little Prince,

Third Reich’s Nazi regime.

Here is my secret, very
which presents us with a seemingly
simply: you can only see
simple children’s story. But like all

AFTER
things clearly with your
good examples of such fiction, it is

1952 Holocaust survivor Paul
heart. What is essential is
a tale for both old and young. Saint-

Celan produces a collection
invisible to the eye.

Exupéry takes from classic children’s
of poems, Poppy and Memory,

The Little Prince
literature the idea that the state of
after settling in Paris following
childhood is one of transition, where
horrific wartime experiences
difference predominates. The prince
in his native central Europe.

is literally and metaphorically an
alien wandering the Earth—a child

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BREAKING WITH TRADITION 239

See also: Mother Courage and Her Children 244–45 ■ Poppy and Memory 258 ■

One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovitch 289
lost in an adult world. But as a
nature as it moved across Europe
character, his alienness is infused
destroying all in its path, including
with a moral philosophy that

Saint-Exupéry’s beloved France.

celebrates dissimilarity and

The narrator warns about “some
questions the world of adults which terrible seeds on the little prince’s has led to war—and, in Saint-planet. … And a baobab, if you

Exupéry’s case, exile from home.

tackle it too late … will bore right

Like a child’s painful maturation
through a planet with its roots.” In
into the unknowable realm of
contrast, the novel positions the
adulthood, the state of exile is a
humanist philosophy of rationality,
process of losing and relearning
compassion, and respect for

Antoine de
one’s place in the world.

difference against this spreading

Saint-Exupéry
disaster. The alien boy advises us

Tolerating difference
all that “eyes are blind. One must

Born to a French aristocratic

This strangeness of the adult world
look with the heart.”

family in 1900, Antoine de
coupled with the novel’s celebration

The Little Prince is a timeless

Saint-Exupéry had a strict
of the little prince’s alienness, has
yet timely exploration of the value
upbringing in a château near

Lyon. During his national
also been read as a political critique. of human life. Like other writers in service, he became an aviator.

The baobab trees, which infest the
exile, Saint-Exupéry explores loss

Before World War II, he
home planet of the little prince, have and change against a backdrop was a commercial pilot who
been interpreted as a reference to
of upheaval and alienation, which
pioneered airmail routes in
the contemporary “sickness” of
fosters kindness toward others and

Europe, South America, and

Nazism and its equally grasping
a toleration of difference. ■

Africa. When war broke out,
he joined the French Air Force
and flew reconnaissance

The rise of the Nazis saw the emergence of writer-refugees whose missions until 1940. During
homelands became hostile environments due to politics (Marxist these years he produced many

Brecht left for Denmark), anti-Semitism (Jews Roth and Zweig went to Paris and London, respectively), and war (Saint-Exupéry fled well-known works, but The
occupation, while wartime internee Celan chose postwar exile).

Little Prince was not written
until he and his wife, Consuelo

Suncin, fled heartbroken into
exile after France’s defeat and
its armistice with Germany.

Bertolt Brecht

Vilified by his government

Berlin to island of Funen, Denmark
and depressed by his stormy
marriage, Saint-Exupéry flew

Joseph Roth

Berlin to Paris
his last flight in 1944, over
the Mediterranean, where it

Stefan Zweig
is believed he was shot down.

Vienna to London

His posthumous reputation
has recovered him as one of

Paul Celan

France’s literary heroes.

Czernowitz (now

Saint-Exupéry

Chernivtsy) to Paris

Lyon to New York

Other key works

1926 The Aviator

1931 Night Flight

1944 Letter to a Hostage

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240

FURTHER READING

THE CALL OF THE WILD
corruption that plays out in a
and there are health warnings in
fictional republic of South America,
place, creating an atmosphere of

(1903), JACK LONDON
and an important examination of
dissolution. The book is a Freudian
postcolonial global capitalism.

reflection on both the degenerative

The masterpiece of American writer Fused with these themes is a tale of force of illicit homoerotic passion

London (1876–1916), The Call of the
adventure that traces the fortunes of across the generations, and of the Wild, a popular and unashamedly
the eponymous hero, a man of
profound poignancy of aging.

emotional tale of survival, is set
principle. This is a dark work, full of
during the 1890s Klondike gold
betrayal and disillusion. Much of
rush in Alaska. The main character the story—even the climax—is SONS AND LOVERS
is a dog, half Saint Bernard, half
conveyed by flashbacks.

(1913), D. H. LAWRENCE

Collie, purloined from a California
ranch and set to work as a sled dog

A partly autobiographical exploration
in faraway Alaska. He suffers abuse ETHAN FROME
of the working-class family and
by his owners and aggression from

(1911), EDITH WHARTON
romantic relationships, Sons and
a rival dog before finally turning

Lovers is often seen as Lawrence’s
feral. Shedding civilization and

The most popular work of American finest work. Set in the mining region relearning primitive ways, he
author Wharton (1862–1937), Ethan
where Lawrence was brought up,
becomes leader of a wolf pack.

Frome is narrated by a visitor to a
the book tells the story of a young

New England town who is intrigued budding artist, Paul Morel, who by one of its residents, Ethan Frome, has romantic involvements with a dour and monosyllabic farmer.

an unyielding, religiously minded

Switching from the first person to
girlfriend and a married woman—
an extended third-person flashback, both of whom are overshadowed by the novel tells the tragic tale of the

Paul’s mother, with whom he shares

They were savages, all of
secret love of Frome for his wife’s
a close, suffocating bond. Paul’s
them, who knew no law but
cousin, and the tragic outcome of a
father is violent and uneducated,
the law of club and fang.

snowy “smash-up” that occurred 24 which adds to family tensions. The The Call of the Wild
years earlier. The themes of passion, book is an unsentimental portrait Jack London
thwarted emotions, resentment, and of childhood, adolescence, the clash frustration are magnified against
between generations, and familial
the harsh rustic environment.

possessiveness and grief, set
within a closely observed social
setting. The mother’s unfulfilled

DEATH IN VENICE
life and final fatal illness are

NOSTROMO

(1912), THOMAS MANN
poignantly depicted.

(1904), JOSEPH CONRAD

The most famous novella by German

Nobel Laureate Mann (see p.227),

IN SEARCH OF LOST TIME

Polish-born novelist Conrad (see

Death in Venice is about a famous

(1913–1927), MARCEL PROUST
p.197), a mariner for 20 years, took
author suffering from writer’s block,

British citizenship in 1886 and wrote who takes a short vacation in the Published in seven volumes over
in English. Nostromo, subtitled “A

Italian city of the title, where he

15 years, In Search of Lost Time, or

Tale of the Seaboard,” is an
becomes obsessed by a 14-year-old

Remembrance of Things Past, is
analysis of politics, revolution, and
boy. Cholera has been detected
the masterpiece of French writer

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BREAKING WITH TRADITION 241

D. H. Lawrence

A PORTRAIT OF THE

“he who has attained his goals.”

The hero opts not to join the order

ARTIST AS A YOUNG MAN newly created by the Buddha, but

Born in 1885, David Herbert

(1916), JAMES JOYCE
to discover his own form of insight.

Lawrence was the son of a

Sidetracked by wealth and erotic
coal miner and the first from

The first novel by Irish writer Joyce
desire, he finally gains wisdom and
his village in Nottinghamshire,

(see p.216), A Portrait of the Artist
love in the consciousness of the

England, to win a scholarship
as a Young Man traces the early
world’s unimprovable completeness.

to the local high school. His
years of a character who would

The book fuses spiritual thinking
early promise led to college
and a teaching career, but his
later reappear in Joyce’s 1922
with psychoanalysis and philosophy.

writing talent—his first story
masterpiece, Ulysses. Stephen
was published in 1907—

Dedalus rebels against the norms
persuaded him to quit teaching
of Ireland and Catholicism, and sets A PASSAGE TO INDIA
in 1912. He eloped to Germany
out to forge his own destiny—as

(1924), E. M. FORSTER
with married aristocrat Frieda
a writer in Paris. The book uses

Weekley in the same year.

stream-of-consciousness narrative

English author E. M. Forster (1879–

Marked by a spontaneous,
in a way that foreshadows the

1970) sets A Passage to India during
vivid realism, Lawrence’s
author’s later work.

the period of the British Raj in India,
writing subverted prevailing
amid the stirrings of the movement
social, sexual, and cultural
norms, earning him censorship

THE HEARTLESS
for independence. The book’s central
event is an alleged and unspecified
and—at the time of his death in

1930—a tarnished reputation.

(1917), YI KWANG-SU
attempt at sexual impropriety in a
cave complex, by a young Muslim

A South Korean journalist and

Indian doctor against a British

Key works
independence activist, Yi Kwang-su woman with whom he is on friendly 1913 Sons and Lovers (see left)

(1892–1950) was the author of the
terms. The case against the doctor,

1915 The Rainbow
first modern Korean novel, The
which leads to a trial, brings to the

1920 Women in Love

Heartless. It tells the story of a
surface tensions between colonized
young teacher of English in Seoul,
and colonizing nations. Forster
torn between two women in the
questions the underlying principles

Marcel Proust (1871–1922). In a
period of Japanese occupation: one
of British imperialism, in the
famous early scene, the taste of a
is traditionalist and working as a
process puncturing the romantic
madeleine releases memories of
kisaeng (geisha), the other is inclined delusions of those seduced by the boyhood for the first-person
to liberated Western values. The
narrator. Proust’s leisurely, analytical protagonist’s predicament is used prose outlines detailed accounts of
to dramatize social tensions in
the inner lives of both himself and

Korea, but the book also explores
the characters of the work, including personal, sexual awakening as love and jealousy, homosexuality,
well as cultural ambiguities.

In England the moon had
artistic ambition, and many varieties
seemed dead and alien; here
of vice and virtue. The experience of
she was caught in the shawl
living in wartime Paris is vividly

SIDDHARTHA
of night together with earth
conveyed. Throughout, social

(1922), HERMANN HESSE
and all the other stars.

nuances are subtly registered.

A Passage to India

Eventually the narrator learns that

Hugely popular in the 1960s due its

E. M. Forster
the beauty of the past lives on in the exploration of Eastern spirituality, memory—time is regained. He then Siddhartha by Swiss writer Hesse begins writing his life’s story. This

(1877–1962) describes the spiritual
autobiographical dimension is one
life of a young Brahmin in ancient
of the work’s many fascinations.

India. The title is Sanskrit, meaning

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242 FURTHER READING
image of the British Raj. He also
of a well-to-do woman spending a
shows the marginalization of women day in London. Clarissa Dalloway’s Virginia Woolf
in a milieu where male friendships
thoughts turn to a party she will
are strong and mutally supportive.

be hosting that evening, but also

Foremost of the writers in the
range back in time, to her youth

“Bloomsbury Set” of influential
intellectuals and artists, Woolf

THE TRIAL
and the experience of her marriage
was born in 1882 in London.

to a reliable but unsatisfying man.

She started writing as a girl

(1925), FRANZ KAFKA

The other major character is a
and her first novel, The Voyage
traumatized soldier who spends

Out, appeared in 1915. She

Written in 1914–15, The Trial is the
time in the park with his Italian
married, happily, in 1912, but is
most complete of three unfinished
wife, before making a tragic
also known for her love affair
novels by Jewish-Czech writer
decision. Technically the novel is
with talented gardener Vita

Franz Kafka (see p.211), who wrote
accomplished and original, shifting

Sackville-West. Woolf soon
in German. Its account of Joseph K., between direct and indirect established herself as a leading
arrested and prosecuted by an
speech, and juggling between
intellectual and writer, taking
inscrutable authority without being omniscient narration, stream of fiction in a new direction—
told the nature of his crime, has
consciousness, and soliloquy.

inward. But she was prone to
been interpreted as an archetypal
depression and mood swings.

metaphor for modern alienation,

She committed suicide by
and for the dehumanizing effect of

THE COUNTERFEITERS
drowning near Lewes, Sussex,
in 1941, at 59. Many feminist
elaborate, inflexible bureaucracies—

(1926), ANDRÉ GIDE
thinkers since her death have
and, by extension, of totalitarian
revered her as an inspiration.

states. The latter interpretation

Seen as a precursor to the 1950s
makes Kafka a prescient author,
nouveau roman novel form, The

Key works
anticipating Fascism and Nazism.

Counterfeiters by French author

Gide (1869–1951) draws a parallel

1925 Mrs. Dalloway (see left)

between counterfeit gold coins and

1927 To the Lighthouse
the authenticity of human feelings

1931 The Waves
and relationships. Structured as
a story-within-a-story, the book is
complicated by multiple plots and
who exerts mysterious power

Someone must have been
viewpoints in an attempt at a
over men—examines the tension
telling lies about Joseph K.,
literary form of Cubism, an art style
between primitive and civilized
for without having done
in which the concept of a single
impulses, and between the sexes.

anything wrong he was
point of perspective was abandoned. Set in the rural cattle-ranching arrested one fine morning.

Centered around young men in fin-

Llanos prairie region, the story is

The Trial
de-siècle Paris, one of the themes is
told using evocative, vernacular

Franz Kafka
the possibilities for fulfillment
language. There are magical realist
within homosexual relationships.

elements that anticipate the fiction
of Gabriel García Márquez.

DOÑA BARBARA

(1929), RÓMULO GALLEGOS

THE SOUND AND THE FURY

MRS. DALLOWAY

(1929), WILLIAM FAULKNER

Rómulo Gallegos (1884–1969) wrote

(1925), VIRGINIA WOOLF

Doña Barbara two decades before

An ambitious and enigmatic novel
becoming the first democratically
comprising four counterpointed

Mrs. Dalloway, written by Woolf
elected president of his native
perspectives, The Sound and the
when she was at the height of her

Venezuela. The novel—named after Fury is a masterpiece by Nobel powers, lays bare the consciousness its charismatic female character, Laureate Faulkner, master chronicler

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BREAKING WITH TRADITION 243
of the American South. The setting
from a line in Shakespeare’s The

(1894–1961), who wrote under the
is Jefferson, Mississippi. The first

Tempest—a vision of a dystopian
pseudonym Céline, which was
section is a disjointed narrative told future, set in London around the also his grandmother’s first name.

by Benjy, a 33-year-old, cognitively
year 2540. A world totalitarian

Characterized by black-comedic
disabled man. The second section
state represses individual freedom
invective, the mood is darkly
is narrated by his older brother, a
and self-expression, including
pessimistic, even misanthropic.

suicidal Harvard student 18 years
emotions. Genetic engineering and

The story traces the protagonist
earlier; the third, by Benjy’s hard-
brainwashing are used as tools

Ferdinand Bardonee’s journeys from
nosed younger brother; and the
of control, and recreational drugs

France at the beginning of World
last section is narrated by one of

(“soma”) and sex are freely available. War I, via colonial Africa to the US
the family’s black female servants.

Consumerism is rampant (“ending
and back to Paris. Focusing on

Using stream of consciousness and
is better than mending”), while
human stupidity, Céline has
radical time shifts, Faulkner creates spiritual values have shriveled to challenging things to say about
a complex jigsaw of imagination
nothing. Even the terms “mother”

war, empire, and the ruling classes.

and insight, and writes with an
and “father” are outlawed. A
unparalleled understanding of race, rebellious spirit, John the Savage, grief, family dysfunction, and the
sets himself against the system

TROPIC OF CANCER
decay of old Southern values.

and does battle with the World

(1934), HENRY MILLER

Controllers. The book is admired for
its prophetic insights as well as for

Banned for its explicit and

THE MAN WITHOUT
its moral outlook and vivid writing.

deliberately shocking sexual content,

Tropic of Cancer was the debut

QUALITIES

(1930, 1933, 1943), ROBERT MUSIL JOURNEY TO THE
novel of American writer Miller

(1891–1980). A sprawling, plotless,

Unfinished and written in three

END OF THE NIGHT
semiautobiographical masterpiece,
volumes (the third was published

(1932), LOUIS-FERDINARD CÉLINE
it describes life and love at the
posthumously), The Man Without
extremes of existence in 1930s’

Qualities was the life’s work and

Radically experimental in style and

Paris. Publication in the US and UK
masterpiece of Austrian novelist
treatment, Journey to the End of The was delayed until censorship laws Musil (1880–1942). Eschewing plot-Night is a partly autobiographical
were overturned in the 1960s. The
driven momentum, Musil presents
novel by French writer Dr. Louis-
book inspired a new wave of writers,
a complex social vision and exposes Ferdinand Auguste Destouches such as the “Beat Generation.”

modern values and political folly.

Set in the twilight of the Austro-

William Faulkner
not until 1925 that he tackled a

Hungarian Empire, which is satirized
novel. He also trained in Canada
with heavy irony, the rambling

American Nobel Prize winner,
as a pilot in the Royal Air Force.

story encompasses many characters

Faulkner, chronicled the South of Faulkner’s books often depict the in its more than 1,000 pages: a black
his country. He was born in 1897, decline of the upper echelons of page, an aristocrat, the murderer of
in New Albany, Mississippi. In
society, addressing controversial
a prostitute, and a hero who serves

1902 his family moved to Oxford, themes such as slavery; but he as a detached commentator on

Mississippi, where his father
also wrote about the poorer
a collapsing society.

was business manager of the
classes. He died in 1962 at 64.

university. This was where

Faulkner would spend most of

Key works

BRAVE NEW WORLD
his life, and the surrounding

(1932), ALDOUS HUXLEY

Lafayette County was the

1929 The Sound and the Fury
inspiration for his fictional

(see left, opposite page)

Yoknapatawpha County, the

1930 As I Lay Dying

English writer Aldous Huxley
setting for most of his novels. He 1931 These 13 (short stories) (1894–1963) presents in Brave New
first wrote poetry, and it was

1936 Absalom, Absalom!

World—whose ironic title comes

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244 FURTHER READING

THE BOOK OF DISQUIET

Great Depression. It follows two
struggle to make sense of the world
itinerant ranch workers whose
can only be conducted within

(WRITTEN c.1913–35; PUBLISHED
dream is to have a small farm of
himself. Eventually the protagonist

1982), FERNANDO PESSOA
their own. An incident involving
views reality’s indifference to his life
a ranch-owner’s daughter propels
as liberating, since he is now free to

Described by Portuguese author
the story into tragedy. Steinbeck’s
create his own version of meaning,

Pessoa (1888–1935) as a “factless
themes include the hardship of
with all the responsibility it brings.

autobiography,” The Book of Disquiet penury, our desperate wish for was only published 47 years after
comfort in loneliness, and the way
his death. A Modernist masterpiece, aggressive self-interest can flourish THE GRAPES OF WRATH
it is a fluid, kaleidoscopic, and
in the weak as well as the strong.

(1939), JOHN STEINBECK
unfinished mosaic of fragments that
combine glimpses of self-revelation

Like Of Mice and Men (see left),
with reveries and maxims of literary NAUSEA

Steinbeck’s masterpiece The
criticism and philosophy. Pessoa

(1938), JEAN-PAUL SARTRE

Grapes of Wrath is set in the 1930s
filtered his writing through the use
during the Great Depression. It
of heteronyms—invented authorial

A major work of existentialism,
focuses on the suffering of the
personae—and this highly original

Nausea was the first novel by

Joads, an Oklahoma dust-bowl
book gives a spellbinding insight

French philosopher Jean-Paul
family who drive a car converted
into the process. Although a study

Sartre (1905–80), who was later
into a truck along Route 66 to
in loneliness and despair, the story
awarded—but declined to accept—

California to find work. Like many
has a brilliant inventiveness that
the 1964 Nobel Prize. In a seaside
other economic migrants, they flee
makes it engaging.

town an introverted historian is
drought, dispossession, and unpaid
captivated by the idea that his
debts. This powerful novel, which

OF MICE AND MEN
intellectual and spiritual freedoms
conveys the resilience of the human
are circumscribed by the objects
spirit under stress through poetic

(1937), JOHN STEINBECK
and situations that impinge upon
prose and sharp characterization,
him. The consequence is nausea,
publicized the exploitation of

Steinbeck’s most popular book and
which turns into a profound angst
migrant workers in America during
widely praised at the time of its
and self-loathing that undermine
the 1930s and drew attention to the
publication, Of Mice and Men is
his sanity. He begins to feel that
cause of social improvement. While
set in 1930s’ California during the
relationships are empty: the
the Joads are imperfect, they
gradually exhibit a capacity for
empathy: the final scene

John Steinbeck

Wrath. In addition to writing

(controversial at the time of the
fiction Steinbeck served as a war

A Nobel Prize winner, John
reporter, covering World War II
book’s publication), features an act

Steinbeck explored in fiction
in 1943 and the Vietnam War in
of great compassion by the family’s
the relationship between

1967. He returned to California
teenage daughter, Rose of Sharon.

humankind and the land. Born,
in 1944 and concentrated on local
in 1902 in Salinas, California—
themes in his fiction. He died in
most of his stories were set in

New York, where he was living

MOTHER COURAGE AND
the central and southern regions at the time, in 1968 at 66.

HER CHILDREN
of the state—he was the son of a

(1941), BERTOLT BRECHT
library treasurer. He majored in

Key works

English at Stanford University

An important antiwar play, Mother
but left in 1925 without a degree. 1937 Of Mice and Men (see Courage and Her Children is set

His first successes as a writer
above)

during the Thirty Years’ War of
date from the early 1930s, and in 1939 The Grapes of Wrath (see 1618–48, although its ramifications

1940 he won the Pulitzer Prize
above)

are contemporary with the time of
for Fiction for The Grapes of

1952 East of Eden
the author: German poet, theater

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BREAKING WITH TRADITION 245
director, and playwright Bertolt

Brecht (1898–1956). By presenting

THE FOUNTAINHEAD

Jorge Luis Borges
the central figure, Mother Courage,

(1943), AYN RAND
without sentimentality, Brecht

The Argentinian writer Borges,
focuses his audience’s attention

A study of the triumph of individual
known for his intellectually
on issues and broad themes,
artistic vision when confronted by
intriguing stories, is a major
figure of Spanish-language
discouraging any identification
traditionalist pressures to conform,
literature. Born in Buenos
with character. The play shows his

The Fountainhead by Russian-born

Aires in 1899, as a teenager
trademark “estrangement effect,”

American author Ayn Rand (1905–
he traveled with his family to
drawing attention to theatrical

82) tells the story of a Modernist

Europe, and studied French
artifice through placard captions,
architect, thought to have been
and German in Geneva. He
bright lighting, and other effects.

based on Frank Lloyd Wright. The
returned to Argentina in 1921.

novel combines uncompromising

In 1955 he became director of
ethical individualism (in its subject

THE OUTSIDER
the national library and
matter) with romantic realism (in
professor of English literature

(1942), ALBERT CAMUS
its treatment). More than seven
in Buenos Aires. He went blind
years in writing, it became a
at 55 but never learned Braille,

French author, journalist, and
rallying cry for the right-wing,
which may have been a factor
philosopher Albert Camus (1913–
anticommunist philosophy of
in his vivid symbolism. In

60) denied that The Outsider is an
objectivism—a movement that
addition to fiction he wrote
poetry and essays. He died in

“existentialist” novel, although its

Rand herself founded—which was

Geneva in 1986.

plot is saturated in the bleakness
based on reason, freedom, and
associated with this philosophy.

personal talent and achievement.

Key works

In the book, a French Algerian,
unmoved by his mother’s funeral,

1935 A Universal History of
later unfeelingly shoots dead an

FICCIONES

Infamy

Arab—someone he has never met.

(1944), JORGE LUIS BORGES

1944 Ficciones (see left)

Convicted and imprisoned, he

1967 Book of Imaginary Beings
appears to be indifferent to his

An enigmatic short-story collection,
deprivations. However, the incident Ficciones reveals Borges’ ability to does awaken some self-awareness.

draw the reader into his fantastical,

The story, told from his viewpoint,
complex imagination with stories

ANIMAL FARM
is an example of the literature of the that are as enchanting as fairy tales. (1945), GEORGE ORWELL

“absurd,” focusing on our attempt

The 17 pieces are exuberant, yet
to find meaning where none exists.

finely controlled. The prose has

Animal Farm shows that satirical
jewel-like precision, while the
allegory can be as effective as
characteristic tone is one of profound realism in revealing the evils of metaphysical anxiety. The first story totalitarianism. English author revolves around an encyclopedia

Orwell (see p.252) uses a tale of
entry for a country that cannot be
talking animals to dramatize the
located. Other stories tell of the
communist politics of the Russian

My mother died today.

reviewing of a nonexistent book

Revolution and Stalinism. The

Or maybe yesterday,
that in the process brings it into
human owners of the farm are

I don’t know.

being, an ancient society ruled
ousted in a coup orchestrated by

The Outsider
by chance, the infinite Library of
the pigs, Napoleon and Snowball.

Albert Camus

Babel, and a person with perfect

Initial idealism falls prey to “human”

memory. Certain symbols that are
weakness, and hypocrisy sets in.

used in the book—particularly the

Entertaining yet chilling, this is
mirror and the labyrinth—later
one of the most influential political
become Borges’ trademarks.

books of the 20th century.

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POSTWAR

WRITING

1945–1970

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POSTWAR

WRITING

1945–1970

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248 INTRODUCTION

J. D. Salinger’s novel

Jack Kerouac’s

Soviet troops liberate

The Catcher in the Rye

Samuel Beckett’s
depiction of American
the surviving prisoners
gives a first-person
absurdist drama
counterculture in On
of the World War II
account of adolescent

Waiting for Godot is first
the Road is a defining
concentration camp
angst and teenage
performed in Paris in its
work of the beat
at Auschwitz, Poland.

rebellion.

original French version.

generation.

1945

1951

1953

1957

1949

1953

1955

1958

In Nineteen Eighty-Four,

In San Francisco,

Vladimir Nabokov’s

Chinua Achebe’s debut

George Orwell describes a

Lawrence Ferlinghetti
sexually taboo novel
novel, Things Fall Apart,
dystopian totalitarian
and Peter D. Martin open

Lolita causes a scandal
describes the effects
state overseen by the

City Lights bookstore,
and is banned in the
of colonialism on
tyrannical Big Brother.

which later publishes

UK and France.

a traditional society

Allen Ginsberg’s Howl.

in Africa.

In 1945, much of the world was to come to terms with the horrors the existential threat of the nuclear reeling from three decades of
of the death camps. German
bomb manifested itself as nihilism
turmoil: two cataclysmic world authors, including Günter Grass, rather than cynicism. Instead
wars, separated by a global Great
tackled the shameful legacy of
of trying to find some sense in

Depression. In what proved to be

Nazism. In Japan, a generation
life, writers such as Paris-based
a short-lived period of hope, many
of writers examined the social

Irishman Samuel Beckett, in his
people struggled to make sense
and political changes following
play Waiting for Godot, pointed out
of the destruction and rebuild a
the nuclear attack on Hiroshima.

its absurdity, depicted with a grim
better world. But as old empires

The negative effects were also
humor. In addition to this “theater
and powers declined, new ones
felt in those countries that had
of the absurd,” black humor could
arose, resulting in the “clash of
been victorious in war. In England,
be found in American novels such
cultures” between the West and

George Orwell, who was also a
as Joseph Heller’s Catch-22.

the Communist Eastern bloc. The
veteran of the Spanish Civil War,
following decades were dominated
argued that the defeat of Nazism

New voices
by this cold war, and the ever-
had not removed the threat of

The unsettled atmosphere of the
present danger of nuclear war.

totalitarianism. In Animal Farm
era after the war also inspired new,
and Nineteen Eighty-Four he
postmodern writing techniques

Aftermath of World War II
portrayed dystopian societies
which reflected this uncertainty:

Literature in the postwar period
that darkly satirized Stalin’s Soviet
narratives could be paradoxical,
was inevitably influenced by

Russia, capturing the pessimistic
fragmented, or presented out of
experiences of war. Jewish writers,
mood of the Cold War. This mood
chronological order, often from
and especially Holocaust survivors
was also sharply felt in France,
multiple perspectives, or that
such as poet Paul Celan, attempted
where the experience of war and
of an unreliable narrator.

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POSTWAR WRITING 249

In Günter Grass’s

As the US becomes

In Cold Blood, a

The Tin Drum, the
increasingly involved in

Martin Luther King, Jr.,
true crime novel
story unfolds from
the conflict in Vietnam,
delivers his “I Have a
by Truman Capote,
the memoirs of Oskar

Joseph Heller finishes

Dream” speech about
details the murders

Matzerath, written
his darkly satirical
racial injustice from the
in 1959 of the
in an institution for

World War II novel

Lincoln Memorial in

Clutter family
the mentally ill.

Catch-22.

Washington, DC.

in Kansas.

1959

1961

1963

1966

1960

1962

1963

1967

In To Kill a Mockingbird,

The Cuban missile crisis,

Julio Cortázar’s antinovel

Gabriel García

Harper Lee describes
a 13-day US–Soviet

Hopscotch has a Table

Márquez recounts the
through a child’s
standoff in October 1962
of Instructions about
history of the fictional
eyes small-town
over ballistic missiles deployed
different sequences in

Colombian Buendía
life in America’s
in Cuba, takes the world to
which the 155 chapters
family in One Hundred

Deep South.

the brink of nuclear war.

can be read.

Years of Solitude.

These techniques, developed by

In the US, too, writers continued
against the older generation that

European writers such as Jean-Paul to assert their identity. As the civil had taken them into two world

Sartre and Günter Grass, were an
rights movement gathered
wars and had continued on an
inspiration to the new generation of momentum in the 1950s and 1960s, aggressive path with military South American authors, who were

African-American authors such as
involvement in Korea and Vietnam.

establishing a distinctive style.

Ralph Ellison described how black

These young people also reacted to

Among them were Julio Cortázar,
people were marginalized, while
cold war uncertainties and the
whose experimental “antinovel”

Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird
nuclear threat with hedonistic

Hopscotch subverted many literary
looked at race from the perspective
dissent. J. D. Salinger was one of
conventions, and Gabriel García
of someone from the Deep South.

the first to describe teenage angst

Márquez, who popularized the style Social issues of all types also and rebellion, followed by the writers
known as magic realism, inspired
provided the subject matter for
of the beat generation, whose work
by the surreal short stories of

New Journalism, the blend of fact
was inspired by the freedom of

Argentinian Jorge Luis Borges.

and fiction pioneered by Lee’s
modern jazz and the brashness of

New literary movements were
friend Truman Capote.

rock ‘n’ roll. Experimental writing by
also emerging elsewhere, as many

Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, and
countries—especially in Africa—

Youth culture

William S. Burroughs pushed the
achieved national independence

Perhaps the most vociferous
boundaries not only of form, but
from European colonial control.

manifestation of postwar culture
also of content: their sometimes

Foremost among these countries
came with the younger generation,
explicitly sexual material resulted
was Nigeria, where Chinua Achebe and was most noticeable in the US.

in legal action and bans on books
provided an indigenous voice to

An anti-establishment youth
in some places, before the more
a people rebuilding their nation.

culture emerged as a reaction
relaxed attitudes of the 1960s. ■

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BIG BROTHER IS

WATCHING

YOU

NINETEEN EIGHTY-FOUR (1949),

GEORGE ORWELL

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WATCHING

YOU

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252 NINETEEN EIGHTY-FOUR

IN CONTEXT

FOCUS

Dystopian literature is a
genre that portrays the
nightmarish vision of a
society that is the polar opposite

Dystopia
of a utopia (an ideal, perfect world).

BEFORE

Ever since the appearance of

He who controls the

1516 English humanist Sir

Thomas More’s Utopia in 1516,
past controls the future.

dystopias have been evoked over

Thomas More’s Utopia first

He who controls the
the centuries by a wide range of
imagines an ideal society,
present controls the past.

writers to focus on topics such as
and its opposite—a dystopia.

Nineteen Eighty-Four
dictatorships (both communist

1924 Russian writer Yevgeny
and fascist), poverty, torture, the

Zamyatin’s We describes the
oppression of populations, and

One State, where people live
the control of people’s minds.

for the collective good.

Authors use these dystopian
worlds to explore central human

1932 In English writer Aldous
concerns, creating visions of the
the threat posed by the destructive

Huxley’s Brave New World
possible consequences of things
force of the atomic bomb and
individuality is suppressed.

happening in ways that are
the scenario of dramatic climate

AFTER
unrestrained. Margaret Atwood’s
change have both provided

1953 American novelist Ray

The Handmaid’s Tale (1985), for
powerful sources for dystopias.

Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 is
instance, sees a world run by a

George Orwell’s Nineteen
military regime, in which women

Eighty-Four is the best-known
banned and burned.

have been stripped of their rights
modern dystopia. Orwell’s fear

1962 English novelist Anthony
and are appreciated purely for
of rising Stalinism is the starting

Burgess’s A Clockwork Orange
their reproductive value.

point for the novel. Although Orwell
depicts a world full of violence.

believed in a democratic socialism,

Turning points
he saw the emerging USSR—in

1985 The Handmaid’s Tale, by

Dystopias focus primarily on
which one political party had

Canadian Margaret Atwood, is
imagined futures, and often on the
consolidated complete control—as
set in an America run by a
fear of what may arise from new
anything but socialist. He had also
totalitarian Christian regime.

technologies and social change.

witnessed the splintering of anti-

For example, in the 20th century,

Franco forces in the Spanish Civil

George Orwell

George Orwell was born as Eric

England in 1937 and in 1941 he

Arthur Blair in India in 1903 to
joined the BBC, only to resign

British parents. He was educated
in 1943. He returned to writing
in England before heading back to
with Animal Farm (1945), which
the East, to enroll in the Indian
proved an immediate success.

Imperial Police in Burma. In 1928,

His wife died unexpectedly that
he moved to Paris, returning to
same year, and Orwell isolated

London in 1929 to write Down
himself on Jura, a Scottish
and Out in Paris and London
isle, where he wrote Nineteen

(1933). In 1936, Orwell traveled

Eighty-Four (1949). He died of
to Wigan, northern England, to
tuberculosis in 1950 at 46.

experience the poverty forged by
the Depression. That same year he Other key works
married Eileen O’Shaughnessy
before going to fight in Spain’s

1934 Burmese Days
civil war and getting shot through

1937 The Road to Wigan Pier
the throat. Orwell returned to

1938 Homage to Catalonia

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See also: Candide 96–97 ■ Gulliver’s Travels 104 ■ Brave New World 243 ■ Fahrenheit 451 287 ■ Lord of the Flies 287 ■

A Clockwork Orange 289 ■ The Death of Artemio Cruz 290 ■ The Handmaid’s Tale 335

War in 1936, when pro-Stalin

The world Smith inhabits is ruled
dictates the truth of the past as
communists turned on those who
by an elite. The masses (“the
well as the present. History is
were supposed to be their allies.

proles”), who make up 85 percent
revised and rewritten to fit the

Orwell had already painted a
of the population, are controlled
changing diktats of the state.

bleak vision of such treachery in
by four paradoxical ministries:

And Winston Smith himself works
his novella Animal Farm (1945). He
the Ministry of Peace, which
in the Ministry of Truth: editing
also had a template of sorts for his
oversees war; the Ministry of Love,
historical records, and burning the
new work: the world outlined by
which deals with policing; the
original documentation by posting

Russian writer Yevgeny Zamyatin’s

Ministry of Plenty, which controls
it into a “memory hole.” History,

We (1924), in which individual
the economy, including rationing
as the reader understands it, has
freedom no longer exists.

for the population; and the Ministry stopped: “Nothing exists except Nineteen Eighty-Four depicts
of Truth, or Minitrue, which deals
an endless present in which the
a totalitarian society manipulating
with news and the education of

Party is always right.”

its citizens through propaganda,
the masses, issuing propaganda to
flipping truths into lies for the sake
control the thoughts of the people.

The all-seeing government
of maintaining political power. This

One of the chief conduits of

A network of telescreens, cameras,
dystopian society is far darker—
control is Newspeak, the language
and covert microphones operate
one without the hope that the
of the Ministry of Truth, which
to spy and eavesdrop on the ❯❯
revolution in Animal Farm had
first promised, and one in which

The role of the Ministry of Truth
individual lives have become mere
is to intimidate and terrify the
cogs in an overarching system.

population into compliance.

Orwell describes the ministry’s

The end of history
building as “an enormous

Nineteen Eighty-Four’s opening
pyramidal structure,” upon
which is written the three
words—“It was a bright cold day in
slogans of the Party.

April, and the clocks were striking
thirteen.”—alert the reader to the
fact that even the very nature of
the day’s temporal construction
has shifted. Winston Smith, the
novel’s protagonist, is entering his

WAR
apartment building. He is a citizen

IS PEACE
of London, capital of Airstrip One

(once known as Great Britain), a
province of Oceania, one of the

FREEDOM
three cross-continental states that

IS SLAVERY
exist following a global nuclear war.

Posters fill the wall space with the

IGNORANCE
image of a face—“a man of about

IS STRENGTH
forty-five, with a heavy black
moustache and ruggedly handsome
features,” and whose “eyes follow
you about when you move. BIG

BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU,
the caption beneath it ran.” Big

Brother is the leader of the Party
that governs Oceania.

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254 NINETEEN EIGHTY-FOUR

“Newspeak” is a sinister, curtailed
form of everyday English (“Oldspeak”)

Duckspeak:

Goodthink:

devised by the all-powerful state. In
a form of brainless speaking that enables
approved views that give ideological
time, “Oldspeak” will be replaced by
garbage to be uttered convincingly.

conformity to the Party.

Newspeak, a stark, simple language,
purified to express meanings and to
meet the ideological needs of Ingsoc,
or English Socialism. Because thought
requires words, the state has inhibited

“thoughtcrimes,” and personal ideas

Doubleplusgood:

Doublethink:

and feelings of dissent will have
something that is
a system of thought in which control in
become unthinkable.

simply the best.

the present means amending the past.

Thoughtcrime:

Unperson:

Blackwhite:

Bellyfeel:

the criminal act of a belief that
someone erased by the state
blind, uncritical belief
gut instinct acceptance
questions the ruling Party.

from the historical records.

in spite of the facts.

of Party ideas.

population: these are run by the
crime of self expression. He knows
the Junior Anti-Sex League, but

Thought Police, who supervise
it will be an act that he cannot ever passes Smith a note with the the protection of the ruling Party.

step back from and, moreover, that
simple message “I love you.” Their

“he was a lonely ghost uttering a
affair is an act of rebellion itself,

Everyman’s rebellion
truth that nobody would ever hear.”

a sex crime. Yet their covert love

Orwell immerses his readers in this And yet he continues to write.

cannot last for long, hidden beneath
hideous totalitarian world before

Winston Smith is the everyman
the facade of their obedience to Big
revealing that Winston Smith is
hero of the novel—his surname’s

Brother and the rules of Oceania.

engaged in a vital act of rebellion.

commonality suggesting that there

In his tiny apartment, dominated
is nothing special or unusual about

Enemies of the state
by the instrument of Party control
him. That quality makes his act of

The state’s acknowledged enemy

(the telescreen), Smith is starting to subversion so incendiary: if every is Emmanuel Goldstein, the Party’s
write his own history in a diary

Smith or Jones were to rise up
former leader who now heads
he has acquired secondhand—a
against society, then revolution
a resistance movement called
would follow. The use of a name
that feels ordinarily English echoes

Eric Blair’s own adoption of the
pseudonym “George Orwell,” which
he did shortly before publication of
his first book, Down and Out in

In the end the Party would

Paris and London (1933), to avoid

If you want a picture
announce that two and two
any embarrassment to his family.

of the future, imagine
made five, and you would

Orwell’s characterization of the
a boot stamping on
have to believe it.

ordinary Smith as a rebel, one who
a human face—forever.

Nineteen Eighty-Four
makes his own stand for genuine

Nineteen Eighty-Four
truth against the machinery of the

Party, creates an unlikely champion.

In Julia, he finds a fellow dissenter
and a lover. Younger than Smith,

Julia is an apparent firebrand for

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POSTWAR WRITING 255
superstate has a similar ideological or overtly, and try to crush human construct based on keeping their
feelings and break a person’s spirit.

population compliant.

As Julia remarks: “Everybody

The persuasiveness of the
always confesses. You can’t help it.”

passages from Goldstein’s book

The experience of Winston Smith

You want it to happen to the
reveal the seductive power of words reveals how the state apparatus other person. You don’t give
and language. One of Nineteen
acts on a single, human individual,
a damn what they suffer.

Eighty-Four’s greatest legacies is
making the reader not only feel his

All you care about is yourself.

the plethora of words and phrases
pain but also his burning desire to

Nineteen Eighty-Four
that have seeped from “Newspeak”

fight back against the machine in
into English. Big Brother, sex crime, whatever ways he can.

thoughtcrime, and Room 101 are
just a handful of the most common

A modern message
linguistic creations found in

Initial critical reception of Nineteen

Orwell’s work.

Eighty-Four was extremely positive,
referencing the originality of the

The Brotherhood. Goldstein is a

Mastering manipulation
bleak vision. Since then, the text
despised figure (like Leon Trotsky

The ways in which the state can
has reached across the globe, been
was in Stalin’s USSR—the two
manipulate and control its citizens
translated into some 65 languages,
even have the same goatee beards), are key themes of Nineteen Eighty-and found new audiences in a
who is used to unite the citizenship Four. In a totalitarian system, major movie version directed by
of Oceania via the daily ritual act of individual choices and lifestyles Michael Radford and released

“Two Minutes Hate,” during which
largely become the dictates of an
in 1984, with John Hurt playing
abuse is flung at Goldstein’s image
overarching body of governance.

Winston Smith.

on the telescreens.

Oceania’s ruling organization

The central concern at the

In a secondhand bookstore,
shows that it is determined to
heart of the dystopia depicted

Smith opens a text “with no name
maintain its grip on power by
in Nineteen Eighty-Four is the
or title on the cover.” The book
weakening personal relationships
danger of allowing those who
is The Theory and Practice of
and eradicating trust and mutuality. rule us to gain too much control.

Oligarchical Collectivism by

Orwell traces the psychological

In a globalized modern era of mass

Emmanuel Goldstein. Orwell
and physical methods by which
surveillance, Orwell’s warning
inserts full pages from this book
the state can coerce, either covertly resonates more than ever. ■
into the text of Nineteen Eighty-

Four to draw the reader closer
to the rebel protagonist and to
reveal the political philosophies
and social theories that have led
to the present. This book within
a book thus serves as a device
to fill in some of the background,
explaining the establishment of

Oceania and the other superstates,

Eurasia and Eastasia, in the global
reorganization following World War

II, and to expose the truth that each

A Soviet poster depicts Stalin as the
revered leader. Orwell’s dystopia was
shaped by his experience in Spain,
where the Stalinist faction was
ruthless in its pursuit of total control.

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256

I’M SEVENTEEN NOW,

AND SOMETIMES

I ACT LIKE I’M

ABOUT THIRTEEN

THE CATCHER IN THE RYE (1951), J. D. SALINGER

IN CONTEXT

FOCUS

Numerous authors, from The Catcher in the Rye is narrated Johann Wolfgang von
by 17-year-old Holden Caulfield. He

Goethe and John Keats to
is liberal with his parents’ money,

James Joyce and F. Scott Fitzgerald, and relentless in his commentary Birth of the teenager
explored the precarious state of
on the human condition, sexuality,

BEFORE
adolescence long before the birth of and morality. He has little regard 1774 The Sorrows of Young
the “teenager” in 1950s’ America.

for authority and seems careless

Werther, by German writer

Teenagers, though, with their wild
about his self-destructive trajectory.

new music and their thrill seeking,

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe,
represented a challenge to

Teenage disaffection
follows the passions of a
conservative society and culture,

But Holden Caulfield is much
sensitive young artist.

and were treated with nervous
more than a teenage rebel. His

1821 English poet John Keats
dismissal: adults considered this
frank admissions of deceptions,
dies at 25. His early verse is
generation to be morally lax and
imperfections, and contradictions
criticized as “adolescent.”

directionless. Teenagers kicked
reveal a bemused individual who
back with assertions of hypocrisy,
is hankering after childhood

1916 Irish writer James Joyce
considering themselves outsiders
innocence, suffering grief, and
publishes A Portrait of the
in an uncaring world; and this is
growing painfully aware of the

Artist as a Young Man, a
the territory of Salinger’s writing.

contradictions of adult life. He
coming-of-age novel that
is a compelling antihero—an
depicts rebellion and anti-
ambivalent, vulnerable figure—

Catholic sentiment.

who can be sensitive and witty

AFTER
as well as immature and vulgar.

Caulfield’s casual disregard

1963 American writer Sylvia
for honesty and disdain for

Plath publishes The Bell Jar, a

I’m the most terrific
societal norms are mitigated by a
coming-of-age story with a
liar you ever saw in
genuine confessional impulse and
twist—its teenage protagonist
your life. It’s awful.

surprising tolerance for some of the
descends into madness.

The Catcher in the Rye
diverse characters he encounters

1982 In American author
throughout the course of the novel.

Charles Bukowski’s Ham on

Caulfield is also an easy victim.

Rye, a first-person male narrator

He is bullied in his dormitory at
remembers his teen years.

school, and ripped off by a pimp
working the elevator in the New

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See also: The Sorrows of Young Werther 104 ■ The Magic Mountain 224–27 ■

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man 241 ■ The Bell Jar 290

Holden’s journey through New York

Central Park: Ice skates

17 Phoebe’s school
with Sally and suggests they
could run away together.

5 Central Park

18 Metropolitan

Museum of Natural

Museum of Art

History: Visits the museum

6 Museum of
to kill time; nothing changes

Natural History
here, he says—it is a world

J. D. Salinger
that is frozen in time.

13 Going “Home”

Jerome David Salinger was

Edmont Hotel: Checks in
born in 1919 to wealthy
here after leaving Pencey

Carousel 20

19 Zoo
parents in New York City.

Prep and has an awkward

Like his main protagonist
encounter with Sunny

12 The Lake

(a hooker) and Maurice (a

Holden Caulfield in The
pimp and elevator operator).

Edmont Hotel 2

10 Wicker

Catcher in the Rye, Salinger

Bar
attended several schools

Broadway: Heads here to

Radio City ice rink 9

14 Antolini’s
before graduating. After
buy a record for his sister,
spending a year in Europe,

Phoebe (and overhears a

Theater 8

7 Biltmore Hotel
he studied at Columbia
child singing about the

15 Restaurant

Broadway 11

University, taking a writing
catcher in the rye).

course led by Whit Burnett,

4 Grand Central
editor of Story magazine,

Ernie’s: Bumps into

Terminal
who became his mentor

Lillian Simmons at Ernie’s

Fifth Avenue 16
early in his writing career.

nightclub in Greenwich

Village (where apparently

Salinger was drafted into
teenagers can drink at 16).

1 Penn Station
the US Army in 1942 and
continued to write despite

The numbers in the map
suffering from a “nervous

1
plot Holden’s route through

3 Ernie’s
condition.” The Catcher

New York
in the Rye thrust Salinger
onto the world stage as a
literary celebrity. However,

York hotel. In his confusion about

Death and grief are prevailing
he resented the attention and
women and sex, he unconsciously
themes in The Catcher in the Rye.

became reclusive and far less
seeks out kindness and familiarity.

After Holden’s brother dies, he
productive. By the time of his

Having paid for a prostitute he asks smashes his hands in rage; his death in 2010, The Catcher in
if they can simply “talk.” He strikes
classmate is bullied and comes
the Rye remained Salinger’s
up a conversation with two nuns,
to a tragic end; and the very title
only full-length novel.

despite his atheism, and they insist of the book refers to stopping he is “a very sweet boy.”

(catching) children running through

Other key works

Inevitably, Salinger’s dirty
fields before they fall off a cliff. It
realism caused controversy. Some
is likely that the loss of numerous

1953 Nine Stories
critics dismissed the novel as
young soldiers in World War II

1955 Raise High the Roof

Beam, Carpenters
puerile and maudlin. But Salinger
influenced Salinger to write this

1959 Seymour: An
gained cult status in the years
compelling first-person narrative,

Introduction
following its publication, further
which remains an enduring portrait

1961 Franny and Zooey
fueled by his reclusive lifestyle.

of the teenager in crisis. ■

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258

DEATH IS A

GANG-BOSS AUS

DEUTSCHLAND

POPPY AND MEMORY (1952), PAUL CELAN

IN CONTEXT

FOCUS

After the World War II of the camp commandant, making concentration camp of
prisoners dance by their own

Auschwitz was liberated
graves. The collection also includes
on January 27, 1945, and the scale
another of his best-known poems,

Literature after Auschwitz
of the atrocities of the Jewish

“Corona,” which has been read as a

BEFORE

Holocaust became known, some
reflection on the attempt to achieve

1947 In her poetry collection
thought the events so horrific that
true love without it becoming an

In den Wohnungen des Todes
conventional bounds of literature
escape from the truth of the world.

would be unfit to describe them.

Elsewhere in Poppy and

(“In the Apartments of Death”)

To Jewish authors, however, some

Memory, haunting images of

Berliner Nelly Sachs describes
form of expression was essential.

the Holocaust recur: ash, hair,
her own sufferings and those
smoke, mold, bitterness, shadows,
of the European Jews.

A mournful heritage
death, memory, and forgetting.

1947 Italian writer Primo

The poet Paul Celan (1920–1970)

In exploring these themes, Celan

Levi’s Survival in Auschwitz
was born Paul Antschel into a
expresses the mournful heritage
is a first-hand account of his
family of German-speaking Jews in of organized mass murder. ■
incarceration in Auschwitz.

Romania. He survived a ghetto and
an internment camp to become,

1949 German sociologist
under the pen name Celan, a major

Theodor Adorno says that “to
postwar German-language poet.

write poetry after Auschwitz is

But, haunted by his experiences,
barbaric,” a condemnation not
he eventually committed suicide.

of the right to expression but of

Poppy and Memory, which

Black milk of morning
the society that had allowed
contains more than 50 poems,
we drink you at night.

Auschwitz to happen.

was Celan’s second collection

“Todesfuge”

AFTER
and established his reputation.

1971 The Nazi and the Barber,

It includes his most famous poem,
a novel by German Holocaust

“Todesfuge” (“Death Fugue”).

Written in a musical rhythm, the
survivor Edgar Hilsenrath,
poem features Death, in the guise
adopts the perspective of an SS
officer who assumes a Jewish

See also: The Little Prince 238–39 ■ The Tin Drum 270–71 ■
identity to escape prosecution.

One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich 289 ■ Death of a Naturalist 277

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I AM INVISIBLE

UNDERSTAND SIMPLY

BECAUSE PEOPLE

REFUSE TO SEE ME

INVISIBLE MAN (1952), RALPH ELLISON

IN CONTEXT

FOCUS

The African-American civil with political and social protest.

rights movement of the

Ellison found a new form for the
late 1950s and 1960s
protest novel, removed from earlier
sought to end racial segregation
realist and naturalist works. His

The civil rights movement
and discrimination in the US
style was idiosyncratic, both in

BEFORE
through protest and civil
structure and narrative, describing

1940 Richard Wright’s Native
disobedience. Authors such as
events based on his experience of

Son discusses the criminal

James Baldwin, Maya Angelou,
being a black man, and what that

Richard Wright, and Ralph
meant in a personal and public
roles that white society creates

Ellison engaged with the
perspective in American society.

for African-Americans.

movement, writing about the

The book’s narrator is invisible,

1950 African-American writer
systematic disenfranchisement,
unnamed, and completely alone:

Gwendolyn Brooks wins the
overt racial discrimination, and
society chooses either not to

Pulitzer Prize for Poetry with
state-sanctioned violence that
see him, or to ignore him. He
her collection Annie Allen. It
pervaded the US.

lives underground, mirroring the
charts a woman’s move from
segregation of African-Americans
individual freedom to more

An isolated activist
at the time. In his isolation, the
engaged ideas of progress.

Born in Oklahoma in 1914, Ralph
narrator reflects passionately on the

Ellison first studied music at
path his life has taken—from public

AFTER

Tuskagee Institute in Alabama,
speaker in his youth, to disgraced

1953 In Go Tell It on the
but later moved to New York to
college student and mistreated

Mountain, James Baldwin
pursue courses in the visual arts.

worker in a white factory in Harlem,
reflects on his own life and

Here, he met Richard Wright and
to involvement with the politically
involvement with the church
was influenced both by his writing ambiguous Brotherhood. The as an African-American,
and his communist affiliations.

narrator muses over the injustices
showing both its positive

Following service in the merchant
he has suffered in life, but finally
side and its oppressive hold.

navy in World War II, Ellison
he concludes that he must live a
became disillusioned with left-
life that is true to his nature and

1969 Maya Angelou’s I Know
wing ideology and began writing
his wider responsibilities: he is

Why the Caged Bird Sings

Invisible Man, a book concerned
ready to emerge into the world. ■
expresses the author’s
changing responses to

See also: Les Misérables 166–67 ■ Their Eyes Were Watching God 235 ■
the violence of racism.

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings 291

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260

LOLITA LIGHT OF

MY LIFE FIRE

OF MY LOINS.

MY SIN MY SOUL

LOLITA (1955), VLADIMIR NABOKOV

IN CONTEXT

FOCUS

Literary history is punctuated obsession with a certain type of with books that were either
underage seductress: the “nymphet,”

banned or censored because a slender, silky-skinned pubescent they were thought to corrupt public girl, between 9 and 14 years old.

Banned books
morals or cause political or religious The title of the novel has become BEFORE
offense. In the first half of the 20th
part of the English language as a

1532–64 François Rabelais’

century, literary experimention
reference to a young temptress.

Gargantua and Pantagruel is
pushed the boundaries of taste and

Reading Lolita creates a
shocked a conservative audience.

state of mental confusion since the
condemned for obscenity by

In response to this, censors trawled reader warms to a narrator who the College of Sorbonne, Paris.

through works such as Irish writer
subverts all normal reactions to

1759 Although banned by

James Joyce’s Ulysses to identify
his appalling story. In Humbert’s
government and church
obscenities, and removed sexual
claustrophobic fantasy, readers
authorities for its satirical
references from English author D. H. lose perspective, seduced by an content, Voltaire’s Candide

Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover. urbane European professor, with becomes a best seller.

But after the unexpurgated Lady
a well-prepared defense peppered

Chatterley was tried on grounds
with apologies, literary allusions,

1934 Tropic of Cancer, Henry
of obscenity in 1960 and acquitted,
wordplay, and treacherous wit.

Miller’s account of life as a
restrictions on the publication of
writer in Paris, is banned in
pornographic literature in the UK

The spell of obsession
the US for sexual content.

were effectively abandoned. Across As an adolescent on the French AFTER
the world, book censorship eased,

Riviera, Humbert fell in love with

1959 Narrated by a junkie,
but it never disappeared entirely.

the young Annabel—the template
for his obsession. Years later, in

William Burroughs’s Naked

Accepting the unacceptable the US, he “broke her spell by Lunch is banned in Boston

Few now would be offended by
incarnating her in another”: Dolores
in 1962; the decision is
books that were censored in the

Haze, dubbed Lolita, the 12-year-
overturned in 1966.

past, and yet Vladimir Nabokov’s
old daughter of his landlady. The

1988 Salman Rushdie’s The
controversial novel Lolita retains its
devastating consequences are

Satanic Verses is banned
power to disturb as well as enchant. played out after Humbert marries in more than 10 countries

Banned after its 1955 publication in the mother to gain access to the for perceived blasphemy

France and republished in London
girl, the object of his fantasy. A
against Islam.

in 1959, the novel is founded on
vague plan to murder his new wife
narrator Humbert Humbert’s
becomes unnecessary after she is

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See also: Gargantua and Pantagruel 72–73 ■ Madame Bovary 158–63 ■ Ulysses 214–21 ■ Nineteen Eighty-Four 250–55 ■

The Tin Drum 270–71 ■ Howl and Other Poems 288 ■ American Pyscho 313 ■ The Satanic Verses 336

Literature is often
perceived as a threat

POLITICAL
by authorities because

CONTENT

OBSCENITY

RELIGIOUS

OFFENSE
of its ability to convey
ideas that have the

July’s People

American Psycho

Harry Potter series
potential to change

Nadine Gordimer (1981)

Bret Easton Ellis (1991)

J. K. Rowling (1997–2007)

minds and challenge
prevailing ideologies.

Nineteen Eighty-Four

Howl

The Da Vinci Code

Some surprising titles

George Orwell (1949)

Allen Ginsberg (1956)

Dan Brown (2003)

have been banned over
the years by nations,
states, or libraries for

Uncle Tom’s Cabin

Harriet Beecher

Brave New World

The Satanic Verses
their political content,

Stowe (1852)

Aldous Huxley (1932)

Salman Rushdie (1988)

sexual explicitness,
and offensiveness
to religion.

mown down by a car; the bereaved
with Dolores across the continent,

Style, structure, and imagery are
stepfather then retrieves Dolores

“putting the geography of the
not found in pornographic books, as
from summer camp and begins

United States into motion.” The

Nabokov reminds us in a defensive
his attempt to live out his dream.

details of his despotic infatuation
afterword to a novel that excels on

(the quarrels, close calls, and
all three counts. Humbert Humbert

In love with language
bribes) intermittently surface in
is the ultimate unreliable narrator,

In an “erotic novel” that offers
a surreal, cinematic account that
shielded by a fictional foreword
almost nothing salacious, part
spools across page after page of
writer who wraps up the loose
two is a continuation of the author’s wry observation on American ends before the story has even
real love affair—with language. In
culture. Arriving back on the East
begun. There are no alternative
his highly wrought, ornate, and

Coast after a year, Humbert enrolls accounts, only the posthumous lyrical prose, Humbert pieces

Dolores at school, and the fabric
voice of Humbert, defending the
together his year-long road trip
of his fantasy begins to fall apart.

indefensible to his readers. ■

Vladimir Nabokov

Born into an aristocratic family
and tutor. He married Véra
in St. Petersburg, in April 1899,

Slonim in 1925; they had

Vladimir Nabokov spent his
one son, Dmitri. After fleeing
childhood in Russia and grew
to the US during World War II,
up trilingual in English, French,

Nabokov wrote Lolita in English.

and Russian. After the Russian

He taught at Wellesley College

Revolution of 1917, the family
and Cornell University and,
was exiled to England in 1919,
as an authority on butterflies,
where Nabokov studied at Trinity
held a position at the Museum

College, Cambridge. Following
of Comparative Zoology at
another move to Berlin, Nabokov’s Harvard. He died in Montreux, father, a journalist and politician,

Switzerland, in 1977.

was assassinated at a political
rally. Living in Berlin and in Paris,

Other key works

Nabokov wrote novels, short
stories, and poems in Russian,

1937 The Gift
while working as a tennis coach

1962 Pale Fire

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262

HE LEAVES NO STONE

UNTURNED, AND NO

MAGGOT LONELY

WAITING FOR GODOT (1953), SAMUEL BECKETT

IN CONTEXT

FOCUS

The theater of the absurd, in monologue with phrases that have which the acclaimed Irish
no meaning. The speech stops only
writer Samuel Beckett
when Vladimir pulls off Lucky’s

(1906–1989) played a major role,
hat, causing him to break off mid-

The absurd
subverted the norms of art and
sentence—an example of Beckett’s

BEFORE
life by entertaining the idea that
debt to vaudeville comedy and,

1942 The narrator of Albert
any meaning in the universe
more specifically, to comedians

Camus’ novel The Outsider
would always elude our attempts

Laurel and Hardy. The tramps are
to discover it. “He leaves no stone
waiting for Godot, but this character
expresses a typical absurdist
unturned,” said English playwright
never turns up, and has been seen
belief: “I laid my heart open

Harold Pinter admiringly of Beckett, as a stand-in for God, often referred to the gentle indifference of

“and no maggot lonely.” In both his
to but also absent—an analysis
the universe.”

plays and his fiction, Beckett gave
that irritated Beckett, although

AFTER
voice to the inarticulate—damaged he conceded its plausibility. ■

1959 Les Nègres, a play by
souls, without hope and with only

French writer Jean Genet,
pathetic consolations, facing the
shocks audiences by using
brute truths of existence.

black actors in whiteface.

Words in orbit

1959 In Rhinocéros by

The play Waiting for Godot

Romanian playwright Eugène

(originally written in French, like

Joyce was a synthesizer, trying

Ionesco, characters turn into
much of Beckett’s work) features
to bring in as much as he
rhinoceroses and wreak havoc,
two tramps, Vladimir and Estragon. could. I am an analyzer, trying indicating the absurdity of a

Their dialogue is a tragicomic
to leave out as much as I can.

world where ordinary people
dance of ideas, and the action

Samuel Beckett
change into fascist monsters.

defies common sense. Another
character, Lucky, led on a rope by

1960 English writer Harold
his master, Pozzo, says nothing

Pinter’s play The Caretaker
initially but later spews out a
owes a great debt to Beckett in
surreal 700-word unpunctuated
its lack of plot and its oblique
dialogue, full of tangents and

See also: Metamorphosis 210–11 ■ The Trial 242 ■ Nausea 244 ■
offbeat implications.

The Outsider 245

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IT IS IMPOSSIBLE TO TOUCH

ETERNITY WITH ONE HAND

AND LIFE WITH THE OTHER

THE TEMPLE OF THE GOLDEN PAVILION (1956),

YUKIO MISHIMA

IN CONTEXT

FOCUS

In the decades leading up to

World War II, Japan was an
aggressive military state,
occupying parts of China. Its

Postwar Japanese writers
strict code of literary censorship

BEFORE
tightened even further during

It is no exaggeration

1946 Haruo Umezaki’s
wartime. The relaxing of these
to say that the first real
collection of short stories
restrictions at the end of the war
problem I faced in my life
saw a flowering of literary voices.

Sakurajima is published. The
was that of beauty.

tales, from which he became

The Temple of the

Freedom and diversity
known, touch on aspects of

Golden Pavilion

Many of the “first generation” of

Japanese life in World War II,
postwar writers (those whose first
such as kamikaze pilots.

work was published in 1946–47)

1951 Shoˉhei Oˉoka’s most
focused on the subject of wartime
famous novel, Fires on the
experiences. However, with the

Plain, is published. Like
appearance of a second generation

Umezaki’s Sakurajima, it

(1948–49), and a third (1953–55),

550-year-old Zen temple in Kyoto,
the only theme that united the
decorated in gold leaf. Initially,
reflects the author’s wartime
authors was the freedom that
it represents to the monk the
experiences, including Japan’s
allowed them to flourish. This
transitory nature of life and
defeat by US forces on Leyte
resulted in a period of intense
beauty, but comes to dominate his
island in the Philippines.

creativity and productivity.

thoughts as a bullying presence,

AFTER

Yukio Mishima (1920–1970), was and one that he cannot escape. The 1962 Koˉboˉ Abe’s novel
of the second generation, and The
novel was extremely popular—a

The Woman in the Dunes

Temple of the Golden Pavilion is
compelling study of madness that
is a bleak and disturbing
often said to be his finest work. It
leads to destruction, but also a
tale about an amateur
tells the fact-based story of an ugly,
meditation on beauty itself, of
entomologist who is held
stuttering young monk who comes
which one of the most beautiful
to hate all beauty, especially the
aspects is Mishima’s prose. ■
captive in an escape-proof
shack at the bottom of a
pit of sand in a remote village.

See also: The Love Suicides at Sonezaki 93

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264

HE WAS BEAT—

THE ROOT THE SOUL

OF BEATIFIC

ON THE ROAD (1957), JACK KEROUAC
spontaneous form of existence in

IN CONTEXT
their quest to find true meaning in

FOCUS

In the postwar United States,
a generation of middle-class
youth became increasingly
life. Some of them became known
reluctant to follow the societal
as “beats”: a collective of poets and

The beat generation
pathways of their parents based
writers who sought kicks, spiritual

BEFORE
on materialistic goals. Instead,
refuge, and excess in alcohol, drugs,

1926 Ernest Hemingway’s
they adopted a meandering,
and sex; they also delighted in jazz.

The Sun Also Rises depicts
modern Americans traveling
through Europe on a quasi-

The birth of beat
spiritual journey.

1952 John Clellon Holmes’s
novel Go includes the first use

An idealistic youth culture turns away from
of the term “beat” to define the
mainstream American society in the 1940s.

people of the beat movement.

1953 Lawrence Ferlinghetti
opens City Lights Bookshop
in San Francisco; it becomes

Jack Kerouac, Neal Cassady, and others take to the
a haunt for the beat writers.

roads of North America seeking the meaning of life.

1956 Allen Ginsberg’s first
collection of poetry Howl and

Other Poems is published,
launching him as the leading

The beat generation record their thoughts and
beat poet.

adventures in “spontaneous prose. ”

AFTER

1959 William S. Burroughs’

Naked Lunch uses a radically
disjointed, nonlinear style

“Beat” writing forges a path into mainstream literature extending the narrative form
in both poetry and prose.

of the beat generation.

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See also: The Red Room 185 ■ The Catcher in the Rye 256–57 ■ Howl and Other Poems 288 ■ Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas 332

The term “beat” simultaneously
launch on a riotous road trip,
held notions of being “beatific”; of
hitchhiking and taking buses on
being “beaten” by the punishing
a meandering adventure: partying,
intensity of a hobo existence; and
meeting friends, and looking for
of a life lived to a jazz “beat.” In the
girls before finally returning to

1950s, tales of the beat movement’s New York. The subsequent parts free lifestyle and reckless ways
tell of a series of hedonistic charges
shocked mainstream society, and
through North America.

their writings signaled a radical
reinvigoration of American literature. Spontaneous prose The appearance of Jack Kerouac’s

The narrative form of On the Road,
novel, On the Road, in 1957 framed
which Kerouac referred to as

Kerouac typed On the Road onto
him as the leading beat novelist.

“spontaneous prose,” was inspired
rolls of tracing paper that he had glued

On the Road details a series of
by an 18-page typed letter that
together to avoid having to change
journeys that Kerouac took between he received in December 1950
paper and interrupt his creative flow.

1947 and 1950. In the book they are
from his friend Neal Cassady.

The final manuscript was 120-foot long.

narrated by Sal Paradise (identified

According to Kerouac, the key to
with Kerouac himself) who is often
the prose was to write swiftly and
and stream-of-consciousness style
accompanied on his travels by

“without consciousness,” in a
mirrored the intensive pace of Sal’s

Dean Moriarty (the writer Neal
semitrance, allowing the mind to
alcohol-infused, vagrant existence,

Cassady). A number of other beat
flow freely, associating sights,
while imitating the improvisational
generation writers also appear in
sounds, and senses in a narrative of character of jazz music. Kerouac the book, disguised by name only,
absolute immediacy. For example,
wrote On the Road in a frenetic
such as Allen Ginsberg (“Carlo
as Sal and Dean reach Chicago,
three-week period in April 1951,

Marx”) and William S. Burroughs

Kerouac writes “Screeching
fueled by caffeine and drugs.

(“Old Bull Lee”).

trolleys, newsboys, gals cutting by,

The result was a manuscript in

The book has five parts. The
the smell of fried food and beer in
wildly creative, original prose—
first sees Sal Paradise setting off
the air, neons winking—‘We’re in
or “spontaneous bop prosody,” as
for San Francisco in July 1947. Sal
the big town, Sal! Whooee!’” The

Ginsberg called it—that came to
meets Dean Moriarty and the two
long, fluid, descriptive sentences
define the beat generation. ■

Jack Kerouac

Jack Kerouac was born to French-
other beat writers. Those

Canadian parents in Lowell,
voyages across the North

Massachusetts, in 1922. He

American landscape were
studied at Columbia University
relayed in his various roman à
where he met Allen Ginsberg,
clef writings, friends’ faces only

Neal Cassady, and William S.

thinly veiled as protagonists.

Burroughs who would become

Kerouac’s alcoholism led to
fellow leading lights of the beat
cirrhosis and his death in 1969.

generation. Kerouac dropped out
in his second year then joined the

Other key works
merchant navy, before turning to
writing as a profession. From

1950 The Town and the City

1947, he became increasingly

1957 On the Road
attracted to the whisky-drinking

1958 The Subterraneans
hobo lifestyle and began his

1958 The Dharma Bums
wandering across America and

1972 Visions of Cody (published

Mexico, often visiting various
posthumously)

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266

IN CONTEXT

WHAT IS GOOD

FOCUS

Nigerian voices

AMONG ONE PEOPLE BEFORE

1952 Amos Tutuola tells a

IS AN ABOMINATION Yoruba folklore story in English
in The Palm-Wine Drinkard.

1954 Cyprian Ekwensi gains

WITH OTHERS
international attention with

People of the City.

THINGS FALL APART (1958), CHINUA ACHEBE

AFTER

1960 Wole Soyinka’s play A

Dance of the Forests critiques
present-day corruption through
the nation’s mythological past.

2002 Helon Habila depicts a
new generation living in Lagos
under a military regime in

Waiting for an Angel.

2006 Half of a Yellow Sun,
set during the Biafran War,
confirms Chimamanda Ngozi

Adichie as an exceptional
new voice and wins the 2007

Orange Prize for Fiction.

Published in 1958, Chinua

Achebe’s slim volume of
less than 150 pages, Things

Fall Apart, is one of the earliest
novels to offer a mode of expression
to indigenous writers in Nigeria,
and was an instrument in the
formation of a dazzling canon of
literature. This multilayered story
of a fictionalized tribal village and
its cataclysmic contact with British
colonizers in the late 19th century
has since become the world’s most
widely read African novel, selling
more than 12 million copies in over

50 languages. The story told in

Things Fall Apart has a resonance
for all of the world’s traditional
cultures torn apart by invasion.

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See also: Heart of Darkness 196–97 ■ Disgrace 322–23 ■ Half of a Yellow Sun 339

Set in precolonial southern Nigeria
in the 1890s, Things Fall Apart
portrays a civilized society that
has rich traditions of culture,
commerce, religion, and justice.

The people’s social courtesies and
greetings—such as the breaking
and sharing of kola nuts—the
bargaining of terms of betrothal,
and the importance of women’s
chastity and obedience in this
patriarchal society would not seem
out of place in a Jane Austen novel.

In Umuofia, life revolves around the
seasons as villagers plant, tend,
and harvest the crop of yams,

The Igbo people celebrate different
compelling plot, and tragic hero,
observe the “Week of Peace,” and
festivals throughout the year. In Things
but infused with the myths and
enjoy celebrations marked with

Fall Apart, the Feast of the New Yam is
oral tradition of Nigerian culture.

palm-wine feasts, wrestling
held just before the yam harvest to give

When Achebe published his
matches, storytelling, and songs.

thanks to the Earth goddess, Ani.

pivotal work, Nigeria was in a state
of political flux in the lead up to

A self-made man

The novel’s title is taken from
independence in 1960. He wrote

The protagonist, Okonkwo, is a

W. B. Yeats’s poem “The Second
the novel partly as a response
famous wrestler and warrior, a

Coming,” which was written in
to the representation of Africa in
quick-to-anger husband of three
the aftermath of World War I.

the books he studied at college. In
wives, and the proud owner of a

Yeats’s apocalyptic imagery of

2000 he described how Anglo-Irish
large compound. Having inherited
the world caught up in anarchy,
writer Joyce Cary’s novel Mister
nothing from his idle, cowardly, and
and the arrival of an ambiguous

Johnson (1939), set in Nigeria, was
indebted father—whom he strives
messiah—some unformed,
held up as a fine example of writing to resemble as little as possible—
slouching beast—presages the
about Africa, although native

Okonkwo works the fields as a ❯❯
novel’s “first coming” of white

Nigerians saw in it an undercurrent

Christian colonizers who invade
of distaste and mockery. He also
and break apart tribal cultures.

maintained that Joseph Conrad’s
lurid description of natives in Heart

Nigerian reality
of Darkness (1899) typified the

Early in Things Fall Apart, we
racism endemic in literature about
learn that “Among the Igbo the art

Africa shown by European writers.

The white man is
of conversation is regarded very

Achebe’s reply was to write a
very clever … He has put
highly, and proverbs are the palm-
textured, immersive story of the
a knife on things that
oil with which words are eaten”;
downfall of a traditional society—
held us together and
perhaps it is unsurprising that
a rich, close community of Igbo
we have fallen apart.

some of the villagers of Umuofia are people (formerly Ibo, as the novel Things Fall Apart
won over by the colonizers’ hymns
refers to them). In place of Conrad’s
and Bible stories. Achebe wins over indistinguishable hordes of black his audience in much the same

“savages,” Achebe peoples his
way, drawing readers into a classic
village of Umuofia with vibrant
novel with a three-part structure,
characters that leap from the page.

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268 THINGS FALL APART

Igbo culture

European culture

Decentralized government
with multiple small

One central government
diverse groups
ruling over a single large
and no overall ruler.

political entity.

Belief in the Earth

Belief in one God and in
goddess, and numerous

Jesus Christ, his son on
other deities and

Earth, as the savior and
ancestor spirits.

redeemer of humankind.

Community elders manage

Formal courts settle
grievances and settle

European colonizers saw Africans as primitive,
disputes, according to
making little attempt to understand their customs
disputes with the goal
written laws, with the
and cultures. The imposition of alien values and
of making peace.

goal of upholding rights.

institutions led to profound transformations in
traditional African communities at all levels.

sharecropper to become wealthy,
life that Okonkwo concludes more
tribe that they worship “gods of
building up the storehouses of
than once that she should have
deceit who tell you to kill your
yams and coffers of cowries that
been born a boy.

fellows and destroy innocent
signify prosperity. His second
children. There is only one true
wife, Ekwefi, is a tribal beauty who

Questions and answers

God …” As the missionary’s
leaves her first husband because of

In Igbo culture, the wishes of the
converted interpreter struggles to
her passion for Okonkwo; their only
gods are passed on by egwugwu—
explain to the crowd about Jesu
child, Ezinma, is a spirited tomboy
masked village elders representing

Kristi, the son of God, Okonkwo
with such an understanding of her
the clan’s ancestral spirits—and
asks if God also has a wife. The
father and the subtleties of village
include brutal acts of sacrifice:

missionary ploughs on with an
these will become the crack in their incomprehensible account of the culture that allows ingress and

Holy Trinity, which seems to be
collapse. This may be a “land of the little different from the multiple living […] not far removed from the
gods of the Igbo tribes, and just
domain of the ancestors,” but there
as reliant on blind faith.

are few who adhere as slavishly to
the murderous will of the gods as

Two sides of the story

Okonkwo. His warrior ideology

Achebe exposes the brutality
begins to set him apart from others
of colonization, including
who are starting to ask questions
massacres and imprisonments,
even before the white men arrive.

but also describes the work

Ekwefi resolves to defend her
of Mr. Brown, a gentle missionary,
daughter from the gods; Obierika,
who listens as well as preaches,

Okonkwo’s friend, questions the
winning hearts and minds by
practice of abandoning twins at
combining religion with education,
birth—“but although he thought
gifts, and medicine. Okonkwo’s

Masks were worn by Igbo men
for a long time he found no answer.” eldest son, Nwoye, is among those for magical purposes during certain

The first white man to arrive in
of the tribe who are drawn to the
rituals, especially at funerals and
festivals, or, as in Things Fall Apart,
the neighboring village of Mbanta
poetry of the new religion and
by the egwugwu to administer justice.

supplies an answer. He tells the
moved by the “gay and rollicking

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tunes of evangelism.” For Nwoye,

Okonkwo’s grandson Obi, who

Christian hymns not only have
returns from university abroad and
the “power to pluck at the silent
struggles with ideals in a society
and dusty chords in the heart of
built on bribery and corruption.

an Ibo man,” but seem to answer

Achebe then turns back the clock

“a vague and persistent question
in Arrow of God, to continue the
that haunted his young soul.”

story of the destruction of Igbo
culture in the colonial years.

The power of language

Described as the “father of

Asked why he chose to write in
modern African literature,” Achebe

English rather than his native Igbo,
opened the door to African writing

Achebe replied that it would be
in English. In an article in The New
foolish not to use a language he had Gong Magazine, columnist Henry spent a lifetime acquiring and one

Chukwuemeka Onyema suggests

Chinua Achebe
that could be put to active use as
that Things Fall Apart’s “singular

“a counterargument to colonization.” achievement … was that it told us Born in 1930 in the small town

Achebe maintained that written
about ourselves through our own
of Ogidi, southeast Nigeria, to

Igbo, devised by the missionaries
eyes.” Onyema describes the 1960s

Protestant parents, Chinua

Achebe spoke Igbo at home
at the turn of the century, was a
in Nigeria as a “literary ferment,” as
and English at school. He
mix of dialects that had lost all the
writers sought to define the newly
graduated from University
rhythm and music of the spoken
independent nation and to make

College, Ibadan, in 1952, and
language. The point is illustrated
sense of its contradictions. Among
within 12 years had written
in his novel when the white man’s
them was playwright and novelist
the three novels that were

Igbo interpreter is mocked by

Wole Soyinka, who was awarded
to become the foundation of
the local villagers for his different
the 1986 Nobel Prize in Literature.

his oeuvre. Achebe married
dialect—his way of saying “myself”

Christie Chinwe Okoli in 1961,
translates as “my buttocks.”

Confronting oppression
and they had four children.

Achebe followed Things Fall

Later generations of Nigerian

An early career in radio

Apart with two novels that form a
writers continued to grapple with
ended with the outbreak of
trilogy built around the country’s
the aftermath of colonialism, civil
the Biafran War. Achebe went
turbulent half-century under British war, and cultural conflict. In 1991, on to teach in the US and
rule. No Longer at Ease, set in the

Ben Okri was awarded the Booker

Nigeria, and wrote stories,
period just before Nigeria gained

Prize for The Famished Road, in
poetry, essays, and children’s
books. In 1990 a car crash left
independence, tells the story of
which a spirit-child faces down
him confined to a wheelchair
death to become part of the lives of
for the remainder of his life. In
real people. Women writers such as

1992 he became professor of

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie have
languages and literature at
also found a voice engaging with

Bard College, New York, and

Nigeria’s turbulent political history
in 2009 he moved to Brown
and exploring the place of women

University, Rhode Island. In

An abominable religion has
in a male-dominated culture. In

2007 Achebe was awarded
settled among you. A man

Adichie’s debut novel, Purple
the Man Booker International
can now leave his father and

Hibiscus (2003), the narrator is

Prize for fiction. He died in
his brothers. … I fear for you; a 15-year-old girl struggling to March 2013 at 82.

I fear for the clan.

emerge from the repression of a

Things Fall Apart
patriarchal Catholic upbringing.

Other key works

Other writers have explored a wide

1960 No Longer at Ease
range of modern-day issues—such

1964 Arrow of God
as homosexuality, prostitution, and

1966 A Man of the People
environmental degradation—from

1987 Anthills of the Savannah
a Nigerian perspective. ■

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270

EVEN WALLPAPER HAS

A BETTER MEMORY

THAN HUMAN BEINGS

THE TIN DRUM (1959), GÜNTER GRASS

IN CONTEXT

FOCUS

The term “unreliable
narrator” refers to first-
person narrators who
undermine the authority of their

The unreliable narrator
own stories. Realist novels tend

BEFORE
to offer a rational speaking voice

… I stuck to my drum and

1884 The naive boy hero in
telling a story that meets a reader’s
didn’t grow a finger’s breadth

Mark Twain’s The Adventures
expectations. But what if the
from my third birthday on.

narrator gives the reader reason to
of Huckleberry Finn fails to

The Tin Drum
doubt, because he or she is insane,
understand the significance of
or has a distorted perception of the
events that is clear to readers.

world, or is very young, or lying?

1955 Humbert Humbert’s

Texts of the 20th century are
narrative is assembled from
littered with slippery speakers,
notes made in an asylum and
from Humbert Humbert in Vladimir
presented after his death in

Nabokov’s novel Lolita to Patrick
war in The Tin Drum. Anyone

Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita.

Bateman in Bret Easton Ellis’s
seeking an example of an unreliable

American Psycho. But unreliable
narrator doesn’t need to look any

AFTER
narrators have been around for
further than the stunted hero of the

1962 Delinquent teenager
centuries, and include Jonathan
novel, Oskar Matzerath. Oskar

Alex confesses all in “Nadsat,”

Swift’s naive Gulliver and Mark
introduces himself from his bed in a
a futuristic teen-speak, in

Twain’s ingenuous Huckleberry

“mental hospital” where he has been

Anthony Burgess’s novel

Finn. Executed well, novels with
held following his trial for murder.

A Clockwork Orange.

unreliable narrators engage the

He explains that until the age of 20
reader differently: that element of
he was just three feet tall, having

1991 Bret Easton Ellis’s serial
doubt both stretches credulity and
arrested his own growth on his
killer speaks through a yuppie
draws the reader in.

third birthday by sheer force of will.

archetype in American Psycho.

History is happening all around,

2001 Yann Martel’s narrator

In the midst of history
but the spotlight focuses on the
stretches credulity in Life of

Günter Grass has been described
fierce, tiny figure of Oskar, with

Pi, with his tale of life adrift
as “the conscience of a nation”

his constant companion—a tin
with a tiger—and then offers
for his darkly satirical portrait of the drum—and a scream that can a different option.

rise of Nazi sympathies in ordinary
break glass. He has two possible
families and the aftermath of the
fathers: his mother’s lover, or her

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See also: Tristram Shandy 104–05 ■ The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn 188–89 ■ Lolita 260–61 ■ A Clockwork Orange 289 ■ American Psycho 313
husband, who runs a grocery store
eels. He diverts us down the blind
in the Free City of Danzig (now
alleys of his obsessions with art,

Gdansk, Poland), which is under
circus dwarfs, nurses, and the

German control. Oskar is a witness
scents of women he seduces. He
to real events in history in Danzig
offers a rational history of Danzig,
and Düsseldorf but, self-absorbed
then conjures up a nightclub called
and obsessed with his own needs,
the Onion Cellar where people chop
he is no hero. Over the years he is
raw onions to make themselves cry.

implicated in a string of deaths.

What does Oskar represent?

Perhaps he is the devil, using

Unlikely truths
his scream to cut holes in store

Günter Grass

Sometimes the narration slips into
windows to tempt passersby
the third person, or is passed to
to steal, or seducing women by

Born in 1927 in Danzig (now

Oskar’s jailer to allow another
ingenious means. Or perhaps he

Gdansk, Poland) to a German
perspective. The tone varies: a
embodies Grass’s perception of
father and Kashubian mother,

Günter Grass attended the
slaughter of nuns on a Normandy

Germany—immune to suffering

Conradinum Gymnasium and
beach is scripted like a drawing-
during Nazism and quick to bury
was a member of the Hitler
room farce, while Oskar’s poetic
the past. What is certain, however,

Youth. In late 1944, at the
voice both enchants and revolts as
is that through Oskar’s grim
age of 17, he was drafted into
he describes a fisherman hauling
magical fantasy the author found a
the Waffen-SS (the Nazi elite
up a horse’s head writhing with
way to drum history into memory. ■
military wing), as he revealed
controversially in 2006.

After the war, Grass

Unreliable narrators come
worked as a miner and farm
in different guises: some are
liars or conceal facts, others
laborer, and studied art, before
are unstable, confused, or
working as a sculptor and

To Kill a Mockingbird
manipulative. They may
writer in Paris and Berlin. He
be immature or unaware,
published his first poetry and

CHILD
reporting events that the
plays in 1955, but his
reader perceives differently.

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
breakthrough came in 1959
with The Tin Drum, which

A Clockwork Orange
was followed by two more

One Flew over the

The Tin
novels that made up the

Cuckoo’s Nest

Drum

The Catcher in the Rye

Danzig Trilogy. In 1999 he

Life of Pi
was awarded the Nobel Prize

American Psycho
in Literature, one of many

Midnight’s

The Blind
awards during his career.

Children

Assassin

Grass was heavily involved in

MENTALLY

UNSTABLE/MAD

German politics, supporting

LYING/CONFUSED
the Social Democratic Party

Heart of

Tristram
and opposing reunification.

Darkness

Shandy

He died in 2015 at 87.

The Sound
and the Fury

Other key works

Wuthering Heights

The Turn of the Screw

1961 Cat and Mouse

CONCEALED FACTS

1963 Dog Years

1999 My Century

The Moonstone

2002 Crabwalk

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272

I THINK THERE’S

JUST ONE KIND

OF FOLKS. FOLKS.

TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD (1960), HARPER LEE

IN CONTEXT

FOCUS

Building on the traditions situations, the texts in this genre of 18th-century gothic
examine Southern social issues
literature, with its elements
such as racism, poverty, and crime.

of fantasy and the grotesque,

Harper Lee’s classic novel To

Southern gothic
mid-20th-century writers of

Kill a Mockingbird incorporates

BEFORE
the American Deep South, such
a coming-of-age theme into the

1940 Carson McCullers’

as Tennessee Williams, Flannery
southern gothic genre, and
debut novel The Heart Is a

O’Connor, and Carson McCullers,
highlights racial prejudice in the
established a literary genre known

American South in the years before

Lonely Hunter encapsulates
as southern gothic. These writers
the civil rights movement. It also
the elements of southern
used the characteristics of the
explores the behavior of those who
gothic in a story of social
traditional gothic style to inspect
live in a small Southern community.

misfits in Georgia in the 1930s.

the unsettling realities and twisted

1955 Cat on a Hot Tin Roof,
psyches beneath the surface of

Challenging convention
by playwright Tennessee

Southern respectability. With their

The story is set in the mid-1930s in

Williams, is set on a cotton
damaged or eccentric characters,

Maycomb, an Alabama town where
plantation in the Mississippi
macabre settings, and sinister

“a day was twenty-four hours long
delta and challenges Southern
but seemed much longer.” The
social conventions with its
narrator is a young girl, Scout, nearly
portrayal of the favorite
six years old at the start of events.

son as a repressed gay

She is a tomboy, who questions
man and alcoholic.

social conventions. Scout lives with
her widowed father, lawyer Atticus

AFTER

You never really understand Finch (a morally upright man who 1980 A Confederacy of
a person until you consider
strives to teach his children the

Dunces, by John Kennedy
things from his point of
values of understanding and

Toole, is set in New Orleans
view—until you climb into his compassion), her brother Jem, and and follows the antics of
skin and walk around in it.

their black cook, Calpurnia.

slob and misfit Ignatius J.

To Kill a Mockingbird

Scout describes daily life in

Reilly. Toole is posthumously

Maycomb, their neighbors, her
awarded the Pulitzer Prize
friendship with an unusual boy
for fiction for the book a
called Dill, and her school, creating
year after its publication.

a picture of an apparently timeless
society in the Deep South. Heat

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See also: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn 188–89 ■ The Sound and the Fury 242–43 ■ Invisible Man 259 ■

In Cold Blood 278–79

Over the course of the novel,

Scout’s perception of the world around
her matures from a naive ideal to a more
realistic understanding of society, but
she nevertheless retains her optimism.

As the novel
progresses, Scout's

This experience
awareness of evil
leads to the loss of
in the world

Yet through the influence of her father
her childhood
increases as she is
and others around her, Scout never
innocence, as Scout
exposed to darker
loses her fundamental belief in
learns that the world
elements of life,
human goodness.

is not always just
including racism
or fair.

and intolerance.

bakes the streets, refined ladies

When Atticus agrees to take on the ends with Scout older, wiser, and gossip at missionary teas, poor
defense of a local black man, Tom
reflecting on human behavior
white children arrive at school with Robinson, who is falsely accused within her small community.

no shoes, and black people live
of raping a white woman, Scout

Published as the civil rights
segregated lives as land workers
describes the tensions and violence movement was accelerating, To or domestic servants. In southern
created by Atticus’s determination

Kill a Mockingbird was an almost
gothic tradition, however, there
to defend Robinson, in spite of the
instant best seller. Despite its
are oddities in the community—in
fact that, as he admits, it is a lost
gentle tone, the novel, like others in
particular the reclusive Boo Radley,
cause. Following the trial there is
the genre, exposed the darkness
who lives in a supposedly haunted
a murderous attack on the children, underpinning the gentility of a house, and about whom the
which reveals Boo Radley to be

Southern community forced to
children weave fantastical tales.

guardian, not a monster. The novel
face the reality of racial hatred. ■

Harper Lee

Born in the town of Monroeville,
childhood, she started To Kill

Alabama, on April 28, 1926,
a Mockingbird, which she

Harper Lee was a loner and a
completed in 1959.

tomboy. Her father was a lawyer,

The tremendous success of
and her best friend was the author To Kill a Mockingbird gained Truman Capote (she would later

Lee many literary awards,
help him to research In Cold Blood).

including the Pulitzer Prize in

Lee attended the University of

1961. She accepted a post on the

Alabama, where she edited the

National Council of the Arts but
university magazine. Although
largely retired from public life
she started law school, she
from the 1970s. It was believed
wanted to write, and in 1949
that Lee had only ever written
dropped out and moved to New
one book but in 2015 Go Set a

York. In 1956 close friends offered

Watchman, her second novel,
to fund her for a year so that she
was published: although a
could write. Taking inspiration
sequel, it was written before
from events and people in her

To Kill a Mockingbird.

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274

NOTHING IS LOST IF

ONE HAS THE COURAGE

TO PROCLAIM THAT ALL

IS LOST AND WE MUST

BEGIN ANEW

HOPSCOTCH (1963), JULIO CORTÁZAR

IN CONTEXT

FOCUS

One of the distinguishing case of Argentine writer Julio features of the novel is

Cortázar’s Hopscotch, the novel is
generally thought to be
subverted even from a physical point
the sequential, linear organization
of view. The reader of an antinovel

The antinovel
of its narrative segments: chapters,
is forced to suspend all narrative

BEFORE
more or less in sequence, are
expectations and to engage with

1605 Don Quixote, by Miguel
presumed or expected to hold
the text in ways that a traditional
de Cervantes, is regarded as
equal status with each other,
work of fiction does not require. As
from a narrative perspective.

the reader of Hopscotch is told in the
the first modern novel, but its

The antinovel—first named as
book’s Table of Instructions, “In its
literary features and episodic
such by French writer Jean-Paul
own way, this book consists of many
structure are at odds with later

Sartre in the mid-20th century—
books, but two books above all.”

definitions of the genre.

subverts this assumption, marking

1939 At Swim-Two-Birds by
a radical departure from the

An open-ended book

Irish author Flann O’Brien has
conventional novel with respect to

Hopscotch can be read as a
multiple characters and plots
plot, dialogue, and structure. In the
straightforward novel—the first
that lose linear structure.

book—one chapter after the other

(ending at Chapter 56), or as a

AFTER
second story, skipping from the

1973 The Castle of Crossed
so-called Expendable Chapter 73

Destinies, by Italian author
to 1, back and forth, all the way to

Italo Calvino, has multiple

58 and 131, where the reader gets
plots; each is determined by
caught in an endless loop of the
a randomly chosen sequence
latter two. The author also allows
of tarot cards.

the reader to explore the novel in
any other sequence, and to ignore

2001 Bartleby & Co., by
the Expendable Chapters entirely.

Spanish writer Enrique

Even in the more linear option,

Villa-Matas, revolves around
the plot moves in an erratic fashion,
unwritten texts, fragmented
capturing a series of fragments as it
notes, footnotes, literary

References to jazz appear throughout follows the main character, Horacio allusions, and comments on

Hopscotch, not only in its subject

Oliveira, initially in 1950s Paris.

authors both real and fictional.

matter but also in its jazz-infused
language, nonlinear structure, and

We discover Oliveira’s intellectual
improvisational approach.

interests and his passion for jazz—a

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See also: Don Quixote 76–81 ■ Tristram Shandy 104–05 ■ The Outsider 245 ■

If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler 298–99

Hopscotch invites the reader to

First book
experiment with different pathways
through its pages. There is a “normal”

first book of 56 chapters, and a second

Expendable Chapters
making use of 99 “Expendable Chapters.”

Each book can be read separately, and
there also several alternative options.

73

71

81

Julio Cortázar

Julio Cortázar was born
to Argentinian parents in

Belgium in 1914. His family
moved to Switzerland at

1

2

3

4

5
the beginning of World

War I, but settled in Buenos

Aires, Argentina, in 1919.

Cortázar became qualified
as a teacher at an early age,
and began his university

116

84

74
studies in philosophy and
language in Buenos Aires, but
these were interrupted due to
form of music that was a clear
forced travel across countries is
financial difficulties.

influence on Cortázar’s style, with
mirrored in the effects that the

In 1951 he emigrated to
its staccato, syncopated rhythm.

book as an object demands of the

France, where he worked as

We hear of Oliveira’s discussions
reader. In this way the author
a translator while constantly
with fellow members of the vaguely
successfully draws attention to the
traveling and writing short
defined Serpent Club, their
text’s fictional constructs, as well
stories. He became engaged
in political causes, supporting
reverence for mysterious author
as to the expectations that we have
the left-wing movements in

Morelli, and Oliveira’s love of (but
of the novel form. ■

Cuba and mainland Latin
troubled relationship with) La Maga.

America, which he visited

Eventually, he heads to Argentina,
several times from the 1960s
where he finds work in an asylum.

onward. Around the same
time, his novels, including

Narrative strategies

Hopscotch, started being

The second book takes Argentina
published. Cortázar died
as its stage. In some Expendable

[A] chess world where you
in 1984 at 69, and is buried

Chapters, Cortázar’s belief that
moved about like a knight
in Paris.

the reader should be aware of the
trying to move like a rook
workings of a novel—as participant

Other key works
trying to move like a bishop.

and even conspirator—can be

Hopscotch
detected, ultimately destroying the

1960 The Winners

1967 Blow-Up and Other
status of the text itself as a novel.

Stories

Cortázar’s depiction of mental

1968 62: A Model Kit
deterioration, disconnected and

1973 A Manual for Manuel
alienating human interaction, and

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276

HE HAD DECIDED TO

LIVE FOREVER OR DIE

IN THE ATTEMPT

CATCH-22 (1961), JOSEPH HELLER

IN CONTEXT

FOCUS

With a fascination for the
morbid and the taboo,
black humor uses farce
to make light of controversial or

American black humor
serious issues. Such humor often

BEFORE
comes from despair or horror and

Anything worth

1939 The Day of the Locust by
frequently highlights the futility
dying for … is certainly

Nathanael West satirizes the
of life. Many dark, satirical novels
worth living for.

came out of the US in the latter half
grotesque vanity of Hollywood

Catch-22
of the 20th century, when the
and its hangers-on during the
nation assumed leadership of the

Great Depression.

West after the shattering of Europe

1959 Philip Roth’s fiction
through two world wars, and the
collection Goodbye, Columbus
onset of the Cold War nuclear age.

humorously deals with the
dark or taboo side of subjects

The madness of sanity
situation (which refers to a military
such as sex, religion, and

Catch-22, the satirical novel by
code of practice): they can apply for
cultural assimilation.

American Joseph Heller (1923–99),
discharge on the grounds of insanity,
is set in World War II, although the
but the very process of claiming

AFTER
book can be read as a commentary
madness using the correct protocol

1966 Thomas Pynchon’s The
on the ongoing Vietnam War.

proves their sanity and so they

Crying of Lot 49 explores the

It follows the exploits of Captain
must continue to fly.

failure of communication and

Yossarian and his fellow airmen,

The madness of war so clearly
the absurd and disordered
who serve on bombing missions.

seen by Yossarian is underscored
nature of the world.

Unmoved by patriotism, Yossarian
through Heller’s use of paradox,
is furious that his life is at risk;
absurdity, and the kind of circular

1969 The search for meaning
convinced he is surrounded by
reasoning exemplifed by Catch-22
in increasingly fractured times
crazed idiots, he tries to avoid his
itself. True to the conventions of
is satirized in Kurt Vonnegut’s
missions by faking illness. Yet he
black humor, the novel is by turns

Slaughterhouse-Five, inspired
and his comrades are in a “Catch-22” bleak, hilarious, and tragic. ■
by the author’s experience of
the firebombing of Dresden

See also: The Crying of Lot 49 290 ■ Slaughterhouse-Five 291 ■
and the absurdity of war.

American Psycho 313

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EVERYDAY MIRACLES

AND THE LIVING PAST

DEATH OF A NATURALIST (1966), SEAMUS HEANEY

IN CONTEXT

FOCUS

The political, cultural, and “Churning Day.” While there is no personal landscape of the
progression of a narrative in the
generation of poets that
collection, the 34 poems all revolve
sprang up after World War II was
around similar elements of style

Postwar poetry
one scarred by the war’s atrocities
and thematics, with natural

BEFORE
and filled with guilt. Writers and
imagery used to highlight the

1945 Anglo-American poet
other artists had a troubled
effects of the war upon external

W. H. Auden’s Collected Poetry
relationship with the past, whether
and internal spaces. In the second
public or personal. In the work
poem, “Death of a Naturalist,” a boy
includes work on public
of poets such as W. H. Auden,
encounters frogs that Heaney likens
politics and the start of his

Ted Hughes, and Philip Larkin,
to grenades of mud, rupturing the
religious imagery, reflecting
personal relationships often stood
childhood connection with nature.

the crisis of modern society.

in for wider interactions, and the

The past is also incarnated in

1957 In The Hawk in the Rain,
memory of the war insinuated

Heaney's family members, his

English poet Ted Hughes
itself in imagery, references,
father in particular. In “Digging”

explores love and war through
poetic forms, and style.

he shows their now outmoded link
and alongside the symbolic
to manual labor and expertise
lives of animals, showing a

Memory and change
in older ways of life, recalling his
world of struggle mirroring

The first major poetry collection by
father digging for potatoes and his
the one of humanity.

Irish poet Seamus Heaney (1939–
grandfather digging turf. Yet their

2013), the successful and acclaimed labor, after all, is perhaps not too 1964 English poet Philip

Death of a Naturalist, explores the
different from his own, as Heaney

Larkin’s Whitsun Weddings
schism between childhood and
almost apologetically recognizes
is a series of poems conscious
adulthood, past and present as a
writing as a link to his earthier,
of the decline of established
version of the division between
more “useful” forebears.

familial and social relations.

a prewar and a postwar world.

Heaney was awarded the

Themes and imagery invoke nature, Nobel Prize for Literature in 1995, 1965 American poet Sylvia
family, human labor, and rural

“for works of lyrical beauty and

Plath’s Ariel, published

Irish landscapes in poems such
ethical depth, which exalt everyday
posthumously, sees a shift to a
as “Blackberry Picking” and
miracles and the living past”. ■
dark and unsettling flow of
imagery, borrowing from the

See also: The Waste Land 213 ■ The Bell Jar 290 ■ Crow 291
horrors of war crimes.

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278

THERE’S GOT TO BE

SOMETHING WRONG

WITH US. TO DO

WHAT WE DID

IN COLD BLOOD (1966), TRUMAN CAPOTE

IN CONTEXT

FOCUS

The term “New Journalism” his theory: a wealthy Kansas was introduced by critics
farmer, Herbert Clutter, and
in the 1960s to describe
members of his family had been
the work of American writers such
shot dead for no apparent reason.

New Journalism
as Truman Capote, Norman Mailer,

Assisted by his friend, author

BEFORE

Tom Wolfe, and Gay Talese, who

Harper Lee, Capote visited the

Early 1900s Investigative
used literary techniques to relate
scene and began researching
journalists such as Lincoln
nonfictional stories and present
the murder. In Cold Blood was
factual reporting dramatically.

published seven years later.

Steffens and Ida M. Tarbell

Capote’s theory that journalism
blend literary techniques and
could be forced to yield a new art

Murder in Kansas
journalism in articles that
form, the “nonfiction novel” (which

The book describes the murder,
expose corrupt business and
he expounded in a 1966 interview
which occurred on November 15,
government practices.

in The New York Times), lay at the

1959. There were four victims:

1962 Journalist Gay Talese
heart of his book In Cold Blood.

48-year-old Clutter, a churchgoing,
uses interviews, dialogue, and

In 1959 Capote had read a
hardworking man; his wife, Bonnie;
observation in a factual but
newspaper report that offered an
his daughter, Nancy; and his son,
literary article on boxer Joe
ideal subject on which to exercise

Kenyon. The family were well

Louis in Esquire magazine.

respected and popular—their
brutal slaying shocked the

AFTER
community. A local man said they

1970 Tom Wolfe challenges
were “gentle, kindly people, people
traditional journalism with

I knew— murdered.”

Radical Chic and Mau-Mauing

In contrast the two murderers,
the Flak Catchers, reporting in

I thought that Mr. Clutter

Richard “Dick” Hickock and Perry
a lively observational style.

was a very nice gentleman … Smith, were ex-convicts—misfits I thought so right up to the
on parole from the Kansas State

1972 Hunter S. Thompson
moment that I cut his throat.

Penitentiary. Dick’s promise to
publishes the drug-fueled Fear

In Cold Blood

Perry was that they would “blast
and Loathing in Las Vegas, the
hair all over them walls.” The two
genesis of “gonzo journalism,”

were caught and arrested in Las
in which the writer plays an

Vegas on December 30, 1959.

integral part in the story.

Capote immersed himself in his
subject, spending time with friends

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See also: To Kill a Mockingbird 272–73 ■ The Armies of the Night 291 ■ Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas 332

Blending fact and fiction

New

Journalism

Journalism

• Creates a connection
with the reader.

Fiction

• Accurate and
thoroughly researched.

• Blends reporting with

• Literature created
a distinct literary “voice.”

from the imagination

• Focuses on narrative—
of the author.

telling the story.

• Examines emotions,
motivations, and

• May be based

• Brevity and concise
characters.

on real events.

form are valued.

• Retains factual
accuracy.

and relatives of the victims, local

New Yorker magazine, and was an

Journalism. He stated that Capote’s
residents, police, prison warders,
instant success. American journalist novel incorporated all the form’s psychiatrists, and the murderers

Jack Olsen said it was the first book key techniques: firsthand themselves. He did not record
to make true crime a “successful,
witnessing of events; real dialogue;
interviews, but scribbled down
commercial genre.” Even so, Capote third-person narrative; and detailed quotes and impressions afterward.

was accused of having falsified or
description of minute life details,
exaggerated events. He denied this such as how the killers brushed Truth and embellishment
falsification, though there is some
their teeth. This created a nearly

The end result is a remarkable work evidence of embellishment.

factual reportage presented in the
in which Capote constructs scene

Tom Wolfe wrote that In Cold
style of a novel, enabling readers
after scene, building up characters

Blood had given New Journalism
to gain an understanding of events
and allowing participants to tell

“an overwhelming momentum,” and and characters that was all the their stories in their own words.

he went on to codify the features of
more powerful for being based on

The book was first serialized in The the form in his 1973 book, The New real events. ■

Truman Capote

Born Truman Streckfus Persons
was a controversial figure. A
in New Orleans on September 30,
socialite, heavy drinker, and

1924, Capote had a troubled
sometime drug user, he enjoyed
childhood. His parents divorced
a flamboyant lifestyle and lived
when he was four, and he was
openly as a gay man, which was
raised by relatives. He then
unusual at that time. In later life
rejoined his mother and her
he became reclusive, and died in
second husband, Joseph Capote,

Los Angeles on August 25, 1984.

attending school in New York City
and Greenwich, Connecticut. His

Other key works
career began with a string of short
stories published in magazines

1945 “Miriam” (short story)

such as Harper’s Bazaar and

1951 The Grass Harp

The New Yorker. His first novel,

1958 Breakfast at Tiffany’s

Other Voices, Other Rooms, was

1986 Answered Prayers:

published in 1948 and established

The Unfinished Novel
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ENDING AT EVERY MOMENT

BUT NEVER ENDING

ITS ENDING

ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF SOLITUDE

(1967), GABRIEL GARCÍA MÁRQUEZ

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282 ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF SOLITUDE

José Arcadio and Úrsula have two

IN CONTEXT
sons—a lusty giant, also named

José Arcadio, and his anxious,

FOCUS
prescient brother Aureliano. Their

The Latin American boom
names, physical traits, and

BEFORE

Time was not
personalities are repeated down

1946–49 Guatemalan Miguel
passing … it was
the generations, while characters
turning in a circle …

such as Pilar Ternera, the village

Angel Asturias blends

One Hundred Years
prostitute, both enrich the gene

Modernist techniques with
of Solitude
pool and complicate it, by coupling
surrealism and folklore in Mr.

with and bearing children for

President and Men of Maize.

multiple Buendías.

1962 In The Death of Artemio

Through all this complexity, the

Cruz, Carlos Fuentos layers
beating heart of Macondo is always
memory, poetic imagery,
the matriarch Úrsula, whose long life
stream of consciousness,
allows her to protect and maintain
and multiple perspectives to

Their writing was fueled by the
the Buendía family in every new
explore corruption in Mexico.

counterculture of the 1960s, and
generation after each invasion of
their narratives frequently make
incomers and the episodes of

1963 Argentinian Julio
use of innovative and experimental
insanity that follow them.

Cortázar allows readers to
techniques such as nonlinear time,
choose their own path through
shifting perspectives, and magic

Invasion
his radically experimental
realism—a technique regarded by

Each generation is faced with its
work Hopscotch.

many to be an invention of South
own fresh catastrophe, many of

American literature.

which parody an episode in Latin

AFTER

American history or reflect the

1969 The shattered society

Isolation
continent’s rich tradition of myth
of 1950s’ Peru is revealed at

Often considered the masterwork
and legend. Although he is an artist
lightning speed in a discussion
of the boom, Colombian García
at heart, Aureliano is soon caught
between two men of different

Márquez’s One Hundred Years of
up in civil wars that ravage the
classes in Mario Vargas Llosa’s

Solitude brings together Bible
country for years. He becomes

Conversation in the Cathedral.

stories, ancient myths, and South
a famous colonel, renowned

American traditions of magic,
throughout the land as much for

A
resurrection, and regeneration in a
his poetry as his military exploits.

s its name suggests, the
metaphorical commentary on the

Latin American boom was continent’s history.

an explosion of literary

The story spans one century and
creativity that occurred in South
seven generations of a single family,

America in the 1960s. Although
the Buendías. Macondo, the town

Jorge Luis Borges had ignited a
that they found, represents the
slow-burning fuse some 20 years
history of Colombia at large. At the
before with Ficciones—a puzzle
story’s opening, Macondo is a small
box of short stories that broke all
village of adobe houses, wedged
literary conventions—the boom
between mountains and swamp.

years saw the publication of stellar

Its isolation from the modern world
works that gained worldwide
is complete; no route stretches back
attention for authors such as Gabriel over the mountains. Established by García Márquez, Julio Cortázar,

José Arcadio Buendía and his wife

The house in Aractaca, Colombia,
where Gabriel García Márquez grew up
and Mario Vargas Llosa. These

Úrsula Iguarán, it is a utopia where
is now a pilgrimage site for fans of the
intellectuals engaged with the
everyone is younger than 30 years
author, who come to visit the place that
political struggles of Latin America. old and no one has yet died.

inspired the creation of Macondo.

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POSTWAR WRITING 283

See also: Ficciones 245 ■ Hopscotch 274–75 ■ Pedro Páramo 287–88 ■ The Death of Artemio Cruz 290 ■ The Time of the Hero 290 ■ Midnight’s Children 300–05 ■ The House of the Spirits 334 ■ Love in the Time of Cholera 335 ■ 2666 339

All Aureliano’s victories come to
squad. The town has been changed Macondo soon becomes an outpost nothing however, as the country
forever, and the opening of a new
of US economic imperialism. The
remains convulsed by conflict, a
railroad exposes Macondo to the

American Fruit Company turns the
parody of the bloody struggles that
influence of the outside world for
town into a banana plantation,
wracked Latin America in the 19th
the first time.

controlled by a small encampment
century. The wars bring death and

At first the villagers are enthralled of Americans. When the workers go violence to the previously peaceful
by the wonders of modernity—they
on strike for better conditions, they

Macondo, and Aureliano’s nephew
cannot understand how an actor
are massacred in an episode that

Arcadio becomes a dictatorial
who dies in one movie, can come
forms the violent catalyst of the
governor until he is shot by a firing
back to life to appear in another—but town’s final decline. ❯❯

Unknown

Úrsula

José Arcadio
cousins

Iguarán

Buendía

Colonel

Remedios

Rebeca

José Arcadio

Pilar Ternera

Aureliano

Moscote

Amaranta

Buendía

Santa Sofía

Aureliano
de la Piedad

Arcadio

17 sons

José

Remedios

José Arcadio

Aureliano
the Beauty

Segundo

Petra Cotes

Fernanda del

Segundo

Carpio

Gaston

José

Meme

Mauricio

Arcadio II

Babilonia

Amaranta

The same names recur across

Úrsula

Aureliano II
the seven generations of the

Buendía family with bewildering
regularity. This family tree depicts
the various relationships of the

Buendías with family members

Aureliano III
in yellow boxes and incestuous
couplings shown by yellow lines.

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284 ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF SOLITUDE

The misery inflicted on Macondo
between brother and sister, and the
represents the centuries of pain
natural progression of family from
caused by Western economic

Adam and Eve in the Bible would
exploitation. Even a rainstorm that
have progressed along similar lines.

lasts for four years, 11 months, and

Some 17th-century arrivals in South
two days, fails to wash the town

America believed that the Garden

The last that remained of a
clean. It does, however, cause an
of Eden was sited in eastern Bolivia.

past whose annihilation had
exodus, leaving Macondo empty

The first Conquistadors thought
not taken place because it was
aside from a handful of Buendías
they had discovered a people
still in a process of annihilation.

living out their final days in the town.

descended from the son of Noah,

One Hundred Years
a survivor of the Great Flood, or
of Solitude

Bible stories and myths
possibly from the lost tribes of Israel.

Márquez draws on South America’s

Deluge myths were widespread
mixed heritage of myths and Bible
among indigenous South American
tales to tell the story of a paradise
people. These bubble to the surface
destroyed through its loss of
in the great rain toward the end of
innocence. In Macondo “the

One Hundred Years of Solitude.

world was so recent that many
madness, he becomes literally
things lacked names.” The novel’s

Science and magic
bonded to the chestnut tree in
exploration of the history of human

Magic is not sprinkled lightly
his garden, and when he is taken
progress therefore begins with an
across this novel; it is woven into
indoors the smell of mushrooms
idiosyncratic Buendía creation myth. the fabric of its lilting, poetic text.

and wood-flower fungus follows him.

The family’s founding marriage

At first, the villagers are mystified

As Úrsula ages and her sight fades,
is a union between the cousins
by modern phenomena such as

“the lucidity of her old age allows

José Arcadio and Úrsula, and the
false teeth and photographs. But
her to see,” and she develops her
story of a previous Buendía incest
even when the modernization of
other senses: using odors to
that produced a child with a pig’s

Macondo is well underway, the
remember sights, she tracks a
tail becomes an ever-present
forces of magic carry just as much
child’s movements by sprinkling
anxiety. As it turns out, this fear
weight as reason and science.

a little rosewater on his head; and
was entirely justified; the final

Remedios the Beauty, a woman too
she distinguishes color by texture.

Aureliano is born with the feared
beautiful to be looked upon, rises to

García Márquez said that he
affliction. There are several Inca
heaven in a cloud of bedsheets. After discovered the key to handling creation myths founded on incest
the first José Arcadio descends into the narrative voice in his novel Gabriel García Márquez Born in Columbia in 1928, Gabriel revolution in 1959, he worked in José García Márquez was raised

Bogotá and New York for Prensa
by his grandparents in Aractaca,

Latina, the Cuban news agency.

a town resembling the fictional

His second full novel, One

Macondo of One Hundred Years of

Hundred Years of Solitude was

Solitude. This upbringing shaped
written in Mexico City and
his anti-imperialist beliefs. During
earned the author worldwide

The Violence, a 10-year period of
acclaim. Márquez authored 22
political repression in Colombia,
books and was awarded the

García Márquez became a reporter Nobel Prize in Literature in 1982.

in Barranquillo.

He died in Mexico City in 2014.

Although Garcia Márquez’s
journalism flourished, his liberal

Other key works
views meant that he had to leave

Colombia and work as a foreign

1985 Love in the Time of Cholera
correspondent in Europe.

2004 Memoirs of My Melancholy

After reporting on the Cuban

Whores

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POSTWAR WRITING 285
in his grandmother’s stories and
from an aunt who had a knack for
offering fantastical explanations
with the conviction of the truth.

Resurrection

In One Hundred Years of Solitude
the dead continue to exert an
influence on the living and the
grave is a door to multiple realities
beyond our own. Early in the story

José Arcadio Buendía throws a
spear through the throat of Prudencio

Aguilar, a neighbor who insults
him. José Arcadio is then haunted
by the man’s spirit until he is on his
own deathbed. The two men make
plans for a bird-breeding farm in
the afterlife so that they will have
remains untouched by the passing

A banana plantation is established

“something to do on the tedious
of time. Rescued from the firing
in Macondo, and the American Fruit

Sundays of death.”

squad, Aureliano retreats there to

Company’s economic imperialism

The fixation on death persists
fashion tiny gold fishes, which he
leads to a massacre and reflects the

US’s exploitation of Latin America.

when distant relative Rebeca arrives then melts down and makes all over at the Buendía house dragging a bag again in an attempt to live forever of her parents’ bones. She eats earth in the present moment—a bitter removed “all trace of man’s passage
and lime, the stuff of the grave, while reflection of the futile repetitions of on earth from the room.” As he
she awaits their proper burial.

the story and of human history.

reads he finds himself “deciphering

When the last Buendía is drawn
the instant that he was living,

Circular time
to the laboratory to finally unravel
deciphering it as he lived it,

Fractured or nonlinear time is a key the scrolls which document and prophesying himself in the act
feature of the Latin American
prophesy Macondo’s 100-year
of deciphering the last page of
boom’s postmodernist approach to
history, and which were delivered to the parchments, as if he were literature. The opening lines set
the first José Arcadio by the gypsy
looking into a speaking mirror.”

this up in a very memorable way:

Melquíades, he finds prehistoric

In this extraordinary metafictional

“Many years later, as he faced the
plants and luminous insects have
moment the narrator, character, and
firing squad, Colonel Aureliano
reader arrive at the point at which

Buendía was to remember that
past, present, and future combine
distant afternoon when his father
and fall into the void beyond which
took him to discover ice.”

the words stop on the page.

Time is cyclical in the story:

One Hundred Years of Solitude
present, past, and future events are

Races condemned to one
has sold more than 30 million copies
commingled in the 100-year span of
hundred years of solitude
and is regarded as a masterpiece
the Buendía family. The setting,
did not have a second
of a literary boom that reverberated
too, is circular. All of the action
opportunity on earth.

across two decades. Márquez’s
takes place within concentric

One Hundred Years
postmodern vision spoke to both
spheres: first, the modern world

Latin America and the wider world
of Solitude
that is encroaching on Macondo;
in its depiction of a planet that is
then the village itself; the Buendía’s
doomed to repeat a cycle of endless
house; and finally the mysterious
environmental catastrophe, warfare,
laboratory that is established in
and infighting over and over for
the heart of the house and which
generation after generation. ■

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286

FURTHER READING

PAROLES
priest in Johannesburg who is in
search of his son, who has been

(1946), JACQUES PRÉVERT
involved in the murder of a white
activist for racial justice. It also

Paroles (“Words”) is the first poetry
tells the story of the activist’s father,
collection by the French poet and
and how his own prejudices and

The train came out of the
screenwriter Prévert (1900–77).

views are changed by his son’s
long border tunnel—and

Comprising 95 poems of varying
death and writing, and by meeting
there was the snow
length, it reveals multiple elements

Kumalo. Paton’s narrative reveals
country. The night had
of his trademark writing style, such the changing reality of South Africa turned white.

as wordplay, prose poems, puns,
on the verge of apartheid.

Snow Country
and mini dialogues. The collection

Yasanuri Kawabata
covers a variety of subjects and
themes, entwining everyday life in

SNOW COUNTRY
postwar Paris with sentiments of

(1948), YASUNARI KAWABATA
antiwar protest, critiques of both
religion and politics, and a reflection Japanese novelist Yasunari of the role of art in society.

Kawabata (1899–1972) is a Nobel

Laureate. One of his most famous
and isolation. Kawabata’s focus on

CRY, THE BELOVED
novels, Snow Country, tells of
the personal, with no mention of the
doomed love amid the mountains
fighting in World War II, which was

COUNTRY
of western Japan. Shimamura—
raging at the time of writing, may

(1948), ALAN PATON
a bored, wealthy businessman—
have been a conscious artistic
meets Komako, a beautiful but
response to the conflict.

The masterpiece of South African
forlorn geisha at a hot-spring resort.

author Paton (1903–88) focuses on

The landscape becomes a metaphor

Stephen Kumalo, a black Anglican
for feelings—including hopelessness THE LAGOON AND

OTHER STORIES

Ernest Hemingway
traveled widely to pursue—

(1951), JANET FRAME
among other interests—his love

Born in Illinois, in 1899,
of hunting, a subject that would

A collection of short stories, this

Hemingway discovered his
appear in many of his stories. He
was the first publication by New
affinity for writing early in life
returned to journalism to report

Zealand author Frame (1934–2004).

as a reporter for The Kansas
on the Spanish Civil War (1936–

To varying extents, the texts in the

City Star. He later served as a

39) and the Normandy landings
collection question their own status
volunteer ambulance driver in

(1944), and won the Nobel Prize
as fiction, explore the author’s

World War I in Italy, from where
in 1954. Hemingway committed
agency and identity, and experiment
he returned wounded in 1918.

suicide in Idaho in 1961.

with narrative voice. The book’s

His first novel, The Sun Also
publication and critical reception—

Rises, was written while working Key works
including a highly regarded literary
as an overseas correspondent in
prize—were crucial in saving

Paris. Establishing himself in

1929 A Farewell to Arms

Frame from a lobotomy and a series

Europe, Hemingway saw

1940 For Whom the Bell Tolls
of atrocious practices in institutions
increasing success from his

1952 The Old Man and
for the mentally ill, where she had
short stories and novels and
the Sea (see opposite)

been committed.

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POSTWAR WRITING 287

THE OLD MAN AND THE SEA of dystopian fiction. In a world in which knowledge and books are

William Golding

(1952), ERNEST HEMINGWAY
banned, Guy Montag, a fireman

(in Fahrenheit 451, a fireman is a

Golding was born near the

Written during Hemingway’s stay
person who is in charge of setting

British town of Newquay,
in Cuba in 1951, The Old Man and
fire to books) slowly rediscovers his

Cornwall, in September 1911.

He grew up in a political
the Sea was the last piece of fiction own humanity and individuality.

household in Wiltshire: his
to be published during the author’s

The story highlights the conflict
father, Alec, was a science
lifetime. The story is as simple as
between mindlessly following
teacher, a socialist, and a
the writing style, depicting the
orders and questioning established
rationalist, while his mother,
struggle of old fisherman Santiago
power structures, and the role that

Mildred Curnoe, was a female
with a marlin off the coasts of Cuba books and knowledge can play in suffrage activist. Golding
and Florida. Nevertheless, the work
that ongoing struggle.

studied natural sciences, then
is deeply emotional and powerful,

English literature at Oxford.

as both the Pulitzer and Nobel

He served in the Royal Navy
commissions acknowledged in

LORD OF THE FLIES
during World War II, and
their awards to Hemingway.

(1954), WILLIAM GOLDING
published his first work of

Multiple interpretations of the book
fiction, Lord of the Flies, in
have been suggested, such as that it Despite its initial lack of success, 1954. He kept writing until
is a reflection on the author’s career, Lord of the Flies has since become his death in 1993, and was
awarded both the Booker
that it has an allegorical religious
a classic and fundamental text of
and Nobel prizes.

significance, or that it is a personal
dystopian, allegorical, political, and
story based on people Hemingway
satirical writing. The story begins

Key works
encountered during his life.

with a group of boys stranded on
an otherwise unpopulated island,

1954 Lord of the Flies (see left)

FAHRENHEIT 451
and follows their unsuccessful,

1955 The Inheritors
violent, and ultimately savage

1980, 1987, 1989 To the Ends

(1953), RAY BRADBURY
attempts to impose different types
of the Earth: A Sea Trilogy
of self-government and order on

One of the most famous novels by
the group. The story takes place
the American writer of speculative
in the shadow of a rotting pig’s

Hobbit (1937). Taking inspiration
fiction Ray Bradbury (1920–2012),
skull surrounded by insects—the
from events in the world wars, his

Fahrenheit 451 is a key example
eponymous Lord of the Flies of
childhood in South Africa, and his
the title. Although Golding’s first
studies in Icelandic and Germanic
novel has often been challenged
literatures, he developed the epic
for its controversial exploration of
tale of The Lord of the Rings. The
human nature, utilitarian themes,
story follows multiple characters as
and violence, it is nevertheless a
they journey through The Fellowship
fascinating insight into political,
of the Ring, The Two Towers, and

A book is a loaded gun
psychological, and philosophical

The Return of the King, in a life-or-
in the house next door …

thought of its time.

death quest to end the spread of

Who knows who might
evil forces across Middle-earth.

be the target of the
well-read man?

THE LORD OF THE RINGS

Fahrenheit 451

Ray Bradbury

(1954–1955), J. R. R. TOLKIEN

PEDRO PÁRAMO

(1955), JUAN RULFO

English writer and academic Tolkien

(1892–1973) helped to redevelop the

Influencing writers such as Gabriel
fantasy genre with the three-volume García Márquez and José Saramago, sequel to his children’s book The

Pedro Páramo by Mexican author

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288 FURTHER READING

Yasar Kemal

MEMED, MY HAWK
openly condemn consumer
capitalism, homophobia, racism, and

(1955), YASAR KEMAL
cultural hegemony in the US. The

Born in Gökçedam, Turkey,
book’s publisher was charged with
in 1923, Kemal experienced

Kemal’s first full novel, Memed,
obscenity, but won the case, which
childhood hardships that may

My Hawk—originally titled Ince
only served to increase demand for
have contributed to his later

Memed (“Memed, the Slim”)—was
the book and boost circulation both
urge to speak out on behalf
the first Turkish-language book to
in the US and across the world.

of the dispossessed. He was
achieve international fame. The
blinded in one eye as a child,
and suffered the tragedy of
first volume in a series of four, it
witnessing his father’s murder
follows the troubled story of young

DOCTOR ZHIVAGO
at the age of five. He first met

Anatolian Memed, who runs from

(1957), BORIS PASTERNAK
with literary acclaim with his
his abusers with his loved one
short stories and novels, which

Hatche, loses her, and joins a band

The internationally acclaimed novel
he wrote in the 1950s and 60s
of brigands. He returns to his

Doctor Zhivago by Russian writer
while working as a journalist.

mother and hometown to challenge Pasternak (1890–1960) is a thought-He also wrote ballads and
the abusive landowner who caused
provoking investigation of the
children’s books. Kemal was

Hatche’s death, and discovers that

Russian Communist Party between
awarded 38 literary prizes
his story has only just begun.

the revolution of 1905 and World
throughout his career, and

War I. It had to be published in Italy
was nominated for the Nobel

Prize in 1973. He died in 2015.

THE DEVIL TO PAY
due to censorship by the Russian
government, which also removed the

Key works

IN THE BACKLANDS

Nobel Prize awarded to Pasternak.

(1956), JOÃO GUIMARÃES ROSA

The story is told through multiple

1954 The Drumming Out
characters—centered around Yuri

1955 Memed, My Hawk

A major work of South American

Zhivago—as they adapt to the new

(see right, above)

literature, The Devil to Pay in the
political reality of their country. It

1969 They Burn The Thistles

Backlands, by Brazilian writer
deals with the regime’s misguided

João Guimarães Rosa (1908–67), is
attempts to impose conformity and
narrated by ex-mercenary Riobaldo
its misreadings of socialist ideals,

Juan Rulfo (1917–86) is a surreal,
as a long and continuous tale, with
as well as the characters’ struggles
supernatural, and enigmatic
no section breaks. It is the story of
in their attempts to deal with and
story of grief, haunting memories,
the narrator’s life, his encounters
overcome the alienation, loneliness,
and deeply fraught relationships.

with turncoat ranchers and other
and coldness of communist Russia.

Through nonlinear storytelling,
brigands, and the devil himself,
the blurring of events, dreams,
as they all cross paths, literally and
and hallucinations, the reader is
metaphorically, in the outback of

LA JALOUSIE
dragged into the confusion of the
the Brazilian state Minas Gerais.

(1957), ALAIN ROBBE-GRILLET
narrator Juan Preciado. He tells
of his return to the ghost town

An experimental French nouveau
of Comala after his mother’s

HOWL AND OTHER POEMS roman (new novel), La Jalousie by death to fulfill her last wish—to

(1956), ALLEN GINSBERG

Robbe-Grillet (1922–2008) features a
find his father, Pedro Páramo. Juan
narrator who is effectively absent—
is shocked to discover the extent

The first and most significant
although his presence is implied—
of Páramo’s influence in the town.

collection by American poet
from the events he describes. He

As the narrative unfolds, Páramo

Ginsberg (1926–97), and the most
spies, out of jealousy, on his wife
is revealed as protagonist and
influential for the beat generation
through a “jalousie,” a type of
antagonist of the story, holding
movement. Containing among other window. Scenes are repeated the power of life and death over
poems the epic “Howl,” Ginsberg’s
multiple times, with some of the

Comala and its inhabitants.

pieces are raw and emotional, and
details changed. Ambiguous and

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POSTWAR WRITING 289
modern governmental procedures,
health system. It is often seen as a
basing many of his observations
critique of this type of institution,
on his native Turkey. This major
as well as of other systems of

Turkish-language novel recounts
control in American society.

the protagonist’s personal struggles

She begins serving: the

(as well as those of the secondary

Cognac … then the soda,
characters he interacts with) to

A CLOCKWORK ORANGE
and finally three transparent
adapt to the Eurasian postwar

(1962), ANTHONY BURGESS
ice cubes, each of which
reality, and to be at peace with the
imprisons a bundle of silver
changing nature of modern times.

In this dystopian novel, Burgess

(1917–93) takes his observations of
needles in its heart.

La Jalousie

Alain Robbe-Grillet

ONE DAY IN THE LIFE
the changing youth cultures present
in Britain in the 1960s to disturbing

OF IVAN DENISOVICH
extremes. The reader follows the

(1962), ALEKSANDR SOLZHENITSYN teenage narrator Alex in his exploits of “ultraviolence,” depravity, and

An active critic of the totalitarian
drug use, told in both English and
government ruling over his native
the Russian-influenced teen slang

Russia, Solzhenitsyn (1918–2008)

known as “Nadsat.” The authorities
fragmented, the work is an example wrote this, his first literary work, attempt to reform Alex through an
of the author’s experimentation with to openly condemn Stalin’s rule.

experimental type of aversion
the novel form; the reader is left to

The book recounts a day in the life
therapy, no matter what the cost to
interpret the story for themselves.

of a wrongly condemned labor-
his mental state; the final chapter,
camp prisoner, Ivan Denisovich,
cut from US editions until the 1980s,
and the nature of the punishments,
seems to show some redemption for

A HOUSE FOR MR. BISWAS hardships, and horrors that he

Alex. The satirical novel spawned

(1961), V. S. NAIPAUL
endures. The underlying message,
an extremely successful and equally
however, is one of solidarity, loyalty, controversial cinematic adaptation The first novel by Trinidad-born
and humanity among the prisoners, in 1971 by Stanley Kubrick, which British writer Naipaul (1932–) to
who only survive from day to day
helped to increase the popularity of
achieve international acclaim, A
by working together.

and interest in the book.

House For Mr. Biswas draws on the
author’s experiences of growing up
in the Caribbean. Mohun Biswas

ONE FLEW OVER THE
strives toward his goal of owning

CUCKOO’S NEST
his own house, to provide a home

(1962), KEN KESEY
for his family and escape from his

If he can only perform good
overbearing in-laws. The book lays

One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
or only perform evil, then he
bare the inequalities of colonialism, by American writer Kesey (1935–
is a clockwork orange …

and exposes the tensions between

2001) is a novel set in an institution
an organism lovely with
individual and familial life.

for the mentally ill in Oregon, and is
colour and juice but … only

based on the author’s own time as
a clockwork toy to be wound
a staff member at a similar facility.

THE TIME REGULATION
up by God or the Devil.

Although the novel has been well

A Clockwork Orange
received in most quarters, it has

INSTITUTE

Anthony Burgess
also been subject to bans. Kesey’s

(1962), AHMET HAMDI TANPINAR
best-known book, it highlights the

Tanpinar (1901–62) wrote The Time humanity—and in some cases, Regulation Institute as a critique
cruelty—behind the individuals,
of the excessive bureaucracy in
from patients to staff, in the mental-

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290 FURTHER READING

THE DEATH OF
of her own identity as a woman,

The text is littered with cultural
descends into a worsening mental
and social references to popular

ARTEMIO CRUZ
state, eventually ending up in a
music, literature, and art.

(1962), CARLOS FUENTES
hospital for the mentally ill and being
treated with electroshock therapy.

One of the novels that helped bring

WIDE SARGASSO SEA

Latin American literature to wider

(1966), JEAN RHYS
international recognition, The

THE TIME OF THE HERO

Death of Artemio Cruz by Mexican

(1963), MARIO VARGAS LLOSA

A powerful novel by Dominica-born
author Fuentes (1928–2012) is a

British writer Jean Rhys (1890–1979),
recollection of the life of fictional

The heavily censored literary début

Wide Sargasso Sea explores feminist
main character Artemio Cruz, as he of Peruvian Nobel Prize winner and postcolonial themes through
lies on his deathbed. Through the

Mario Vargas Llosa (1936–), The
relationships of power, especially
memories of Cruz, the reader joins

Time of the Hero is an experimental between men and women. The story, his greedy family, overbearing
work of fiction. Employing multiple
a prequel to Charlotte Bronte’s Jane
priest, and not-too-loyal assistant in perspectives and a complex, Eyre (1847), follows white Creole
revisiting over 60 years of Mexican
nonlinear chronology, the story is

Antoinette and her troubled life
history, politics, and religion,
set in a real-life military academy in in Jamaica, as she is controlled, including the country’s foreign

Lima. It exposes the techniques
oppressed, then dismissed as a mad
policies, corruption, and betrayals.

used to train cadets, turning them
woman by her English husband,
into loyal, silent, hypermasculine
before being forced to relocate to

THE BELL JAR
drones, never questioning or

England under the name of Bertha.

challenging imposed structures of

(1963), SYLVIA PLATH
authority. In turn, these practices
are not solely seen as issues of the

This semiautobiographical novel by academy, but also of more general American poet Sylvia Plath (1932–
military structures, and of a state

63) retells events in the author’s life, that relies on military power to We stared at each other, blood
and was initially published under
maintain control—such as in Peru
on my face, tears on hers. It
a pseudonym. The text is made up
from the 1930s to the 1980s. The
was as if I saw myself. Like
of multiple flashbacks to protagonist authorities attempted to prevent the in a looking-glass.

Esther’s earlier life, as she interns
novel’s publication, condemning it

Wide Sargasso Sea
for a renowned magazine in New
as a plot by neighboring Ecuador to

Jean Rhys

York one summer. Esther, in search
denigrate the nation of Peru.

THE CRYING OF LOT 49

(1966), THOMAS PYNCHON

Written by New Yorker and author

I felt very still and very empty of speculative fiction Pynchon (see THE MASTER AND

… moving dully along
p.296), this novella was hailed as
in the middle of the

MARGARITA
both a prime example and a harsh
surrounding hullabaloo.

(1966–67), MIKHAIL BULGAKOV
parody of postmodern fiction and

The Bell Jar
psychoanalysis. It follows Oedipa

Written by Russian author Bulgakov

Sylvia Plath

Maas and her discovery of a

(1891–1940) between 1928 and 1940
worldwide conspiracy rooted in
but only published almost 30 years
a centuries-old feud between two
later, The Master and Margarita is
postal services, one real (“Thurn
set both in 1930s’ Moscow and—as
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“Master”—in Jerusalem at the time
of Christ. Through both story lines,

THE FRENCH LIEUTENANT’S responses to the violence of racism.

A powerful and influential literary
the book can be seen as a historical WOMAN
work as well as a candid memoir
validation of religious tenets, a

(1969), JOHN FOWLES
of Angelou’s early life in Arkansas
critique of overly bureaucratic rules,
from ages three to 16, the book
and a satire of the Soviet authorities, This popular and highly acclaimed explores issues of childhood, trauma,
catalyzed in the characters of
novel by British author John Fowles
and motherhood, and proclaims the

Professor Woland—an anarchic but

(1926–2005) is often labeled as a
power of belief in one’s self, and of
scholarly manifestation of Satan—
postmodern historical fiction. It
literature and the written word.

and his devilish entourage.

tells the story of naturalist Charles

Smithson and Sarah Woodruff, a
former governess, in a style that

CROW

THE ARMIES OF THE NIGHT comments upon Victorian romances, (1970), TED HUGHES

(1968), NORMAN MAILER
while dealing with topics such as
gender issues, history, science,

Often regarded as the most

Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The
and religion. The narrator, who
important collection of British poet

Armies of the Night: History as a
also becomes a character, allows

Ted Hughes (1930–98), Crow: From

Novel/The Novel as History, by
for multiple possible endings to
the Life and Songs of the Crow was
journalist, playwright, novelist, and the story, destabilizing the linear inspired by American artist Leonard
filmmaker Norman Mailer, was a
narrative of the texts it is imitating.

Baskin’s illustrations of the bird.

key work in the rise and acceptance

Some poems are traditional in style,
of creative nonfiction in the literary
landscape. The text is a historicized, I KNOW WHY THE
while others take more experimental
forms. They follow the character of
political, journalistic recollection of a

CAGED BIRD SINGS

Crow, weaving elements of world

Vietnam War protest in Washington, (1969), MAYA ANGELOU
mythologies and religions into an

DC, in 1967, interspersed with self-
ongoing epic folktale. While
reflections, novelizations, and

The first book of a seven-volume
incomplete—Hughes was unable to
personal thoughts on the subject
autobiography, I Know Why the
continue after the suicide of his
matter and the author himself.

Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou lover Assia Wevill in 1969—the (1928–2014)—the African-American ambitious collection is a noteworthy Pulitzer Prize winner and activist—
philosophical and literary reflection

SLAUGHTERHOUSE-FIVE
expresses the author’s changing
on mythology and the natural world.

(1969), KURT VONNEGUT

Norman Mailer
in the Philippines. In 1955 he

Written by American author
cofounded the political arts

Vonnegut (1922–2007),

Born in New Jersey, in 1923,
magazine The Village Voice. A

Slaughterhouse-Five or The

Mailer grew up in New York. He
cultural commentator and critic,

Children’s Crusade: A Duty-Dance
went to Harvard University at

Mailer also wrote biographies of
with Death is a key example of
the just 16 years old, initially to

Picasso, Lee Harvey Oswald, and
speculative fiction and surreal
study aeronautical engineering,

Marilyn Monroe. His creative
political satire. It meshes together
but soon became interested in
nonfiction, political activism,
time travel and its paradoxes, alien
writing. One of his stories won
and two Pulitzer prizes ensured
creatures, and semiautobiographical
a competition in 1941, which
his fame. He died in 2007.

notes about the author’s service in
led him to pursue writing

World War II, including the bombing
seriously—an ambition that he

Key works
of Dresden. The result is a critique of
argued (unsuccessfully) should
exempt him from military

1957 “The White Negro”

the horrors of war, the publishing
service. His first novel The

1968 The Armies of the Night
industry, and the status of literature,

Naked and the Dead (1948) is

(see left, above)

and is a thoughtful, almost comic,
based on his war experience

1979 The Executioner’s Song
meditation on death and mortality.

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CONTEMPORARY

LITERATURE

1970–PRESENT

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LITERATURE

1970–PRESENT

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294 INTRODUCTION

The photograph “Earthrise”

taken from the Apollo 8

Chairman Mao Zedong,

Salman Rushdie’s
manned spacecraft

China’s communist

Midnight’s Children
orbiting the moon, a year
leader, dies, bringing
tells the story of the

The fall of the
before the first moon
to an end the
partition of India

Berlin Wall
landing, becomes an iconic

Cultural Revolution
in the style of magic
symbolizes the end
image of our planet.

that began in 1966.

realism.

of the Cold War.

1968

1976

1981

1989

1973

1979

1987

1990

Thomas Pynchon’s

In the postmodern novel

Toni Morrison

St. Lucian poet Derek
long and complex

If on a Winter’s Night a
examines the

Walcott publishes
novel Gravity’s Rainbow

Traveler, by Italo Calvino,
psychological

Omeros, reinterpreting
combines science and
alternate passages are
effects of slavery

Homer’s Iliad in a
philosophy with elements
written in the second
in her novel Beloved.

postcolonial setting.

of high and low culture.

person—“you,” the reader.

Toward the end of the This was a period in which the first former outposts of empire, including 20th century, the world
generation of writers to have been
the Caribbean poet Derek Walcott
was becoming a smaller
born in nations that had gained
and the novelist V. S. Naipaul. In
place. The accelerating pace of
independence from the European

Canada, Australia, and South
technological advances, particularly empires came of age. Many writers Africa, where many people had
transportation and communications, admired the new techniques of resettled from the UK, British
brought about a globalization of
postmodernism that some South
influence on writing waned and
trade and cultures on a scale never

American authors had adopted
literature began to appear that
seen before. Political changes, most as a style, and especially the genre was recognizably of those nations.

noticeably the liberalization of
of magic realism. The English

New styles of writing were

Eastern European communist bloc
language still dominated the
also emerging in Asia, as writers
countries and the lifting of the Iron
literary world, however, and it was
sought to establish a national

Curtain, also helped foster ever-
people from the old British Empire
identity in a modern China after
greater international links.

who came to prominence in the
the upheaval of the Cultural

At the same time as nations
first wave of postcolonial literature.

Revolution, and in a Korea that was
around the globe developed their
now divided into an authoritarian
own distinct postcolonial cultures,

New national voices
north and a liberal south by the

Europe and North America became India produced authors such as 38th parallel.

influenced by multiculturalism,

Salman Rushdie and Vikram Seth
which led to a realization within
who, writing in English, portrayed

Multiculturalism
the West that its culture could no
the experiences of the new India

While European culture was losing
longer be considered a benchmark
after independence and partition.

its monopoly in its old colonies,
for the rest of the world.

Local voices also emerged in other
it was also being influenced by

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CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE 295

Vikram Seth’s

J. M. Coetzee’s

Love, jealousy, and

The Guest, by

In his novel Extremely
lengthy novel A
novel Disgrace
betrayal feature in

Hwang Sok-yong,

Loud and Incredibly

Suitable Boy uses
details the fall

Margaret Atwood’s
deals with the

Close, Jonathan Safran
four families to
from grace of a

The Blind Assassin,
aftermath of

Foer uses several
explore the internal
college lecturer in
which offers a new
fanatical hatred
experimental
conflicts of India
postapartheid
twist on gothic
and civil strife in
techniques to shed light
after independence.

South Africa.

fiction.

the Korean War.

on the 9/11 attacks.

1993

1999

2000

2001

2005

1995

2000

2001

2001

In his allegorical novel

White Teeth, by

Jonathan Franzen’s

Terrorists crash three

Blindness, Portuguese

Zadie Smith, tells the

The Corrections
passenger planes into
author José Saramago
story of two families
examines the hidden
the Pentagon and the
describes the social
in multicultural,
dysfunctions of a

“twin towers” of
turmoil that follows

20th-century London.

traditional family in
the World Trade
an imagined epidemic.

the American Midwest.

Center in New York.

rising numbers of immigrants from

In the US, however, issues of

“serious” and “popular” culture,
around the world. Many cities in
race and cultural assimilation had
while sophisticated computing and

Europe became cosmopolitan
a longer history. American society
telecommunications technologies
centers, attracting not only people
had long been based on the model
were the inspiration for novels such
in search of a new life and a better
of its European settlers’ homelands, as American author Thomas standard of living, but also writers
while a quite separate culture

Pynchon’s Gravity’s Rainbow.

and artists who still regarded
had developed among the African-

Magic realism in particular had

Europe as an intellectual center.

American descendants of slaves.

become a widely accepted genre,

Ironically, many writers who

Even after many of the political
yet new writing continued to draw
had helped to establish a literary
goals of the civil rights movement
upon older forms, such as in the
style in their homeland, such
had been achieved, racial tensions
allegorical satire of José Saramago
as Rushdie, Seth, and Naipaul,
persisted and this was reflected in
and the metafiction of Italo Calvino.

had chosen to settle in England,
a distinctive body of literature by

While English is now a second
where their presence inspired
writers such as Toni Morrison.

language for numerous people
younger writers, many of whom
across the world, many novels are
were the offspring of immigrants

International literature
also availabile in translation. The
from the Indian subcontinent,

Alongside the development of new
modern readership is international,

Africa, the Caribbean, and
national voices, a global trend of
and authors—no longer restricted
elsewhere. Such authors described
adopting postmodern stylistic
by regional boundaries—are quick
the complex experiences of living
techniques gave much of the era’s
to reflect on ideas and issues that
in multicultural cities, with Zadie
literature an international appeal.

have global resonance, such as the

Smith exploring the integration

The counterculture of the 1960s
dysfunctions in modern society and
of immigrants into British society.

broke down the barriers between
the threat posed by terrorism. ■

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OUR HISTORY IS AN

AGGREGATE OF LAST

MOMENTS

GRAVITY’S RAINBOW (1973), THOMAS PYNCHON

IN CONTEXT

FOCUS

The term “encyclopedic Rainbow, set at the end of novel” refers to a capacious, World War II, Thomas Pynchon complex work of fiction that interweaves wartime secret
includes swathes of specialized
operations with pop culture,

The encyclopedic novel
information on subjects ranging
surrealism, perverse eroticism,

BEFORE
from science to the arts to history.

rocket science, and mathematics.

1851 Herman Melville’s

It attempts to create, through a

Moby-Dick is the first great
virtuoso effort of imagination, a

Determinism and disorder
fictional world beyond the reach

Within a formidably complex plot,
encylopedic American novel.

of linear storytelling. In his novel
with shifts in time and around 400

1963 Thomas Pynchon’s debut

Moby-Dick, Herman Melville
characters, the novel is a display
novel V. anticipates Gravity’s
combined, among other things,
of prodigious erudition. Its themes

Rainbow in its panoramic and
biblical and Shakespearean
include paranoia, determinism,
information-packed scope.

references, facts about whales,
death, and entropy—a term from
and realistic descriptions of life
thermodynamics that indicates

AFTER
on board a ship. In Gravity’s
a steady decline into disorder.

1996 Dealing with addiction,
family relationships, tennis,
entertainment, advertising,

Thomas Pynchon
his fiction (especially Gravity’s

Quebecois separatism, and

Rainbow). He spent some time
film theory, the encyclopedic

Born in 1937 on Long Island, New in Mexico before moving to York, Thomas Pynchon counts

California. After Gravity’s
novel Infinite Jest, by American
among his ancestors the founder Rainbow his fiction became writer David Foster Wallace,
of Springfield, Massachusetts.

less stylistically challenging
has 388 endnotes.

Pynchon attended the high
and more humanistic and
political. Pynchon is known for

1997
school in Oyster Bay, and went

Using baseball—and one
on to study engineering physics
being protective of his privacy,
baseball in particular—as its
at Cornell University, but left
and shy of media coverage.

central conceit, American
before graduating to serve in the
author Don DeLillo’s complex

US Navy. He returned to Cornell

Other key works
novel Underworld stretches
to study English. In the early
from the 1950s to the 1990s

1960s Pynchon worked as a

1966 The Crying of Lot 49
and involves both fictional and
technical writer at Boeing in

1984 Slow Learner (stories)

historical characters.

Seattle; he would later draw

2006 Against the Day
upon his experiences there in

2013 Bleeding Edge

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See also: Moby-Dick 138–45 ■ Les Misérables 166–67 ■ War and Peace 178–81 ■ Ulysses 214–21 ■ Catch-22 276 ■

Infinite Jest 337

The sheer scale and complexity of

Gravity’s Rainbow make it notoriously

Calm/restlessness
resistant to interpretation. It is possible
to tease out themes by looking at the
symbolic implications of the rainbow,
and their opposites, and pinpointing
their relevance to the novel.

The rainbow implies calm after a downpour. However, Pynchon wartime and postwar world is perpetually restless.

’s

Harmony/entropy
rder in the novel is constantly breaking down. Energ

O
y
is expended but leaks away, through entropy.

Unf nished/complete
he rainbow can be both an ar

T
c
and a half-hidden circle.

The central symbol in the book is
inventor of an “erotic” plastic from
imaginary friend experience adult
the German V-2 rocket, an image
which a capsule in rocket 00000 is
racism, after which their dreams
both of transcendence and of a
made. When the rocket is launched, “could never again be entirely frightening, unknown future. The
a young boy, Gottfried, is strapped
safe.” Gravity’s Rainbow traces
book’s opening words describe the
inside this capsule: he is the sex
a parallel loss of innocence on
sound of a V-2 hitting London: “A
slave of the book’s Nazi arch villain, a massive scale, and Pynchon screaming comes across the sky.”

who by sacrificing Gottfried seeks
no doubt relished the idea that

Symmetrically, at the end of the
to transcend his mortality.

reading itself could no longer be
novel, a rocket is about to detonate.

Such bizarre scenes are shot
entirely safe after his virtuoso

In between, numerous plots and
through with a profusion of ideas,
feat of fictional black magic. ■
subplots propel the characters
including allusions to science
through a succession of wildly
and philosophy. The reader, like
improbable scenarios, in which

Slothrop, struggles to find meaning.

paranoia and fear of death are
often rendered with black humor.

Paranoid truth seeking

The book’s main plot lines

All systems by which we might
revolve around the quest by several
make sense of our lives, whether
characters to uncover the secret of
they are scientific, mystical,
a V-2 rocket numbered 00000. One
religious, or political, are described
such character is an American
at a certain point in the novel as

GI, Tyrone Slothrop, whose sexual
paranoid. Against human attempts
encounters in London occur at the
at rationalization, Pynchon posits
precise sites where V-2 rockets will
a complex reality in which events
fall. Slothrop later rescues a Dutch
occur according to inscrutable
girl named Katje, who is a double
laws—while perhaps entertaining
agent, from an octopus conditioned the idea that true paranoia lies in to attack her. The octopus has been precisely such a world view.

The V-2 rocket is a key presence
in Gravity’s Rainbow, which features
trained by Laszlo Jamf, who had

In his short story “The
a project to assemble one, while
conducted Pavlovian experiments

Secret Integration” (1964), white
embracing a profusion of chaos,
on Slothrop as a child and is the
schoolchildren with a black
perversity, and paranoia.

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YOU ARE ABOUT TO

BEGIN READING ITALO

CALVINO’S NEW NOVEL

IF ON A WINTER’S NIGHT A TRAVELER (1979),

ITALO CALVINO

IN CONTEXT

FOCUS

The term metafiction work, an artifact of the author.

was coined by American

While largely associated with the
writer William H. Gass in
fiction of postmodern writers, many

1970 and refers to a fictional form of examples exist from earlier eras, Metafiction
writing in which a series of literary
including the 17th-century epic

BEFORE
tools are employed by writers to
of Cervantes’, Don Quixote, and

1615 In the second part of the
draw attention to how fiction and
the 18th-century hilarity of
novel Don Quixote, by Spanish
reality interrelate, emphasizing the

Laurence Sterne’s The Life and
nature of the text as a constructed

Opinions of Tristram Shandy.

writer Miguel de Cervantes,
the eponymous fictional hero
is aware that the first part

A novel about novels
had been written about him.

and points of view, Calvino’s

If on a winter’s

1759–67
book interweaves excerpts of

Anglo-Irish novelist
night a
imagined books from different

Laurence Sterne’s fictional
traveler
contemporary fiction genres;
autobiography Tristram
the titles of these 10 books

Shandy contains so many

O
form a complete sentence.

utside the tOwn
digressions that the author

Of MalbOrk
is not born until Volume III.

1944 Argentine writer Jorge

Leaning from

Luis Borges’ Ficciones plays
the steep
with the nature of fiction in
slope
a series of enigmatic and

WITHOUT FEAR
mesmerizing short stories.

OF WIND OR

AFTER

VERTIGO

1987 American author Paul

Auster’s The New York Trilogy

Looks down in
the gathering
twists the form of the
shadow
detective novel and makes
the reader question the tropes

IN A NETWORK
of the genre.

OF LINES THAT

ENLACE

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CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE 299

See also: Don Quixote 76–81 ■ Ficciones 245 ■ Hopscotch 274–75 ■

The French Lieutenant’s Woman 291 ■ Midnight’s Children 300–05

Italo Calvino’s If on a Winter’s
is fractured by further metafictional

Night a Traveler is acknowledged
reflection: the reader is questioned
as one of the metafiction novel’s
about their reaction to the book,
finest modern incarnations, with
and thereby invoked as one of the
a mesmerizing narrative plot that
novel’s protagonists.

not only challenges traditional

A distinct structural form runs
narrative forms but also asks the
through the novel. Each chapter
reader to interrogate the actual
is in two parts: the first is written
process of reading.

in second-person form (“you”) and

As with the finest examples of
concerned with the very process
metafictional texts, the opening
of reading; the second part, being

Italo Calvino
words of If on a Winter’s Night
the beginning of a new book, is
a Traveler immediately demand
seemingly an original narrative.

Italo Calvino was born in
that the reader undertake a

The influence of the Oulipo—

Cuba in 1923 and was two
process preparatory to actually
a group of French writers who
when he moved to Italy with
his parents, who were
commencing the “story”: “You
experimented with new and
returning home. Having
are about to begin reading Italo
demanding literary forms, which
settled in Turin during World

Calvino’s new novel, If on a winter’s Calvino joined in 1968—is evident War II, Calvino fought for the
night a traveler. Relax. Concentrate. in these structural constraints.

Italian Resistance, before

Dispel every other thought. Let the
turning to journalism at the
world around you fade.”

A narrative maze
war’s end, writing for the

The self-reflection by Calvino

If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler
communist paper L’Unità. Not
in the first sentence is a typically
introduces the reader to imaginary
long after the war, in 1947, his
metafictional device. Half the
writers of fictional works that do
first novel, The Path to the
first chapter is a guide to “you”

not exist, to fabricated biographies,

Spiders’ Nests, was published.

preparing for the very real task of
and even to countries that are

Calvino left the Italian
reading this book; it is a somewhat
invented—all are common traits

Communist Party in 1957,
mesmeric world—reminiscent of
of metafiction. The reader is
after the Soviet invasion of
the metafictional playfulness of
guided into a narrative maze

Hungary. In 1964, he married

Jorge Luis Borges’ work—as though by a masterful storyteller—one Esther Judith Singer, resettled
in Rome, and focused on the

Calvino has some insight into the
who delights in playing eccentric
short stories that would form
processes of each reader’s mind as
postmodern games. The experience
the collection Cosmicomics.

they embark on reading his book.

is utterly captivating. ■

Calvino moved with
his family to Paris in 1968,

A fantasy of fictions
where he joined the group

After the meditative beginning,
of innovative writers known

Calvino proceeds to plunge the
as Oulipo, short for Ouvroir
reader into what appears to be a
de littérature potentielle
more traditional narrative plot. A

(“workshop of potential
character (“you”) keeps starting

One reads alone, even
literature”). He died in 1985
a book, but due to various
in another’s presence.

from a cerebral haemorrhage.

circumstances cannot continue;

If on a Winter’s Night
in his quest to finish the books

Other key works
a Traveler
he meets a female reader who he

1957 The Baron in the Trees

(“you”) falls in love with. He also

1959 The Nonexistent Knight
discovers a conspiracy to render

1965 Cosmicomics
all books false and meaningless.

1972 Invisible Cities

This rather strange narrative tale

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TO UNDERSTAND JUST

ONE LIFE

YOU HAVE TO SWALLOW

THE WORLD

MIDNIGHT’S CHILDREN (1981),

SALMAN RUSHDIE

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302 MIDNIGHT’S CHILDREN

IN CONTEXT

FOCUS

Magic realism is a literary
style in which magical or
surreal elements appear
in an otherwise realistic and

Magic realism goes global
traditional narrative structure and

BEFORE
setting. Originally used to describe

Memory’s truth … selects,

1935 A Universal History of
the work of certain German artists
eliminates, alters, exaggerates,
in the 1920s, the term was then

Infamy by Jorge Luis Borges
minimizes, glorifies, and
applied to literature, in particular
is published, often considered
vilifies also; but in the end it
to the works emanating from Latin
the first work of magic realism.

creates its own reality.

America in the mid-20th century.

Midnight’s Children

1959 Günter Grass writes The

The Cuban Alejo Carpentier and

Tin Drum, founding magic
the Argentinian Jorge Luis Borges
realism in German literature.

are often considered the precursors
of the form, while the Colombian

1967 One Hundred Years of

Gabriel García Márquez brought

Solitude by Gabriel García
it to its peak in the boom years

Márquez takes magic realism
of the 1960s and ’70s. From Latin
the strange phenomena seem
to new heights of wonder.

America, magic realism spread
completely normal. Plots are often

AFTER
around the world, with a number
labyrinthine, and the world may

1982 Chilean-American author
of American and European writers
be depicted in exaggerated detail

Isabel Allende’s first novel, The
adopting the style, or elements of it, or color, adding to the surreal in their work. In Salman Rushdie’s
complexity of the novel’s vision.

House of the Spirits, becomes

Midnight’s Children, magic realism

In some respects, magic realism
a global best seller.

merges with postcolonial themes
requires the reader to take on a

1984 British writer Angela
and Indian references to give the
more active role than in other forms

Carter writes the magic realist
novel its unique flavor.

of fiction, because the elements of

Nights at the Circus.

the novel are disconcerting, and

Aspects of magic
may impact the sense of reality

2002 Haruki Murakami

Magic realist writers depict bizarre, experienced by the reader.

publishes the dreamlike novel
inexplicable, or overtly supernatural

Much magic realism also

Kafka on the Shore.

events alongside ordinary events
contains a metafictional aspect,
in the real world in such a way that
which makes the reader question

Salman Rushdie

Salman Rushdie was born in
great controversy when Iranian

Bombay (now Mumbai) in 1947
leader Ayatollah Khomeini
to Muslim parents of Kashmiri
issued a fatwa (religious ruling)

descent, who moved to Karachi in
calling for the assassination of

Pakistan soon after the partition

Rushdie for blasphemy. Rushdie
of India. He was educated in India went into hiding in Britain. In and Britain, attending Cambridge

2000, he settled in New York

University, before becoming an
and has continued to write on
advertising copywriter. Midnight’s matters of religion and society.

Children, Rushdie’s second novel,

He has been married four times
brought him worldwide attention,
and was knighted in 2007.

winning the Booker Prize in 1981
and the Best of the Bookers in

Other key works

2008, and establishing Rushdie
as a leading light of the Indian

1983 Shame
diaspora. The appearance of

1988 The Satanic Verses

The Satanic Verses (1988) drew

2005 Shalimar the Clown

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CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE 303

See also: The Tin Drum 270–71 ■ One Hundred Years of Solitude 280–85 ■ A Suitable Boy 314–17 ■

The House of the Spirits 334 ■ Love in the Time of Cholera 335

Magic realism goes global

In the first half of the

20th century, Latin

From the mid-20th

Postcolonial, hybrid layers

American writers such
century, the style is
deepen the scope of the
as Jorge Luis Borges lead
named magic realism
form, as ever more
the construction of a
and gains popularity across
complex and fantastical
new style of literature
the globe, from Colombia to
examples are offered by late
that merges the realistic

Germany to Japan.

20th-century figures such
with the fantastical.

as Salman Rushdie.

the way in which they read the
take place as monumental political

India. In the opening lines of the
work. Metafiction often includes a
shifts are happening with the
book Saleem recounts: “I was born
self-referential narrator, and stories
removal of British authority over
in the city of Bombay … on August
within stories: both devices are

India after some 200 years.

15th, 1947. … On the stroke of
present in Midnight’s Children.

At the beginning of the novel,
midnight..” As Saleem says, “at the

These manipulations of reality—
the main protagonist Saleem Sinai
precise instant of India’s arrival at
magic tricks within the narrative—
is approaching his 31st birthday
independence, I tumbled forth into
make demands on the reader and
and is convinced that he is dying.

the world.” He then goes on to
ensure their role is an active one.

The book is ostensibly the story of
explain, in broad hints that cannot

Saleem’s life—as well as the lives
yet be fully understood by the

The birth of a nation
of his parents and grandparents—
reader, the premise of the book: “I

Politically, magic realist texts
narrated by Saleem himself to his
had been mysteriously handcuffed
often embody an implicit critical
companion, Padma; but it is also
to history, my destinies indissolubly
position against the dominant
the story of the creation of modern
chained to those of my country.” ❯❯
ruling elite, and as such they
are generally subversive in their
stance. In Midnight’s Children,
the fusion of Rushdie’s magic
realism with postcolonial issues
weaves new and vibrant threads
into an already complex genre.

Rushdie sets the work partly in
the vast, sprawling city of Bombay

(now Mumbai)—once a jewel in

Britain’s colonial crown and now at
a crucial moment of history. Events

Mumbai is a densely populated city,
teeming with all forms of human life.

Rushdie uses rich, vivid language to
evoke its myriad elements—squalor,
beauty, pathos, despair, and humor.

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304 MIDNIGHT’S CHILDREN

This gift allows him to discover
that there were a total of 1,001

“Midnight Children,” who were
born in the hour after midnight on

India’s Independence Day. They all
have marvelous superpowers, with
those who were born closest to the
actual second of partition having
the greatest powers. By the time

Saleem discovers their existence,

420 of the children have already
died, and only 581 remain.

Saleem befriends another of the
children, Parvati, who can perform
magic; another of their number,

Shiva, who is at once Saleem’s
counterpart and nemesis, has
incredibly strong knees and a gift
for warfare. Parvati and Shiva
are named after Hindu gods,
thereby illustrating the religious

India’s Independence Day on
historical events of India and
underpinning of India as a cultural

August 15, 1947, was an occasion for

Pakistan, represents his attempt
entity and adding a further layer of
celebration, yet chaos soon struck, as
to understand all the elements
allegory to the novel.

Muslims and Hindus migrated between that make him who he is.

Using his telepathic powers to
the new nations of India and Pakistan.

broadcast their thoughts, Saleem

The many and the one
arranges a nightly “conference” of

As the narrative unfolds, it soon

Saleem is marked by his large,
the Midnight Children. There
becomes clear that every political
cucumber-like, and constantly
are the same number of children—
event appears to be driven by—
running nose. At the age of 10,

581—as there are members in the
or be driving—one or more events
he discovers that he has telepathic
lower house of the Indian
in the life of Saleem.

powers (a not uncommon trait
parliament, adding political

Saleem’s arrival at the exact
of magic realist protagonists).

symbolism to their meetings. Their
moment of India’s independence
conference is a model of successful
is wildly celebrated by the Indian
pluralism, reflecting the way the
media. India’s first prime minister,
new Indian government sought to

Jawaharlal Nehru, sends him a
collate the disparate elements of its
letter congratulating him on the
vast country. Rushdie implies that

“happy accident” of his moment of
troubles arise when such multiplicity
birth, and identifies him with the

… perhaps, if one wishes
becomes suppressed.

nation—a role that Saleem adopts,
to remain an individual
seeing himself as an important
in the midst of the

The rush of history
historical figure. His life is seen as
teeming multitudes,

As the tale of Midnight’s Children
closely tied to the fate of the newly
one must make
unfolds, Rushdie shifts his story
born India; the bloodshed that
oneself grotesque.

across the subcontinent, employing
ensues directly after partition and

Midnight’s Children
the narrative of his characters’ tales
the fierce conflicts that occur over
to tell the history of India, and so
the following years are echoed
too of Pakistan and Kashmir.

by the concurrent violence within

In 1962, border tensions
his own family. Saleem’s narration
between China and India erupted
of his family’s story, and of the
into war; it was short-lived, but

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CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE 305

India was defeated and in the

Gandhi will continue to die at the
novel, public morale “drains away.”

wrong time.” In this novel, the truth

In Saleem’s life, as conflict with
is malleable, subjective, and far

China intensifies, his nose gets
from absolute.

ever more stuffed until, on the day

The end of the book returns to
the Chinese army halts its advance,

Who what am I?

the present day, as Saleem finishes
he has an operation to drain his

My answer: I am the sum
telling his story to Padma. Despite
sinuses. Once again, the events in
total of everything that
his own prophecy that his body will

Saleem’s life seem to be entwined
went before me, of all I
crack apart, he agrees to marry her
with the wider events of history.

have been seen done, of
on his 31st birthday—which is also

However, with his nose finally
everything done-to-me.

Independence Day. To the last, his
clear, Saleem finds that he has

Midnight’s Children
history is intermingled with India’s.

lost his mind-reading powers. In
compensation, for the first time

Magical mystery tour
in his life he has a sense of smell.

For the reader, Midnight’s Children

And this itself is another kind of
is a complex and mesmerizing
superpower, since he can detect
journey, a mystery tour through the
not only smells but also emotions
back streets to the heart of modern
and lies—“the heady but quick-
and a poor Hindu woman who died

India. Time speeds up and slows
fading perfume of new love, and
in childbirth. So, paradoxically, the
down or is nonlinear. Fate is
also the deeper, longer-lasting

“destiny” he is fulfilling was that
frequently invoked, futures are
pungency of hate.”

of another child; yet because he
foretold, prophecies are listened
was brought up as Saleem Sinai,
to and expected to come true.

Memory, truth, destiny
he considers that that is who he is:

The bizarre and the magical are

The novel is a kaleidoscope of
it is his truth.

commonplace and real. Weaving

Saleem’s memories, and yet the

Even historical facts cannot be
together all these elements of
distinction between true and
regarded as unassailable. Saleem
magic realism, Rushdie creates
untrue is never clear, even making
notes that he recorded the wrong
a dense and vibrant tapestry full
allowances for the outright magical
date for the death of Mahatma
of violence, politics, and wonder
elements that form part of the

Gandhi, and yet he is content to
to tell the tale of the early years
book’s tapestry. Some characters
let the error stand: “in my India,
of independent India. ■
are overt liars, while in many
cases Saleem admits that he
has embroidered certain things in
order to convey an emotional truth
rather than a strictly factual one.

Early on in the narrative,

Saleem confesses that he was
switched at birth with another
baby who was born at the same
time. This baby was Shiva, while

Saleem’s real parents, far from
being the relatively rich Muslims
who brought him up, are a colonial

Englishman, William Methwold,

Saleem’s friends Shiva and Parvati
are named respectively after the great

Hindu god of destruction and the
goddess of love, and these attributes
are reflected in their roles in the book.

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306

IN CONTEXT

FREEING YOURSELF

FOCUS

Contemporary African-

WAS ONE THING

American literature

BEFORE

CLAIMING OWNERSHIP 1953 James Baldwin’s Go Tell It on the Mountain captures the
pain of life in a racist society.

OF THAT FREED SELF 1976 Alex Haley’s novel Roots: The Saga of an American

WAS ANOTHER

Family traces family history
back to slavery.

1982 Alice Walker reveals the

BELOVED (1987), TONI MORRISON
hardships of African-American
women’s lives in the 1930s in

The Color Purple.

AFTER

1997 Junot Díaz’s sizzling
prose paints a picture of the

Dominican-American diaspora
in his story collection Drown.

1998 Edwidge Danticat
recounts the 1937 massacre
of Haitian cane workers in

The Farming of Bones.

By the end of the 20th
century, African-American
writing had grown from the
slave narratives of 150 years earlier
into a major canon of American
literature. From educational works
such as Booker T. Washington’s

Up From Slavery (1901), through
the vibrant literature of the 1920s

Harlem Renaissance, it reached
a high point with Ralph Ellison’s
philosophical novel Invisible Man

(1952). During the late 1950s and
the 1960s, young black writers
were fueled by the civil rights
and Black Power movements.

Toni Morrison’s novel Beloved
emerged during a new flourishing
of black writing that began in the

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CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE 307

See also: Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass 126–27 ■ Their Eyes Were Watching God 235 ■ Invisible Man 259 ■

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings 291 ■ Roots: The Saga of an American Family 333

1970s, when authors such as Alex

Haley, Maya Angelou, and Alice

Walker sought new ways to
explore race, identity, and the
legacies of slavery. This affirmation
of the power of black writing has
continued into the present day with

“hyphenated American” authors,
including Dominican-American

Junot Díaz and Haitian-American

Edwidge Danticat.

Memory and history

In her early novels— The Bluest

Eye, Sula, and Song of Solomon—

Morrison focused on the African-

American experience within her
own lifetime, offering an original
voice on themes such as moral and
spiritual revival, white standards

Inspired by the real-life case of

Freed slaves, such as these men
of beauty, and sisterhood. Her

Margaret Garner, a fugitive slave
photographed during the American

Pulitzer Prize-winning novel
who killed her baby after she

Civil War, were technically free, but they

Beloved is regarded as one of the
was recaptured by marshals in
were still affected by segregation and
the psychological aftermath of slavery.

most influential works in African-

Cincinnati, Ohio, Beloved is a

American literature. Dedicated to
piece of social history with a strong
the “Sixty Million and more” who
political agenda, but it undermines
reader to engage with a retelling
are believed to have died on slave
expectations of its genre with its
of history that is built on an easy
ships and in captivity, it reclaims
use of expressionist fantasy and
intimacy with the supernatural.

the ascendancy of memory and
rhetorical stylization. Morrison also

The book begins in 1873 in
history in black identity, resolving
asserts her roots and her pride in

Cincinnati, Ohio. Slavery has
symbolically issues that are still

African folklore by incorporating
been abolished but racism is still
swept aside in present-day reality.

the cultural focus, origins, and
rife. Sethe, a former slave, and her
mythology of black Americans

18-year-old daughter Denver live in
into the novel. She employs the
a home haunted by a spiteful baby
rhythms and speech patterns
spirit named 124, after the number
of African-American discourse,
of their house on Bluestone Road.

not as a simple pastiche of black

Sethe’s two sons ran away years
speech but in a lyrical, incantatory
ago and her mother-in-law, Baby

Not a house in the
voice, often making use of poetic

Suggs, is dead. The arrival of Paul
country ain’t packed to
repetitions at the beginning and

D, who lived as a slave with Sethe
its rafters with some
the end of interior monologues:

at Sweet Home, Kentucky, starts
dead Negro’s grief.

“Beloved is my sister,” “She’s mine,
a process that unlocks the past.

Beloved

Beloved. She’s mine,” “I am Beloved
and she is mine.” The author invents The past in the present a feminine style of narrative built

Morrison’s time-traveling story slips
around motherhood, sisterhood,
back and forth between Sethe’s

Afro-Christian revivalism, tribal
present and events 20 years earlier,
rites, and ghosts. She asks the
when slaves fleeing north ❯❯

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308 BELOVED
were subject to fugitive slave laws

Slavery is a psychological as well as a physical condition.

that allowed owners to cross into

While slaves are bound in literal chains—shackles, gags, iron free states to reclaim their property. neck collars—the psychological chains that Sethe is left with Piece by piece a story emerges.

as an ex-slave mean that every area of her life is infected.

Sethe and her husband, Halle,
planned a break for freedom, unable
to endure their treatment at the
hands of the new governor of Sweet

Slavery enforced

Home, known as “schoolteacher.”

Slaves were stripped of
silence: by recounting her
their humanity and

Heavily pregnant, Sethe sent her
memories, Sethe confronts
treated like animals:

the atrocities in her past.

two small boys and baby daughter

Sethe struggles to build
on ahead. When Halle failed to
a sense of self.

arrive at their agreed meeting
place, Sethe traveled on alone,
giving birth to her new daughter
on the way, with the help of a white
girl called Amy Denver. After
reaching safety in Cincinnati, she

The suppression of all
found temporary happiness with

The bonds of slavery
aspects of life under
her mother-in-law Baby Suggs, a
restricted movement:

slavery led to fear and
self-repression, which
freed slave. A horrific event—the

Sethe is psychologically
unable to move on
hinders Sethe’s progress
details of which are revealed later

from the past.

as a free woman.

in the novel—is triggered by the
arrival of schoolteacher with a
posse to take Sethe and her
children back to the farm.

Moral complexity

Good and evil are not binary
opposites in this story. At its core
and segregation. The absurd notion memories are the emotional shards is a terrible action committed out
of “good” and “bad” slave owners
that make self-determination so
of profound love. The supposedly
is addressed by Paul D as he
hard, and which are drawn out as

“free” society that sympathetic
reexamines life at Sweet Home
a psychological necessity. Morrison
white folks offer to released slaves
under the benign Mr. Garner: on
suggests that black Americans
is built on unchallenged racism
other farms male slaves were
can begin living in the present
gelded to make them manageable,
only by confronting the past. The
but Garner’s men “are men.” After
fragments of earlier events in

Garner’s death, the much harsher

Sethe’s and Paul D’s lives slowly
regime instituted by schoolteacher
come to the surface throughout
enabled them to know the real
the novel, coalescing into a horrific
condition of their slavery for the
account of slavery conditions in the

I never talked about
first time, and Paul D realizes they

South—tales that are too terrible
it. Not to a soul.

had only been men on home soil by
to relate as a consecutive narrative.

Sang it sometimes, but
virtue of Garner’s protection. “One

“Rememory” is the invented

I never told a soul.

step off that ground and they were
word that Sethe uses for the kind

Beloved
trespassers among the human race.” of remembering that takes former slaves deeper into the past to the

Remembered pain
appalling places that are always

Self-repression brought on by years
waiting to reclaim them. Sethe’s
of sociopolitical repression is a
rememories include the time that
major theme in the novel. Buried
schoolteacher instructed his

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CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE 309
nephew to list her human and
personification of Sethe’s guilt,
animal characteristics, and the
both destroyer and enabler, who
occasion when his boys pinned her
coaxes out stories that have been
down and drank her breast milk.

too difficult to articulate. Her own

Paul D keeps his memories in a
story in child-speak recalls the
rusted “tobacco tin buried in his
cramped hold of slave ships and
chest where a red heart used to be.” bodies tipped into the sea. Beloved Baby Suggs remembers the births
seems to embody the suffering
of seven children from different
of the 60 million and more, but
fathers and losing them all.

nothing is certain.

The true element to be “beloved”

Beloved
is a sense of self. Reclaiming self,

The embodiment of the hurtful
a central theme in Morrison’s work,
past is Beloved, a young woman
is an imperative as there is nothing

Toni Morrison
in unspoiled shoes and a silk dress
in the landscape for ex-slaves to
who insinuates herself into the
own. Robbed of normal family life,

Toni Morrison is one of the
household after Paul D drives
mated, traded, and their offspring

America’s most powerful
away the baby poltergeist. This
sold on, slaves are defined by
literary voices, and the first

African-American woman to
attention-seeking woman with
their enslavement. Starting with
win the Nobel Prize in
baby-smooth skin is violently
these first tentative steps taken

Literature (1993), among her
selfish and has an inexplicable
in freedom, the events in the novel
numerous other awards. Born
knowledge of Sethe’s past. Sethe is
presage the long road ahead. In the

Chloe Anthony Wofford in
slow to recognize what for Denver

1950s the protagonist of Ellison’s

1931 into a working-class Ohio
is obvious. Beloved is a revenant (a

Invisible Man was still in search
family, she grew up with a
person who has died but come back of a self, and we can hear the first love of reading, music, and
to life): Sethe’s dead baby grown to
notes of Martin Luther King’s civil
folklore. She earned a BA from
womanhood and craving the love
rights rhetoric in Baby Suggs’

Howard University and an MA
she has been denied. She is the
sermon in the forest: “in this here
from Cornell. She was married
place, we flesh; flesh that weeps,
for a short time to Jamaican
laughs; flesh that dances on bare
architect Harold Morrison,

African folklore traditions connect
with whom she had two sons.

with the American present in Beloved:

feet in grass. Love it.” Pride in

Morrison wrote her first four
the character of Beloved herself appears race, sex, and self is the healing novels while working as an
to embody the belief that the dead
medicine, because, as Paul D tells
editor in New York. Her fifth,
return to Earth in the form of spirits.

Sethe, “you your best thing.” ■

Beloved, was widely acclaimed
and made into a movie. From

1989 to 2006 Morrison held
a professorship at Princeton

University. In 2005 she wrote
the libretto for Margaret

Garner, an opera based on the
story that inspired Beloved.

She continues to write, and
to speak against censorship
and repression of history.

Other key works

1970 The Bluest Eye

1977 Song of Solomon

2008 A Mercy

2012 Home

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310

HEAVEN AND EARTH

WERE IN TURMOIL

RED SORGHUM (1987), MO YAN

IN CONTEXT

FOCUS

In the xungen, or “roots- whose color symbolizes vitality, seeking,” movement that arose bloodshed, and stability. Set in in Chinese literature during
northwest China’s rural Shandong
the mid-1980s, writers tried to

Province, the book follows one

“Roots-seeking” (xungen)

reconnect with folk culture. The
family from 1923 to 1976, through
movement
movement took its name from a
the Japanese occupation, the

BEFORE

1985 essay by Han Shaogong, “The

Communist Revolution, and the

1981 “A Preliminary Enquiry

Roots of Literature,” which called
horrors of the Cultural Revolution.

on writers to seek out forgotten

As a true “roots-seeking” novel,
into the Techniques of Modern
sources of creativity. While some

Red Sorghum incorporates mythical

Fiction,” an essay by future
xungen authors examined China’s
and folkloric elements, and its break

Nobel Prize-winner Gao
ethnic minorities, others took a
with the chronological structures

Xingjian, lays the groundwork
fresh look at the indigenous values
that accompanied the realistic
for the xungen movement.

within Taoism and Confucianism.

tradition gave new energy to

1985 Lhasa-based Zhaxi

For decades, Chinese writing

Chinese literary modernism. ■

(Tashi) Dawa’s story “Tibet:

had been on a strict diet of realism.

A Soul Knotted on a Leather

In harking back to folk influences,

Thong” draws upon Tibetan
the xungen authors also introduced
folk culture and traditions.

elements of the supernatural. The
new work brought Chinese writers

1985 Wang Anyi’s novella Bao
to the attention of the literary world

Town minutely depicts harsh
again for the first time in decades.

Lines of scarlet figures shuttled
village life in northern China.

along the sorghum stalks to

1985 Beijing writer Ah Cheng

Redefining modernity
weave a vast human tapestry.

publishes Romances of the

One of the movement’s most

Red Sorghum

Landscape, describing border
famous books is Red Sorghum
by Guan Moye (1955– ), better
areas far from “civilization.”

known by his pen name Mo Yan

AFTER

(“Don’t Speak”). Red Sorghum is

1996 In A Dictionary of Maqiao
named after a rare wheat crop,

Han Shaogong uses etymology
and vignettes to examine life

See also: Romance of the Three Kingdoms 66–67 ■ Call to Arms 222 ■
in the Cultural Revolution.

Playing for Thrills 336

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CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE 311

YOU COULD NOT TELL

A STORY LIKE THIS.

A STORY LIKE THIS

YOU COULD ONLY FEEL

OSCAR AND LUCINDA (1988), PETER CAREY

IN CONTEXT

FOCUS

Australian writers have faith—an ungainly, uncomfortable attracted international
individual, brought up in an English
interest since the middle
seaside community. The latter is an
of the 20th century. Novelists have
independent-minded young woman,

Australian writing
moved from traditional themes such who grew up in an “earth-floored hut BEFORE
as “mateship” (the egalitarian bonds in New South Wales” surrounded 1957 Patrick White—one of
forged by mutual reliance in a harsh
by the works of Dickens, Balzac,
the most influential modern
environment), national pride, and
and other literary greats. Becoming
rural survival, to create works that
an heiress after her mother’s death,

Australian writers—uses
are provocative and often disturbing. Lucinda buys an old glass factory in religious symbolism in Voss, a

The areas explored by these books

Sydney, where she is regarded as
story of a visionary explorer’s
include fantasy, beliefs, and
odd because of her aloofness and
encounter with Australia in
personal relationships, while being
strange behavior.

the mid-19th century.

rooted in the Australian experience.

The pair meet onboard a ship

1982 Thomas Keneally’s

One of the leading writers and
traveling from Britain to Australia

Schindler’s Ark mixes fact
creators of this modern genre is
and from then on their lives are
and fiction to explore the

Australian novelist and former
interlinked, coming together in an
impact of an individual on
advertising copywriter, Peter Carey extraordinary project to build and historical events.

(1943– ). His Oscar and Lucinda,
transport a glass church through
which won the Booker Prize in
the Australian bush.

AFTER

1988, is a rich and complex novel

While on one level Oscar and

2001 Peter Carey is awarded
set in the mid-19th century, with

Lucinda is a historical novel, it
a second Booker Prize for his
events taking place in England
is also steeped in fantasy and
novel The True History of the
and New South Wales.

unreality—Peter Carey described

Kelly Gang, an imaginative
it as “a science fiction of the past.”

take on the legendary

Guilt and faith

Its rich and complex characters,

Australian hero Ned Kelly.

The protagonists of the book
descriptive storytelling, and broad-
are Oscar Hopkins and Lucinda
ranging themes of faith, belief, and

2006 Indigenous writer

Leplastrier. The former is a young
sexuality ensured its influence on

Alexis Wright explores the
clergyman who grapples with his
modern Australian literature. ■
dispossession of Aboriginal
lands by white people in her

See also: The Three Musketeers 122–23 ■ The Lagoon and Other Stories 286
novel Carpentaria.

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312

A HISTORICAL VISION,

THE OUTCOME OF A

MULTICULTURAL

COMMITMENT

OMEROS (1990), DEREK WALCOTT

IN CONTEXT

FOCUS

History and memory have Odyssey and Iliad, while also always been a part of
celebrating the landscape, people,
the Caribbean literary
and language of St. Lucia. The
landscape, and writing from the
poem follows Dante’s The Divine

Caribbean writing
region has highlighted the struggle

Comedy in its use of terza rima,

BEFORE
to find a truthful voice that reflects
a three-line poetic form, or tercet,

1949 Cuban writer Alejo
the reality of alienation in a colonial in which the second line rhymes Carpentier publishes his novel
situation. Caribbean authors—
with the first and third lines of
contingent on who their islands’

the next tercet. At the same time,

The Kingdom of this World,
previous colonial owners were—

Walcott honors the tone and rhythm
which negotiates Caribbean
write in Spanish, French, English,
of the local Caribbean patois from
history and culture.

or Dutch. Each writer negotiates
the very beginning of the poem.

1953 In the Castle of My
the known fragments of his or her

While some of the characters’

Skin, by Barbadian writer
own history within the particular
names, such as Achille and Hector,

George Lamming, is one of the
postcolonial situation.

are classical in origin, they are
region’s key autobiographical
also not unusual names for
novels and wins the Somerset

Intertwined narratives

St. Lucian fishermen.

Maugham award in 1957.

A towering figure in this literary

Omeros interweaves time and
landscape is St. Lucian author
place to interrogate topics such as

1960 In Return to My Native

Derek Walcott (1930–). In 1992 he
slavery, American-Indian genocide,

Land, Martinican poet Aimé
was awarded the Nobel Prize for
and expatriates in the Caribbean.

Césaire discusses négritude,

Literature for “a poetic oeuvre of

Walcott fuses stories from Africa,
or black consciousness, as
great luminosity, sustained by a
the US, London, and Ireland with
a form of identity for people
historical vision, the outcome of

St. Lucian events to create a mosaic
whose ancestors had been
a multicultural commitment.”

narrative of collective memory.

dislocated from Africa.

Walcott’s magnificent and

Island life, memories of Africa,
hugely ambitious 300-page poem
and the vestiges of colonialism

AFTER

Omeros (the Greek name for Homer) remain the focus for Caribbean 1995 To Us, All Flowers Are
endorses the judges’ claim. Epic
writers as they attempt to make

Roses: Poems confirms Lorna
in length, it references Homer’s
sense of their disjointed histories. ■

Goodison as one of the finest

Jamaican poets of the

See also: Iliad 26–33 ■ Odyssey 54 ■ The Divine Comedy 62–65 ■
postwar generation.

Ulysses 214–21 ■ A House for Mr. Biswas 289

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CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE 313

I FELT LETHAL ON THE

VERGE OF FRENZY

AMERICAN PSYCHO (1991), BRET EASTON ELLIS

IN CONTEXT

FOCUS

The explicit treatment of a yuppie and a homicidal sociopath.

taboo topics such as

He inhabits a morally bankrupt,
rape, incest, pedophilia,
drug-dependent world that revolves
drugs, and violence characterizes
around designer clothes and

Transgressive fiction
trangressive fiction, a genre that
exclusive clubs and restaurants; he

BEFORE
came to the fore in the 1990s.

expounds his love of a rock band in

1973 The protagonists of

Writers such as Charles Bukowski,
the same tone as he ponders how

English writer J. G. Ballard’s

William S. Burroughs, J. G. Ballard,
to dispose of a corpse. Forced to
and Kathy Acker had paved the
view the world through his eyes,
controversial novel Crash
way in previous decades with
the reader is urged to question
are a group of car-crash
novels that variously described
a society in which everything
victims who are sexually
weird sexual acts, body mutilation,
has become commodified. ■
aroused by car accidents.

drug use, and extreme violence.

1984 Foreshadowing later

To transgress is to go beyond
transgressive fiction, American
established moral boundaries, and
writer Jay McInerney’s satire

American Psycho, a black comedy

Bright Lights, Big City places
by American author Bret Easton
the reader as the central

Ellis (1964–), does this with relish.

Its scenes of violence, particularly

I have all the characteristics
character in a hollow world.

against women, have led to calls
of a human being: blood,

AFTER
for the book to be banned.

flesh, skin, hair; but not

1992 Brutal and shocking,
a single, clear, identifiable

Irish writer Patrick McCabe’s

Psychotic dream
emotion, except for greed

The Butcher Boy plunges

Its true transgression, however, lies
and disgust.

the reader into the violent
perhaps in the suggestion that the

American Psycho
fantasy world of schoolboy
pursuit of the American dream

Francie Brady.

is akin to a mental disorder. The
book is set in Manhattan during

1996 Tyler Durden, the
the 1980s Wall Street boom and the
antihero in American
narrator, Patrick Bateman, is both
writer Chuck Palahniuk’s
transgressive Fight Club, is an

See also: Lolita 260–61 ■ A Clockwork Orange 289 ■ Crash 332
anarchic, masochistic nihilist.

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314

UIETLY THEY IN CONTEXT

FOCUS

Indian English writing

MOVED DOWN

BEFORE

1950s R. K. Narayan’s texts
help introduce Indian English
writing to a global readership.

THE CALM AND 1981 Salman Rushdie’s

Midnight’s Children marks
a new stage in Indian

SACRED RIVER

English writing.

AFTER

1997 Arundhati Roy wins
the Booker Prize with The

A SUITABLE BOY (1993), VIKRAM SETH

God of Small Things, which
challenges the caste system.

2000 Amitav Ghosh looks
at migration and colonial
control in The Glass Palace, a
historical novel set in Burma,

Bengal, India, and Malaya.

2006 In The Inheritance of

Loss, Indian English author

Kiran Desai explores the
impact of colonialism.

Over the last few decades

Indian English writing
has carved a niche as
a recognizable literary genre that
has gained increasing international
attention. In the 1950s and ’60s
some Indian writers—notably

R. K. Narayan, one of the first

Indian English novelists to be
recognized outside India—made a
deliberate choice to write about the

Indian experience in English rather
than in one of the numerous Indian
languages or dialects. Most of
these earlier Indian English
novelists were writing from
within India, portraying everyday
experiences. Since the 1980s,
however, a new generation of

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CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE 315

See also: Midnight’s Children 300–05 ■ Interpreter of Maladies 338

Indian English novelists has

Epic in scale, A Suitable Boy is one
emerged, most of whom have
of the longest novels in the English
chosen to focus on the themes of
language. Set in the early 1950s—
postcolonial India, including the
soon after India’s independence
impact of imperialism, religious
and partition in 1947—the novel
tensions, and the caste system.

follows the fortunes of four families
over a period of 18 months. Three of

Intertwined stories
the families, the Mehras, Chatterjis,

Salman Rushdie was one of the first and Kapoors—all of whom are of the so-called Indian diasporic
middle-class, educated Hindus—
novelists—Indian writers living
are related to each another by

Vikram Seth
outside India. His Booker Prize-
marriage. The fourth family, the

The son of a businessman and
winning Midnight’s Children, with
aristocratic, Muslim Khans, are
a judge, Vikram Seth was born
its blend of Hindu myth, Bombay
friends of the Kapoors.

in 1952 in Calcutta, India.

movies, magic realism, and hybrid

The novel opens in the fictional

After leaving the Doon School,
use of English peppered with
town of Brahmpur, on the Ganges
he completed his schooling in

Indian terms, is the starting point
river between Banares (also known

Tonbridge, England, and went
of what has been described as
as Varanasi) and Patna, although
on to Oxford University,
a renaissance in Indian English
events also take place in Calcutta,
studying philosophy, politics,
literature, mainly produced by

Delhi, and Kanpur. These places are
and economics (PPE). He
diasporic authors. Several writers
described with immense
received a master’s degree in
followed Rushdie, including Vikram richness, and often with wit. Seth economics from Stanford

Seth, whose novel A Suitable Boy
recreates, in magnificent, almost

University, California, and
was published in 1993.

photographic, detail the India of
later spent some time in
the early 1950s, bringing to vivid

China, where he studied
classical Chinese poetry. He
life the Ganges river, the crowded,

Towns along the Ganges river
now lives in England but
bustling streets and markets,
pulsate with life and color, providing
keeps close contact with India.

the country’s extremes of wealth
a vibrant backdrop to the interweaving

Seth’s written works
stories and multiple realities of the
and poverty, and its wonderfully
include poetry, a children’s

India evoked by Seth’s narrative.

varied landscapes. Central to ❯❯
book, and three novels. In

2009 he announced that he
was working on a sequel to

A Suitable Boy, titled A

Suitable Girl. Initially due to
finish the novel in 2013, he
commented on BBC’s radio
program Desert Island Discs in

2012 that the pace of work
was slow: “The sound
of deadlines pushing past is
one of the sounds that authors
are most familiar with.”

Other key works

1986 The Golden Gate

1999 An Equal Music

2005 Two Lives (biography)

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316 A SUITABLE BOY

And yet A Suitable Boy is much
in postpartition India during the
more than just a romantic plot,
formative years of the Nehru period
incorporating numerous subplots,

(1947–64). Woven into the text
both personal and political, and
are key issues such as the value
a large and finely drawn cast of
of work, the process of change,

‘You too will marry
characters. These range from the
the injustice of poverty, and the
a boy I choose,’ said
widowed Mrs. Rupa Mehra, with
direction being taken by India. It

Mrs. Rupa Mehra firmly
her tireless meddling in the lives
describes the period just before the
to her younger daughter.

of her four children, to the young
postindependence election of 1952,

A Suitable Boy

Muslim idealist Rasheed; from the
in which the Kapoor family is
strong-minded Malati, Lata’s best
closely involved. Religious
friend, to the young mathematical
intolerance, in particular Hindu–
genius Bhaskar; and from the

Muslim tensions, is revealed in the
politician Mahesh Kapoor to the
reactions to Lata’s love for Kabir
musician Ishaq. Real historical
and to Pran’s younger brother
figures, such as India’s first prime

Maan’s relationship with a Muslim
the text is the determination of
minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, are
singer-courtesan, Saeeda Bai; and,

Mrs. Rupa Mehra to arrange the
also added to the literary mix.

more violently, in a near-riot
marriage of her younger daughter

A Suitable Boy provides a
between Hindus and Muslims over

Lata, a 19-year-old university
detailed account of the social
plans to erect a Hindu temple near
student, to a “suitable boy.”

and political events taking place
a mosque. The author also depicts

The personal and political

The novel begins with a wedding:

Lata has a tough choice to make:

should she choose the Muslim student,
that of Lata’s elder sister Savita to
the internationally acclaimed poet,

Pran Kapoor, a young university
or the businessman as her partner?

professor from a prominent family.

Her plight echoes that of postpartition

Although he suffers from asthma,

India: should it opt to overcome
he qualifies as a “suitable boy.”

religious factionalism, to strive for

Lata, an independent-minded
a sophisticated internationalism,
or to settle for economic stability?

young woman whose thoughts
and actions in many ways mirror

Kabir
the changes occurring in India
at the time, has mixed feelings
about the marriage of her beloved
sister, questioning how a woman
can marry a man she does not know.

As the novel progresses, Lata
herself falls in love with three
young men: Kabir, a Muslim
student; Amit, an internationally

Amit
celebrated poet; and Haresh, a
determined businessman in the
shoe trade. It is not until the last
moment that the reader learns
which of the three Lata chooses;
significantly, it is a decision that
she makes for herself, taking

Lata
account of her mother’s wishes,
social realities, and her own
feelings about love and passion.

Haresh

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CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE 317

Marriage lies at the heart of A

Suitable Boy and is used to explore
key issues—from religion, class,
gender, and politics to national
and personal identity.

compared to Jane Austen—but
although A Suitable Boy, like

Austen’s novels, deals with family
events and is realistic and
perceptive, it is unmistakably an

Indian novel, written in English,
and a landmark of the genre.

There have been fierce debates
concerning the validity of Indian

English literature, and in particular
a questioning of why leading Indian
the iniquities of the caste system,

English novelist Anita Desai has
novelists, most of whom live outside
poverty, and the status of lower-
observed that it was only after

India, should even be writing in
caste Indians, such as the jatav,

Rushdie “that Indian writers finally

English. In Rushdie’s words, “the
who scrape their living in the evil-
felt capable of using the spoken
ironic proposition that India’s best
smelling tanneries. Certain parts of language, spoken English, the way writing since independence may
the plot revolve around land reforms it’s spoken on Indian streets by have been done in the language of
and the abolition of the zamindari
ordinary people,” something that
the departed imperialists is simply
system, which sought to remove

Seth also captures perfectly.

too much for some folks to bear.”

property from large aristocratic

Nevertheless, the popularity of the
landholders. The novel explores the

Language of imperialists?

Indian English genre continued to
roles of women in 1950s India, too,

Vikram Seth is a skilled and
grow into the 21st century, with
comparing Lata’s dependence on
renowned poet as well as a novelist, writers such as Arundhati Roy, her family with the independence
so it is perhaps unsurprising that

Jhumpa Lahiri, Amitav Ghosh, and
of her friend Malati and the Muslim his text includes superbly poetic Kiran Desai making significant
custom of purdah, in which women passages. Many of these draw the contributions, either setting their
are segregated and wear form-
reader into the world of Urdu poetry, novels in India or focusing on the covering clothes such as the burqa.

Indian music and singing ( ghazals), experience of rootlessness and and myths and legends as sung and alienation in the diaspora. ■

Real-life concerns
played by Saaeda Bai and her

Unlike Rushdie’s magical India,
musicians. Equally haunting are

Seth’s novel focuses on the matters
descriptions of a tiger hunt, the
of real life: work, love, family, the
stinking pools of the tanning
intricacies of lawmaking, political
factory, the Indian countryside, and
intrigue, the academic world,
the Kumbh Mela festival. The novel
and religious tensions. These are
also includes the flippant couplets

They agreed with
presented in beautifully written
nonchalantly tossed out by the
each other violently
and lyrical prose that is compelling, Chatterjis; and a contents page and disagreed with
eminently readable, and often
that comprises 19 rhyming couplets,
each other pleasurably.

amusing. It presents the English
one for each part of the book.

A Suitable Boy
language as it is spoken by the

It took Seth more than eight
people of India—embellished with
years to write his monumental
scatterings of Hindu and Muslim
novel; it was a huge success and
terms, many of which do not
was awarded the Commonwealth
translate into English. The Indian

Writers’ Prize. He has been

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318

IT’S A VERY GREEK IDEA,

AND A PROFOUND ONE.

BEAUTY IS TERROR

THE SECRET HISTORY (1992), DONNA TARTT

IN CONTEXT

FOCUS

When American author but it is the motive, not the identity Donna Tartt (1963–)

of the perpetrator, that mystifies
published her novel The
the reader and is gradually revealed

Secret History, it was recognized as as the plot unfolds. Tartt uses the The campus novel
a striking addition to the campus-
premise of a hidden murder among

BEFORE
novel genre, which it both borrows
the six students to explore wider

1951 American writer Mary
from and extends. Academic novels ideas. Borrowing from Greek McCarthy’s The Groves
developed in the 1950s, when the
tragedy, she compels her reader to
concerns of postwar society were
question whether the “tragic flaw”

of Academe is published. It
linked with the literary and cultural in character, a feature of that genre, is considered one of the first
debates taking place on Western
does indeed exist. She explores
academic or “campus” novels.

campuses. These novels, set within this question through the plot to 1954 The influential book
the confined space of a university,
interrogate how and why we use

Lucky Jim, by English writer
often satirize academic life and the
the literary past in the present.

Kingsley Amis, develops the
pretentiouness of scholars.

campus genre further through

A philosophical murder
a plot that follows a young

The allure of civilization

For Tartt’s student characters, the
history lecturer making his

The Secret History follows a group
literary is all too real: it is taken to
way in a postwar world.

of six classics students at an elite
an explicitly literal extreme in the

New England university. Using this form of a murder that pays homage 1990 The Booker Prize-setting to focus on various literary
to the philosophical idea that
winning novel Possession:

and cultural debates, Tartt expands “Death is the mother of beauty,”

A Romance, by English
on her 1950s predecessors’ use of a
as one student, Henry, declares.

novelist A. S. Byatt, details a
university environment to question

Whether the murder is indeed to
postmodern historical mystery
the role of literature, identity, and
be interpreted as a playful and
set in an academic world.

the genre itself.

self-conscious literary device that

Tartt’s novel is an anti-detective draws from academic theory, or AFTER
story that complicates the 19th-
perhaps as a critique of theory

2000 The Human Stain by
century detective genre. The book
itself, is something that Tartt

American writer Philip Roth
opens with a murder-mystery plot,
leaves for her reader to decide. ■
follows the complex life story of
a retired classics professor and

See also: Oedipus the King 34–39 ■ Disgrace 322–23
the shifting world of academia.

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CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE 319

WHAT WE SEE BEFORE US

IS JUST ONE TINY PART

OF THE WORLD

THE WIND-UP BIRD CHRONICLE (1994–1995),

HARUKI MURAKAMI

IN CONTEXT

FOCUS

From the late 20th century, As Orpheus visits the underworld globalization—in particular
to bring back Eurydice in Greek
the spread of American
myth, so Okada descends into a
popular culture around the world—
well to recover his wife Kumiko

Writing for the world
has created a forum in which
after she disappears.

BEFORE
writers have been able to free their

Yet this is still a Japanese story

1987 The hero in Murakami’s
fiction of localized traditions, as if
at its core. Murakami evokes the

Norwegian Wood, a tale of love,
writing for a universal readership.

alienation of modern urban Japan,

American influences are
while at the same time probing
loss, and friendship, is a former
particularly evident in Japanese

Japanese history. For instance,
college student interested in
culture—stemming, in part, from the Lieutenant Mamiya’s tales of American literature.

US occupation of Japan (1945–52).

wartime exploits in Manchuria

1988 Banana Yashimoto’s

Japanese author Haruki Murakami
and a Soviet prison camp address

Kitchen tells a wistful story of

(1949–) has a cultural background

Japan’s violent war record. ■
a young Japanese woman, for
that seems half American: he
whom the consumer opulence
translated F. Scott Fitzgerald and
of Western-style cooking

Truman Capote into Japanese, and
provides an emotional refuge.

ran a jazz club in Tokyo.

AFTER

East meets West

1997 Ryu Murakami’s In the

Murakami’s novel The Wind-Up

Is it possible … for one human

Miso Soup is a crime story set

Bird Chronicle calls on American
being to achieve perfect
among the hostess bars of
influences, as well as cultural
understanding of another?

Tokyo, with conversational
motifs from Europe. For example,

The Wind-Up Bird
references to real-life
it begins with its hero, Toru Okada,

Chronicle

Americans such as Whitney
listening to Rossini while cooking

Houston and Robert de Niro.

pasta; later in the novel, a baseball
bat is used as a weapon. The book

2002 Kafka on the Shore
itself is a complex quest narrative
shows Murakami exploring
with its roots in Western culture.

metaphysical fantasy—in a

Japan where Westernized

See also: Playing for Thrills 336
culture and Shintoism meet.

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320

PERHAPS ONLY IN A

WORLD OF THE BLIND

WILL THINGS BE WHAT

THEY TRULY ARE

BLINDNESS (1995), JOSÉ SARAMAGO

IN CONTEXT

FOCUS

José Saramago’s harrowing that ruled the country from 1933 to novel Blindness (originally

1974, although the novel’s actual
published in Portuguese as
settings, characters, and times are

Ensaio Sobre a Cegueira, “Essay
left ambiguous. Under scrutiny is

Allegorical satire
on Blindness”) is an example
the lack of morality, kindness, and

BEFORE
of allegorical satire—a type of
empathy typical of any right-wing

1605 In Don Quixote, Miguel
narrative that has a parallel subtext capitalist society.

de Cervantes explores the
that is often moral or political in
nature. In allegorical satire, events

What if we were all blind?

inability to see the world
are used explicitly or implicitly

The novel describes events after
as it really is, in his main
as metaphors to ridicule aspects
people in a city of an unnamed
character’s delusional quest
of society, politics, or life. In
country start going blind—not a
to enact a knight’s saga.

Blindness, the satire is inspired
dark blindness, but a milky, pearl-

1726 Anglo-Irish writer
by Portugal’s Estado Novo (New
white blindness. The affliction

Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s

State), an authoritarian regime
spreads via human contact or

Travels exaggerates moral
and political corruption in
tales of fantastical cultures.

The world of the blind

1945 In Animal Farm, English
author George Orwell traces
the parallels between the

Society is affected by
degeneration of politics in
metaphorical blindness:

Members of society are
human society and a cast
lack of empathy, reason,
affected, as a result,
of rebellious farm animals.

and morality.

by literal blindness.

AFTER

2008–10 American writer

Suzanne Collins publishes The

Hunger Games, using allegorical

New societies form in

Society seeks to
satire to indicate the power of
blindness, as the old ones
incarcerate, quarantine,
media as a political tool in
descend into darkness.

and contain the affected.

contemporary American society.

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CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE 321

See also: The Divine Comedy 62–65 ■ The Canterbury Tales 68–71 ■ Don Quixote 76–81 ■ Candide 96–97 ■

Gulliver’s Travels 104 ■ Animal Farm 245 ■ Lord of the Flies 287

Portugal’s repressive Estado Novo
regime is an unspoken presence in

Saramago’s text; the book’s title and
contents gesture to a parallel theme of
a dark and sinister political blindness.

presence and is incurable. The
government transfers those
affected to a guarded asylum, and
leaves them to fend for themselves,
with food and cleaning equipment
as their only aids.

As a form of society, based on
solidarity, begins to emerge among
of the violence and terror of a
device allows for an enhanced
the blinded—fueled by need,
totalitarian regime. Saramago
understanding of the bonds
survival, and a return of human
gives his narrative unstoppable
being created, the habits being
empathy—we see the main
force by minimizing punctuation
abandoned, and the ideologies
characters grow as members of a
and switching between tenses and
being formed and re-formed in the
community. Saramago describes
perspectives. This creates a sense
story. It is through the doctor’s wife
the physical and psychological
of being propelled through the
that the characters discover each
struggles of the newly blinded as
story, thus echoing the themes
another, and find hope and the
a parallel to people who have lost
of the narrative.

strength to survive the white
sight of reason, humanity, and the
blindness, the cruelty of the thugs,
very idea of human society: “These

Blindness and insight
and the harshness of the asylum.

blind internees […] will soon turn

The reader is given an added

It is thanks to her humanity and
into animals, worse still, into blind
perspective on the bleak situation
her empathy—symbols of the
animals.” The arrival of a group
through the eyes of the doctor’s
type of society toward which
of organized blind thugs becomes
wife, one of the first internees,
people should be striving—that,
an added element of oppression,
but one who feigns blindness
ultimately, they start to rebuild
with obvious political connotations
to be with her husband. This
a life outside the asylum. ■

José Saramago

José de Sousa Saramago was

( O Poemas Possìveis) and, after
born in Portugal in 1922, the
writing more novels, received
son of poor rural workers. His
the Nobel Prize for literature
parents could not afford to send
in 1998. He moved to Spain
him to school, so he trained as a
following the Portuguese
mechanic; only later did his talent
government’s censorship of one
for writing lead him into work
of his books in 1992. He lived
as a translator, journalist, and
there until his death in 2010.

editor. A politically engaged man,

Saramago found that his first

Other key works
novel, Land of Sin ( Terra do

Pecado, 1947), was not well

1982 Baltasar and Blimunda
received by the conservative

1984 The Year of the Death

Catholic regime of Estado Novo
of Ricardo Reis

(New State), which blocked the

1991 The Gospel According
book’s production. He resurfaced
to Jesus Christ
in 1966 with Possible Poems

2004 Seeing

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322

ENGLISH IS AN

UNFIT MEDIUM

FOR THE TRUTH

OF SOUTH AFRICA

DISGRACE (1999), J. M. COETZEE
postmodern preoccupation with the

IN CONTEXT
language of their production and

FOCUS

An extraordinary canon
of literature has evolved
in South Africa from a
the authority of the speaking voice.

society in which the black majority

South African literature
was oppressed for decades by

Power relations

BEFORE
colonialism and apartheid—a

Coetzee’s novel Disgrace centers on

1883 Olive Schreiner explores
tyrannical system of segregation.

the downfall of David Lurie, a
patriarchal and gender issues

Writing during and after apartheid
professor in classics and modern
falls very broadly into two camps:

languages who is reduced to
against a colonial backdrop in
authors such as Nobel prizewinner
teaching “communications.” A cipher

The Story of an African Farm.

Nadine Gordimer produced complex for the lost certainties of whites 1948 The best-selling Cry, the
novels that are a testimony to
from old European stock in the new

Beloved Country by Alan Paton
history, rooted in social realism

South Africa, Lurie finds that
exposes South Africa’s politics
and the politics of their era. In
communication fails him. He cannot
of oppression to the world.

comparison, J. M. Coetzee appears
engage his students, nor use poetry
almost socially irresponsible in
to seduce Melanie, a student whom

1963–90 Thousands of books
producing texts that “rival history.”

he effectively rapes during an affair.

are banned as “undesirable”

His stories are characterized by

After Lurie is plunged into
in South Africa.

ambiguity and elusiveness, with a
disgrace and dismissed from his

1991 Writer and activist
job, the story shifts to the Eastern

Nadine Gordimer is awarded

Cape, where his daughter Lucy
the Nobel Prize in literature.

runs a small farm. Lurie sees
glimpses of an idealized rural past,

AFTER
but struggles with the changing

2000 Writer NoZakes Mda
order between white landowners
experiments with a complex

Repentance belongs to
and their black employees and
mix of Xhosa history, myth,
another world, to another
neighbors. He fills his time helping
and colonial conflict in his
universe of discourse.

to dispatch neglected animals in a
novel The Heart of Redness.

Disgrace
rural veterinary clinic.

The professor speaks several

2003 Damon Galgut’s The

European languages, but cannot

Good Doctor picks apart the
engage with Lucy’s neighbor
promise of political change.

Petrus. “Pressed into the mould
of English, Petrus’s story would

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CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE 323

See also: The Story of an African Farm 201 ■ Cry, the Beloved Country 286 ■

A Dry White Season 333–34
come out arthritic, bygone.” He has
optimism of the new nation.

no African words to reason with

Condemned by some for its violent
the three black youths who attack
plot, the novel is finely balanced in
the farm and rape his daughter,
its portrayal of a state of disgrace
nor can he unveil her neighbor’s
that has no cultural boundaries. In
complicity. Later, at a celebration
the end, there is a parity between
of Petrus’s new status as landlord, a the attack on Lucy and the guest takes center stage to narrate
professor’s sexual abuse of black
in the Xhosa language a future that prostitutes and the student only the blacks can understand.

Melanie, who is assumed to be of
mixed race. While Lurie, in his

J. M. Coetzee

An uncertain future
arrogance, refuses to speak at his

Disgrace, published five years after
hearing, Lucy’s silence about her

Novelist, linguist, essayist,
the first free elections in South
ordeal suggests a realization that
and translator John Michael

Africa, sits in stark contrast to
life has to be stripped back to the

Coetzee was born in 1940 to

English-speaking Afrikaner
postapartheid “honeymoon”

basics because there are no words
parents. Coetzee spent his
literature, suffused with the
available to repair or heal. ■
early life in Cape Town and

Worcester in the Western

Cape. After graduating in
the 1960s, he worked as
a computer programmer in

London. He has a PhD in

English, linguistics, and

Germanic languages from

Professional disgrace

Sexual disgrace
the University of Texas.

The professor’s faltering

Lurie’s sex life with prostitutes and
academic career is completely
sordid casual seductions contrasts

From 1972 Coetzee held
destroyed by his sexual
with the Byronic romances that
posts at the University of
harassment of a student.

haunt his imagination.

Cape Town, finishing in 2000
as Distinguished Professor
of Literature, and taught

The novel’s title
frequently in the US. He
reaches further than
has won a raft of literary
the disgrace of the
awards, including the Booker
unrepentant David Lurie.

Prize (twice) and the 2003

Inhuman acts, shame,
and humiliation threaten

Nobel Prize in Literature.

to engulf a new and

Coetzee now lives in South
fragile society.

Australia and is an advocate
for animal rights.

Treatment of animals

Racial violence

Shameful animal neglect and

Lucy’s rape and the ongoing
maltreatment—a common
coercion and threat to her

Other key works
theme in Coetzee’s novels—
safety typify the tension
is reflected in the grim work
between black people and

1977 In the Heart of
of the veterinary clinic.

the wealthy white minority.

the Country

1980 Waiting for
the Barbarians

1983 Life & Times of

Michael K

Apartheid

The many strands of disgrace underpinning

1986 Foe
the novel suggest the wider disgrace of South

1990 Age of Iron

Africa’s history of colonialism and apartheid.

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324

EVERY MOMENT HAPPENS

TWICE: INSIDE AND

OUTSIDE AND THEY ARE

TWO DIFFERENT HISTORIES

WHITE TEETH (2000), ZADIE SMITH

IN CONTEXT

FOCUS

Immigration has been a major heard. In Germany, for instance, part of the cultural fabric of the Renan Demirkan has paved the US, Canada, and the UK for
way for Turkish-German writing.

generations, but recent decades

In the UK, multicultural

Multiculturalism
have seen a surge of new writing
literature goes back to major

BEFORE
that reflects both the diversity of
waves of immigration from the

1979 A Black Power group
their populations and the ubiquity

Commonwealth in the 1950s, and
takes over the basement in
of English. The need to assimilate
often brings a troubled, xenophobic
into a new culture tends to suppress space into sharp focus, revealing Moses Ascending, Trinidadian-migrant voices, so it is often the
the lives of people of multiple
born Sam Selvon’s tales of a
second generation in immigrant
ethnic groups in major cities. As

West Indian landlord in London.

families who are strongly motivated elsewhere, many mixed-race and 1987 Michael Ondaatje, a Sri
to write stories that reflect the
second-generation immigrant

Lankan-born Canadian writer,
fusion of their cultures. This in part authors penned first novels that weaves native cultures into
explains the slower emergence of
dwell on the integration of diaspora
rich storytelling about the
multicultural writing in the rest
communities. Zadie Smith’s award-
lives of immigrant laborers in
of Europe and around the world,
winning book White Teeth offers a

Toronto in In the Skin of a Lion.

but as other nations become more
fresh, youthful perspective on the
diverse, new voices start to be
complex inheritance of multicultural

1991 Renan Demirkan’s
families in North London.

semiautobiographical account
of conflicting loyalties in a

Melting-pot Britain

Turkish family in Germany,

White Teeth stretches back to the

Schwarzer Tee mit drei Stuck
last days of World War II, when the

Zucker (“Black Tea with Three

English white working-class Archie

Sugars”), becomes a best seller.

Do you think anybody is

Jones is paired with a Bangladeshi

English? Really English?

Muslim radio engineer named

AFTER

It’s a fairy-tale!

Samad Iqbal in a British Army

2004 Small Island, English

White Teeth
tank unit in Greece. The friendship,
author Andrea Levy’s story
crossing class and color lines,
of the lives of two couples,
continues after the war. The bond
sheds light on the migrant
is cemented by long afternoons
experience in postwar Britain.

in an Arab-run Irish pub, marital
discord, and late-in-life fatherhood

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CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE 325

See also: Cry, the Beloved Country 286 ■ A House for Mr. Biswas 289 ■ Interpreter of Maladies 338 ■ Life of Pi 338 ■

The Kite Runner 338 ■ Half of a Yellow Sun 339

In White Teeth, the network of relationships among whites, first-generation immigrants, and their British-born children reflects the changing nature of British society.

Friends

Marcus

Archie

Clara

Alsana

Chalfen

Joyce

Samad

Jones

Bowden

Iqbal

Begum

Has crush on

In love with

Joshua

Irie

Millat

Magid

Chalfen family has major influence on
for both men. Samad has twin
is drawn to her mother’s homeland
hash, and the chattering middle
boys, Magid and Millat, through
through her grandmother. Millat,
classes—as epitomized by the
his arranged marriage with Alsana; Magid, and Irie struggle, as their intellectual white Chalfen family,

Archie and his Jamaican-born wife
parents do, with the feeling that
who exerts an inexorable influence

Clara have a daughter named Irie.

they belong nowhere, in contrast to
on Irie, Millat, and Magid.

Samad, now a “curry shifter” in
those that have lived in Britain for

Set in part during the Thatcher
a local restaurant, decides to send
generations and enjoy the luxury
years—the 1980s—the book is
his son Magid back to Bangladesh
of history and entitlement. “There
dotted with cultural references, from
to have him raised with a respect
was England, a gigantic mirror, and Salman Rushdie’s fatwa to street for his Muslim heritage; but when
there was Irie, without reflection.”

gangs in Nike attire. Smith has

Magid returns years later, it is as a

Smith has an ear for dialogue,
criticized her undergraduate novel,
secular scientist. By ironic contrast, and eyes everywhere—cataloguing but it remains a feisty chronicle of a
his twin, wild-child Millat, joins a
assaults on immigrant communities, time that demanded new definitions Muslim fundamentalist group. Irie
comprehensive schools awash with
of what it was to be British. ■

Zadie Smith

Zadie Smith was born in North

Smith has received nearly 20

London in 1975 to an English
nominations and awards for her
father and a Jamaican mother.

writing. In recent years she has

Originally named Sadie, she
branched outm into short stories
changed her name to Zadie at 14.

and critical essays. In an article

Smith wrote her acclaimed first
in The Guardian newspaper she
novel White Teeth during her
was asked to give her 10 golden
final year at King’s College,
rules for writing fiction, which

Cambridge. Moving to the US,
included: “Tell the truth through
she studied at Harvard and taught whichever veil comes to hand—
creative writing at Columbia
but tell it.”

University School of Fine Arts
before taking her current post at

Other key works

New York University. She divides
her time between New York and

2002 The Autograph Man

London, with her husband, writer

2005 On Beauty

Nick Laird, and their two children. 2012 NW

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326

THE BEST WAY OF

KEEPING A SECRET

IS TO PRETEND

THERE ISN’T ONE

THE BLIND ASSASSIN (2000), MARGARET ATWOOD

IN CONTEXT

FOCUS

The gothic fiction of the 18th postcolonial context, and can be and 19th centuries
seen as a reflection of settlers’

typically featured such
anxieties about their history.

elements as haunted castles,

Southern Ontario Gothic
tyrannical villains, endangered

Narrative complexity

BEFORE
heroines, mysteries, and ghosts.

Margaret Atwood relocates the

1832 Considered the first

In the late 20th century, Canada,
fascination with fear and terror

Canadian novel, Wacousta
and Southern Ontario in particular,
that fed the European gothic to
developed its own take on this
her own home territory, exploring
by John Richardson is full
tradition. Novelists including Alice
the darker side of human nature
of menace and gothic terror.

Munro, Robertson Davies, and
and the destructive potential of

1967 Timothy Findley’s The

Margaret Atwood appropriated
buried secrets. Her book The Blind

Last of the Crazy People is
aspects of gothic fiction such as the Assassin is a notable example of published. Five years later
supernatural and the grotesque,

Southern Ontario Gothic, playing
the author coins the term
and the genre’s dark imagery, and
on notions of sacrifice and betrayal,

Southern Ontario Gothic
applied them to contemporary
truth and lies, conspiracy and
to describe his novel.

Canadian life. Frequently, such
romance, and the boundaries
literature attempts to make sense
between the living and the dead.

1970 Robertson Davies’ Fifth
of Canadian national identity in a

The novel is a multilayered story

Business is an early example
told through the eyes of 83-year-old
of Southern Ontario Gothic,

Iris Chase Griffen, writing her
looking at the dark underbelly
memoirs in the form of a letter
of an Ontario community.

to her granddaughter. Within the
story of Iris’s life another novel

AFTER
is nestled, also called The Blind

2009 Intrigue, murder, and

Darkness moved closer …

Assassin, about two lovers, and
fear infuse Alice Munro’s

Back into the long
purportedly written by Iris’s sister,
gothic short-story collection
shadows cast by Laura.

Laura. And within that novel is

Too Much Happiness.

The Blind Assassin
yet another story, a pulp science-

2013 Hilary Scharper’s
fiction tale related by the man in

Perdita, which she describes

Laura’s novel. All these stories are
as “Ecogothic,” is a modern
punctuated by newspaper reports

Canadian ghost story.

that add a further, supposedly
factual, dimension to the narrative.

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CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE 327

See also: Frankenstein 120–21 ■ Dracula 195 ■ Wuthering Heights 132–37 ■

The Handmaid’s Tale 335 ■ Selected Stories (Alice Munro) 337

The main story, recounted in Iris’s
the present from the past. Laura,
memoir, revolves around Laura and
whose suicide the reader learns

Iris Chase in the 1920s and ’30s.

about in the very first sentence,
gothic motifs are updated: the
haunts Iris through memories and
haunted castle becomes Iris’s
secrets that are slowly uncovered.

family home, Avilion, a mansion

Southern Ontario is itself a dark
built by her rich grandfather,
and brooding character in the book.

complete with attics and turrets;

It may be likened to the underworld
there is a cruel male villain in Iris’s
of classical literature: ominous
domineering husband, Richard;
stretches of water must be crossed
and Iris and Laura themselves are
in order to enter it, and it has its

Margaret Atwood
versions of the victimized heroine.

own villainous gatekeeper, in the
form of Richard. The protagonists

The Canadian novelist,

Haunted by the real
wander here in search of meaning.

poet, and essayist Margaret

The novel is realistic in tone, yet

Overall, Atwood’s reworking

Atwood was born in 1939 in

Ottawa, Ontario. For much of
symbolically the supernatural is
of gothic tropes and her skillful
her childhood, she spent half
never far away. The structure of
interweaving of different genres
the year in the wilderness,
flashbacks means that characters
creates a novel in which, despite
where her father studied
we know to be dead appear almost
the darkness, each element
insects. During this time
as if they are ghosts speaking to
illuminates the whole. ■
she would write poems, plays,
and comics, and while still at
school she decided to become

The structure of The Blind Assassin, with its stories within a writer. The American writer
stories and multiple narrators, echoes gothic literature, while the Edgar Allan Poe was among
third tale—although set on the planet Zycron—contains the
her favorite authors and his
familiar gothic elements of romance, betrayal, and murder.

dark influence can be seen in
much of her fiction.

Atwood’s first publication
was a collection of poems in

1966, but she is best known

The first narrative is Iris
as a novelist. Her first novel to

Chase Griffen’s memoirs, in
be published was The Edible
which she reconstructs the

Woman in 1969. Her passion
past and re-evaluates her
for environmental issues and
own life and that of sister.

human rights comes through
in her dystopian novels such
as The Handmaid’s Tale and

The second narrative is
the trilogy begun with Oryx
a novel also called The Blind
and Crake. She has received

Assassin, ostensibly by Laura
many distinguished literary

Chase, which tells the story
prizes, including the Booker
of a political fugitive and his
socialite lover.

Prize for The Blind Assassin.

Other key works

The third narrative is a
dark science-fiction fantasy

1985 The Handmaid’s Tale
about a blind assassin and

1988 Cat’s Eye
a mute sacrificial virgin.

1996 Alias Grace

2003 Oryx and Crake

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328

THERE WAS

SOMETHING HIS

FAMILY WANTED

TO FORGET

THE CORRECTIONS (2001), JONATHAN FRANZEN

IN CONTEXT

FOCUS

The title of Jonathan and Don DeLillo. In addition to Franzen’s The Corrections

Gaddis, many of them would likely
echoes that of William
feature in Franzen’s literary ancestry.

Gaddis’s The Recognitions (1955),

The Corrections tells the stories

Dysfunction in the
which features a restless son
of the Lamberts: Alfred and Enid
modern family
searching for authenticity and
and their adult children Gary, Chip,

BEFORE
contemplating his relationship with and Denise. This is a family tested 1951 In J. D. Salinger’s The
his father, who is losing his mind.

by individual needs set against

As in The Corrections, the scope
differing notions of the familial

Catcher in the Rye, Holden
of The Recognitions extends to a
unit, values, and rights—all played

Caulfield is lonely and
wider cast of characters and tells
out against a backdrop of a US
alienated yet consumed
the story of a single family by
economy dominated by capitalist-
by thoughts of his family.

weaving narrative threads to
driven high-tech and financial

1960 The first novel of John
garner multiple viewpoints. Since
sectors. As the saga unfolds, the

Updike’s “Rabbit” series is
the late 20th century, the theme
text achieves acute political and
published, dramatizing family
of the dysfunctional family has
social insights, touching on wide-
turmoil in contemporary
often been at the heart of work
ranging themes, from financial

America.

by great American male novelists,
misdoings and gun death to food
such as John Updike, Philip Roth,
and children’s literature.

1993 In The Virgin Suicides,

Suspense and narrative drive

Jeffrey Eugenides tracks the
come from the family’s attempt to
unexplained suicides of five
have “one last” Christmas together
teenage sisters.

and the unfolding brutality of
degenerative disease. The personal

AFTER
lives of the main characters are all

2003 In We Need to Talk about

He became agitated
marked by instability, whether it be

Kevin, Lionel Shriver tackles the
whenever they were going
professional, romantic, or mental.

subject of parenting a child who
to see their children.

becomes a mass murderer.

The Corrections

Generational change

2013 Theo Decker, the narrator

Through his depiction of two
of Donna Tartt’s The Goldfinch,
generations, Franzen is able to
describes a family shattered
reflect societal change over the
by alcoholism and loss.

period of a lifetime. Alfred, the
repressed patriarch, identifies with

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CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE 329

See also: The Catcher in the Rye 256–57 ■ White Teeth 324–25

Emotional

There are shifts in the character
traits of damaged individuals,
leading to personal growth.

Financial

Parental

Seeking to profit

Discipline is used to

Jonathan Franzen
from the anticipated

Types
stifle the spontaneous
wonder-drug
of correction
affection that the

Jonathan Earl Franzen’s father

Corecktall, Gary fails
children naturally

The Corrections
to notice gradual
demonstrate for their
was a civil engineer and
reveals a network of
changes in the
father, Alfred.

his mother, Irene, was a
investment markets.

associations relating to the

“homemaker” (not unlike the
key word of the title,

Lamberts in The Corrections).

unfolding a plot that poses

Franzen grew up in Chicago
profound questions about
and majored in German at
the extent to which we
are able fix our selves

Swarthmore College,
and our lives.

graduating in 1981.

He married Valerie Cornell
at the age of 23; they divorced

14 years later. He is now in a
relationship with the writer

Pharmaceutical

Family rumors

Kathryn Chetkovich, and lives

A pill, Corecktall, that

Long-held myths, built
in New York and California.

is a symbol of vain
from incomplete
hope, doing “nothing
information, are

In 2001 Franzen sparked
and everything.”

dispelled and truths
a feud with American talk-
revealed.

show host Oprah Winfrey

Textual

Changes that Chip needs
when he voiced unease at the
to make to his screenplay.

choice of The Corrections for
her book club, fearing that
men would be put off reading
a past order. His sections are
and certainty that family ties and
it. He continues to write on a
punctuated with quotes from
emotion have to be sacrificed to
range of topics, including the

Schopenhauer and illuminated by
fully contribute to civilization,
pitiful state of Europe and the
recalled scenes from Midwest
reflects, while Enid is pregnant
impermanence of e-books.

America in the mid-20th century,
with their youngest child, Denise:

Franzen won the National
when he worked as a railroad

“A last child was a last opportunity

Book Award for fiction in 2001
engineer. Gary, Chip, and Denise
to learn from one’s mistakes and
with The Corrections, which
inhabit a much less tractable world; make corrections, and he resolved was also a finalist for the
their experiences distill the pressures to seize this opportunity.”

Pulitzer Prize for fiction.

and vicissitudes of the increasingly

Franzen later published a
troubled late 20th century.

memoir called The Discomfort

Other key works

Genetics aside, there is a

Zone, which included an intimate

1992 Strong Motion
common link between all of them:

exploration of the impact of his

2006 The Discomfort Zone:

despite neuroses and flaws, they all mother’s death. This eclectic A Personal History (essays)

have hope of improvement. Even
collection reveals that the notion of

2010 Freedom

Alfred, unwavering in his self-belief family still dominates his work. ■

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330

IT ALL STEMS FROM

THE SAME NIGHTMARE,

THE ONE WE CREATED

TOGETHER

THE GUEST (2001), HWANG SOK-YONG

IN CONTEXT

FOCUS

After Japan’s surrender at
the end of World War II, a
line of latitude that crosses
the Korean Peninsula, the 38th

The 38th parallel
parallel, was chosen as the dividing

BEFORE
line between Soviet and US

Ever since we were children

1893 Literature in Korea
occupation zones, and is still
we have known that the
emerges from the cultural
roughly in effect as the border

Guest is a Western disease.

between North and South Korea.

shadow cast by classical

The Guest

The postwar generation of South

Chinese literature. The first

Korean writers embraced a

Western work of fiction printed
traditionalist movement that looked
in Korean is John Bunyan’s
back at an idealized past. But this

The Pilgrim’s Progress, which
nostalgia was rejected by the
precedes even a translation of
writers of the 1960s, who sought
the Bible, published in 1910.

to engage with the psychological
brother. He discovers the truth of

1985 Hwang Sok-yong’s The
damage of recent Korean history:

the atrocity: it was not perpetrated

Shadow of Arms is an account
the Japanese occupation (1910–
by US forces, but was a result of
of black-market trading during

45), the Korean War (1950–53),
fighting between Christian and
the war in Vietnam (another
and communist rule in the north.

communist Koreans themselves.

East Asian country split

Christianity and communism
between north and south).

Evils from abroad
are seen as foreign “guests” that

In his novel The Guest, Hwang
have turned Koreans against each

1964–94 Park Kyong-ni’s

Sok-yong (1943–) deals with the
other; and the Korean word for
epic 16-volume historical
real-life Korean War massacre at
guest refers also to smallpox,
novel The Land depicts the

Sinchon, in what is now North
another plague from the West that
struggles of Koreans under

Korea. The novel’s Korean-born
ravaged the country. The novel’s

Japanese oppression.

protagonist, a Christian minister

12-part structure mirrors that of a
living in the US, returns to visit the
shamanistic ritual to cure smallpox,

AFTER
site, along with the ghost of his
known as a “guest exorcism.” ■

2005 North and South Korean
authors attend a joint literary

See also: The Heartless 241
congress for the first time.

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CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE 331

I REGRET THAT IT

TAKES A LIFE TO

LEARN HOW TO LIVE

EXTREMELY LOUD AND INCREDIBLY CLOSE (2005),

JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER

IN CONTEXT

FOCUS

The terrorist attacks in New along the way. The novel contains York and Washington on
unusual stylistic choices: pages

September 11, 2001 caused are black, or several in a row are a huge change in the political and
left white; words are circled in red;

Post 9/11 America
cultural landscape, which literature and many photographs appear—

BEFORE
was sure to tackle sooner or later.

of objects, famous personalities,

2001 Jonathan Franzen’s

But at first many authors struggled
and the Twin Towers themselves.

The Corrections, published
with its enormity; after the attacks,

Through such techniques, Safran
leading novelists Martin Amis,

Foer tries to make us look afresh
on September 11, 2001,

Ian McEwan, and Don DeLillo all
at 9/11, to find a new way of seeing
foreshadows the concerns of
commented on how the nature of
something so terrible that has also

American literature after 9/11.

their job felt as if it had changed
become so familiar. ■

AFTER
and become more difficult in

2007 Don DeLillo’s Falling
ways they did not yet understand.

Man is published, detailing

Authors chose different methods to
the effects of the World Trade
try to make sense of the topic.

Center attacks on the life of a
middle-class survivor.

A new way of looking

In Extremely Loud and Incredibly

There are so many times

2007 Mohsin Hamid’s The

Close, Jonathan Safran Foer (1977–)

when you need to make a

Reluctant Fundamentalist
explores the aftereffects of 9/11
quick escape, but humans
depicts the way in which
through a young boy, Oskar Schell.

don’t have their own wings,
a middle-class Pakistani-

Nine months after the attacks, in
or not yet, anyway.

American financial analyst is
which his father was killed, Oskar

Extremely Loud and
drawn toward radicalization.

suffers from a depression, which he

Incredibly Close
says is like wearing “heavy boots.”

2013 Thomas Pynchon’s

Finding a key left by his father, he

Bleeding Edge is published,
embarks on a quest around New
a lively novel touching on

York to discover what the key is for,
financial malfeasance during
meeting many curious characters
the dot-com boom, in which

9/11 takes place more than

See also: The Corrections 328–29 ■ The Reluctant Fundamentalist 339
halfway through the story.

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332

FURTHER READING

L’HOMME RAPAILLÉ
drugs consumed in such quantities coexistence between humans that at one point people appear as
and machines in a high-tech future

(1970), GASTON MIRON
giant reptiles. Thompson blends
world. People use technology and
fact and fiction using the journalistic technology, in a sense, uses people, The masterwork of Gaston Miron
mode he pioneered, which came to
to the point that machines become

(1928–96)—writer, poet, publisher,
be known as “Gonzo journalism”

an intermediary in human relations.

and luminary of Quebec literature— after the book’s fictional attorney.

L’homme rapaillé (“The Man Made

Whole”) is a major selection of the

HISTORY
author’s poems. Lyric love poetry

CRASH

(1974), ELSA MORANTE
sits side by side with explorations of (1973), J. G. BALLARD
the political and social predicament

Morante (1912–85) and her husband
of the French-speaking Québecois

Depicting the dark side of our

Alberto Moravia, both half-Jewish
population in Canada—Miron called fascination with speed, Crash is Italians, hid from persecution during
for separatism, and his poems are
a controversial novel about car-

World War II in the mountains south
a celebration of Quebec’s language, crash sexual fetishism and of Rome. Her experiences were
history, and people. He also saw

“symphorophilia” (being aroused
reflected 30 years later in her most
poetry as an endless process of
by disasters or accidents); its shock famous novel, History, which traces self-discovery, hence his refusal
value is typical of science-fiction
the impact of politics and conflict on
to authorize a definitive collection.

writer Ballard. The protagonist is Dr. local farming communities around Robert Vaughan, a TV scientist and Rome. The central character is Ida FEAR AND LOATHING

“nightmare angel of the highways,”

Mancuso, a widowed teacher whose
whose fantasy is to die in a collision prime concern is the survival of her IN LAS VEGAS
with movie star Elizabeth Taylor.

son, the offspring of a rape. A major

(1972), HUNTER S. THOMPSON

Unflinching in showing a fusion of
theme is the extra challenges war
sex and death, the text paints a
brings to the poor, already familiar

Mixing autobiographical elements
dystopian picture of the close
with hardship even in peacetime.

and surreal invention, this influential
work, subtitled A Savage Journey to

J. G. Ballard
short-story competition. He
the Heart of the American Dream,
moved to London to study
describes journalist Raoul Duke’s

An exponent of the New Wave
literature later the same year.

long weekend with his Samoan
of science fiction, J. G. Ballard

His first fiction was influenced
attorney Dr. Gonzo to report on a
specialized in depicting futuristic by psychoanalysis and surrealist motorcycle race, along with a visit
dystopias, although one of his
art. Working as a copywriter
to a narcotics officers’ convention.

most popular novels, Empire of
and encyclopedia salesman

American writer Thompson (1937–
the Sun, is more conventional.

before joining the Royal Air

2005)—for whom Raoul Duke was

Ballard was born in 1930 in

Force, he became a full-time
an author surrogate, a character

Shanghai, China. As a teenager
writer from 1962. Ballard died
based on and speaking for the
he spent two years of the war
in 2009, at 78, in London.

author—used this narrative
interned by the Japanese. He

Key works
framework to critique the failure
studied medicine (at King’s

College, Cambridge), with the
of 1960s’ counterculture, such as
goal of training as a psychiatrist, 1971 Vermilion Sands the reliance on drugs. The trip
but in 1951, during the second

1973 Crash (see above)

turns into a psychedelic odyssey
year of his studies, he won a

1991 The Kindness of Women
of excess, comic yet brutal, with

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CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE 333

THE AESTHETICS
triumph of the human spirit over
oppression. The book, and the

Angela Carter

OF RESISTANCE
television miniseries based upon it,

(1975–1981), PETER WEISS
led to a surge of interest in African-

Known for fiction that fused

American history and genealogy.

feminism and magical realism,

A three-volume historical novel

Angela Carter was born in

1940, in Eastbourne, England,
dealing with the fight against the
and studied English at Bristol

Nazis by left-wing students in Berlin, LIFE A USER’S MANUAL

University. In 1969 she left her
as well as charting antifascist

(1978), GEORGES PEREC
husband and spent two years
movements elsewhere in Europe,
in Tokyo, where she claims

The Aesthetics of Resistance

Focusing on the inhabitants of a
to have learned her feminist
proposes that the model for political Paris apartment building, Life A principles. She was writer
resistance is to be found in the

User’s Manual, by Frenchman Perec
in residence in the 1970s and
stand taken by the artist. The title

(1936–82) is a fictional web whose

’80s at various UK universities,
of this highly acclaimed work refers main thread is a resident’s project and also taught in the US and
to its meditations on painting,
to paint 500 watercolors of the

Australia. Her Nights at the
sculpture, and literature. Its author
places he visits, have them turned

Circus was a joint winner of

Weiss (1916–82), German-born but
into jigsaws that he must solve on
the James Tait Black Memorial
with Swedish nationality, was also
his return to Paris, before returning

Prize in 1984. Carter was also
a dramatist, painter, and filmmaker. each image to the place it depicts.

a journalist and worked in
radio and the movies. She died

His art teacher—a fellow resident—
in 1992 in London at 51.

ROOTS
plans to paint the lives of all the
tenants. Perec was a member of

Key works

(1976), ALEX HALEY
the Oulipo group, who together
practiced writing under a set of

1967 The Magic Toyshop

Beginning in the 18th century with constraining principles, and was 1979 The Bloody Chamber and
the semifictional story of a teenage
fascinated by literary playfulness.

Other Stories (see left, below)

African boy who is kidnapped and

1984 Nights at the Circus
sold into slavery in the American

South, Roots traces the lives of the

THE BLOODY CHAMBER
next six generations, culminating

AND OTHER STORIES
each subversively reinterpreted.

with American writer Haley (1921–

(1979), ANGELA CARTER

Metamorphosis plays a significant

92), who undertook a decade of
part in these stories, both in the
extensive research into his own

Author of “magical realist” tales,
form of magic (such as men turned
ancestry. A major theme is the

Angela Carter based all ten stories
into wolves), and also in physical
in her influential work The Bloody
and moral transformations—for

Chamber and Other Stories on
instance, with reference to
folktales, including Little Red Riding menstruation and deception.

Hood, Beauty and the Beast, and

Puss in Boots. The psychological
themes underlying the original

A DRY WHITE SEASON

Through this flesh,
narratives are intensified and
which is us, we are you,

(1979), ANDRÉ BRINK
modernized, although without any
and you are us!

loss of their inherent gothic folklore

The underlying metaphor of A Dry

Roots
atmosphere. Rape, incest, murder,

White Season is the equation of

Alex Haley
torture, and cannibalism all feature, climatic and moral drought. This showing the dark side of humanity.

acclaimed novel is set in Afrikaner

Stereotypes of feminity, including

South Africa just before the political
the innocence of girlhood and the
changes took place that overturned
notion of a happy marriage, are
apartheid and brought renewal to

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334 FURTHER READING
husband with his second, younger
visit her house in abundance.

Milan Kundera
wife. The form of the novel is a letter Allende depicts love, betrayal, written by the widow to her friend,
vengeance, and ambition in a

Born in Brno, Czechoslovakia,
an émigré to the US. Personal and
country torn apart, but offering
in 1929, Kundera studied music
social oppression are seen as two
possible salvation in the prospects
as a child and much of his
sides of the experience of many
of the female bloodline.

work bears a musical signature.

women in Senegalese society.

He studied literature and then
film in Prague, becoming
a lecturer after graduating.

THE UNBEARABLE

Initially a member of the Czech

THE HOUSE OF THE

LIGHTNESS OF BEING

Communist Party, he was

SPIRITS

(1984), MILAN KUNDERA
barred following the Soviet

(1982), ISABEL ALLENDE
takeover of 1968, losing his

Set around the Prague Spring
teaching positions. Kundera

The House of The Spirits was the
of 1968, a brief period of political
emigrated to France in 1975
first—and most successful—novel
reform in Soviet Czechoslovakia,
and has lived there ever since,
of Chilean-American writer Isabel

The Unbearable Lightness of Being
taking citizenship in 1981. He

Allende (1942–), the granddaughter
is Kundera’s most famous work.

labels himself as a novelist,
of former socialist president of Chile The title refers to a philosophical although his works skillfully

Salvador Allende, who was deposed dilemma: Friedrich Nietzsche’s blend the philosophical, ironic,
in a coup that features in the novel.

idea of eternal return, or heaviness,
political, comedic, and erotic.

The book began life as a letter to
as opposed to the ancient Greek
her 100-year-old grandfather and
philosopher Parmenides’ notion of

Key works
turned into a complex, epic saga
life as light. It tells of a surgeon who
tracing three generations of family
pursues his belief in “lightness”

1967 The Joke

1979 The Book of Laughter
life, against a background of social
through a promiscuous love life,
and Forgetting
and political turbulence in an
which also serves as a distraction

1984 The Unbearable
unnamed country (recognizably
from his country’s fragile and

Lightness of Being (see right)

Chile). The book has elements
unstable politics. He falls in love
of magical realism: one of the two
with a waitress and marries her,
sisters, Clara, possesses powers of
but cannot give up his mistresses.

the country. Through its protagonist, telekinesis and clairvoyance, which Kundera asks whether life can have a white, male, mild-mannered
she consciously develops—spirits
weight, or meaning, since return
teacher, author André Brink (1935–
to the past is impossible.

2015)—himself a white South

African—explores racial intolerance
and the price for taking a principled

NEUROMANCER
stand against an unjust system.

(1984), WILLIAM GIBSON

… I wait for better times to

SO LONG A LETTER

One of the earliest and most
come, while I carry this child influential works of “cyberpunk”—
in my womb, the daughter of

(1979), MARIAMA BÂ
a science-fiction subgenre usually
so many rapes or perhaps
featuring an antihero in a dystopian
of Miguel, but above all,

Written in French by Senegalese
high-tech future— Neuromancer by
my own daughter …

writer Mariama Bâ (1929–81), So

American-Canadian author Gibson

The House of the Spirits

Long a Letter captures the feelings

(1948–) tells of a damaged, suicidal

Isabel Allende
of a recently widowed Muslim
computer hacker. Having been
teacher. After spending the last
injected with a Russian toxin that
four years of her marriage
prevents him from accessing
emotionally abandoned, she now
cyberspace, he is commissioned
has to share grieving for her late
by an enigmatic employer to do a

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CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE 335
special job; being cured will be
and the taboos that surround
his payoff. The book combines
foreignness and colonialism.

a futuristic vision with elements

Alternating between first- and
of hard-boiled noir.

third-person narration and present
and past tense, the novel uses a
spare, poetic prose style.

THE LOVER

… she would not bury herself
alive inside these four walls to

(1984), MARGUERITE DURAS

THE HANDMAID’S TALE
sew her shroud, as native
widows were expected to do.

Set in French Indochina in the

(1985), MARGARET ATWOOD

Love in the Time

1930s, The Lover draws upon the
of Cholera
real-life experiences of its French

A dystopian vision of the near future,

Gabriel García Márquez
author, Marguerite Duras (1914–96). The Handmaid’s Tale by Canadian It details the intense affair between writer Atwood (see p.327) depicts a 15-year-old girl from a poor family
an America where the establishment
and a wealthy Chinese man of 27,
of a Christian theocracy has led to
yet beyond this it is also concerned the loss of women’s freedoms.

with female empowerment, the

Caste and class become organizing
relationship between mother and
principles of society, allowing
passionate one, Florentino Ariza,
daughter, emerging adolescence,

Atwood to comment on present-day proposes to his youthful sweetheart inequalities. The narrator is Offred,

50 years after first declaring his love
a “handmaid”—a concubine for
and being rejected in favor of

Don DeLillo
reproductive purposes in an era

Dr. Juvenal Urbino, the pragmatist.

of rampant sexually transmitted

A central question in the book is,

Born in New York City in 1936,

Don DeLillo garnered a cult
diseases. Her master develops
which kind of love is likelier to
following with his early works,
feelings for her and gives her
bring happiness? Cholera features
entering the mainstream with
privileges, as well as access to
literally in the narrative, but also

White Noise. Growing up in an
some of the regime’s secrets. She
serves as an imaginative analogy

Italian Catholic family in the
later becomes implicated in a
for infatuation. Other themes in the

Bronx, he discovered a thirst
growing resistance movement. The work include acceptance of aging for reading during a summer
power of this highly controversial
and the continuation of romantic
job as a parking attendant.

work of fiction comes from its
love among the elderly, even as

He worked as an advertising
devastating critique of patriarchy
the body grows more infirm.

copywriter after graduating in
by exaggeration of its features.

communications arts in 1958
but, disillusioned with the job,

WHITE NOISE
he quit in 1964 in order to write
fiction. DeLillo’s novels have

LOVE IN THE TIME

(1985), DON DELILLO
been described as postmodern

OF CHOLERA
in tone and focus on the US’s

(1985), GABRIEL GARCÍA MÁRQUEZ In his best-selling novel White material excess and empty

Noise, author and playwright Don
culture as recurring themes.

A tender exploration of love’s

DeLillo tells of how the chair of
difficulties and ambiguities, Love

Hitler Studies at a US university is

Key works
in the Time of Cholera by Nobel
forced to confront his own mortality

Prize-winning Colombian novelist
after a chemical spill creates an

1985 White Noise (see right)

Márquez (see p.282) deftly navigates “Airborne Toxic Event.” The book 1988 Libra
the twists and turns of human
is a darkly amusing examination

1991 Mao II
feeling. Two versions of love are
of consumerism, intellectual

1997 Underworld
presented, each enshrined in a
pretensions within academia, and

2011 The Angel Esmeralda
male character: one passionate,
the dominance of the media. It also
and the other pragmatic. The
examines cohesion, trust, and love

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336 FURTHER READING
within the family unit—which is
mistaken for a private eye; in the
book is populated by criminal and
described as the “cradle of the
last, an author who is suffering
lowlife characters, and is reminiscent
world’s misinformation.”

from writer’s block obsessively tries of hard-boiled detective fiction.

to track down a successful novelist

THE NEW YORK TRILOGY
who has disappeared. In immersing
themselves in writing fiction, letters, THE ENGLISH PATIENT

(1985–1986; 1987), PAUL AUSTER
poems, or reports, the characters

(1992), MICHAEL ONDAATJE
become alienated from reality. A

Auster plays with identity, illusion,
major theme running through the

In his Booker Prize-winning The
and the absurd in his three hugely
trilogy is the operation of chance

English Patient, Sri-Lankan born
successful interlocking novels:

and coincidence in our lives.

Canadian author Michael Ondaatje

City of Glass, Ghosts, and The

(1943–) shows how the lives of four

Locked Room. This is film-noirish
characters intersect in an Italian
crime fiction, with elements of

THE SATANIC VERSES
villa in 1945. A nurse, a thief, and
postmodern experimentalism. The

(1988), SALMAN RUSHDIE
a Sikh sapper are preoccupied by a
links between an author and his or
plane-crash victim who lies injured
her subject are teasingly explored:

In this deeply controversial book,
upstairs. The narrative spirals into
in the first book the protagonist is
two Indian survivors of a terrorist
the past to reveal an affair in the
a writer of detective stories who is
attack on a jet bound for London

North African desert and other
caught in complications after being become symbols of the angelic dangerous secrets. Lies and half-and the wicked, and experience
truths mask identities, and physical
miraculous transformations. The
and emotional damage are inflicted

Paul Auster
novel’s title, The Satanic Verses,
by both war and love.

refers to passages in the holy book

Novelist, essayist, translator,
and poet, Auster primarily
of Islam, the Koran, that allow
writes about ideas of the self,
intercessory prayers to pagan
identity, and meaning—and
deities. British-Indian author
sometimes the author himself

Salman Rushdie (see p.302) was
features in his books. Born in
subjected to a fatwa (death order)

The desert could not be

1947 in Newark, New Jersey,
by the Supreme Leader of Iran for
claimed or owned—it was

Auster moved to Paris in 1970
allegedly blaspheming against
to translate contemporary
a piece of cloth carried by

Muhammad—one of the characters

French literature. Returning
winds, never held down by
is partly modeled on the prophet.

to the US four years later,
stones, and given a hundred
he continued his translation
shifting names …

work, wrote poetry, and began

PLAYING FOR THRILLS

The English Patient
writing a series of existentialist

Michael Ondaatje
mystery novels, which were

(1989), WANG SHUO
collected as The New York

Trilogy. Auster has also

Wang Shuo (1958–) is a Chinese
written screenplays, two
writer working in the “hooligan”

of which became movies that
style, typified by using Beijing
he directed himself.

dialect to show mocking indifference
to establishment values. His much

Key works
celebrated Playing for Thrills is a

TEXACO
satirical novel of urban alienation,

(1992), PATRICK CHAMOISEAU

1982 The Invention of Solitude
centered on a murder. It is narrated

1985–87 The New York Trilogy
by the chief suspect, Fang Yan, a

This key novel by Martinique

(see above)

man who enjoys card playing,
author Chamoiseau (1953–) takes

1990 The Music of Chance
drinking, and womanizing. Along
its name from a real-life shantytown

2005 The Brooklyn Follies
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CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE 337
company due to its industry

County, southwestern Ontario,
connections. The founder of this
they typically show a mastery of
community, whose father was a
structure, switching back and forth
freed slave, tells her family story,
in time. They also feature a
beginning in the early 1820s. The
preoccupation with moral ambiguity
narrative is punctuated by excerpts

What that Coyote dreams,
and messiness in relationships, and
from her notebooks, diaries, and
anything can happen.

also with the responsibility people
letters. At the heart of the book is

Green Grass,
assume for parents, children, and
the struggle between colonizer and

Running Water
in-laws at different times of life.

colonized, and between official

Thomas King
history and oral storytelling, both of
which are mirrored in the interplay

INFINITE JEST
of languages: French and Creole.

(1997), DAVID FOSTER WALLACE

A torrent of zany humor and

THE ROCK OF TANIOS
surreal incident, Infinite Jest is the

(1993), AMIN MAALOUF
as well as from literature (such as
masterpiece of Wallace (1962–2008),

Robinson Crusoe). Both comic and
an American writer whose suicide

Lebanese author Amin Maalouf
satirical, the work touches on the
cemented his cult status. An

(1949–), who writes in French, won
cultural and political aspects of
ambitious novel that explores
the Prix Goncourt for The Rock of

Native American land issues.

addiction, recovery, and the

Tanios. The novel is set in the late

American Dream, the book is set in

1880s, when Lebanon was caught in
the conflict between Europe and the SELECTED STORIES
a dystopian near future. Multilayered
and nonchronological in style, it

Ottoman Empire. It tells the story of (1996), ALICE MUNRO
features a huge cast of characters,

Tanios, the illegitimate son of a
such as the residents of a Boston
sheikh, who flees his homeland with Canadian author Alice Munro has halfway house, students at a nearby
his adoptive father to escape political written novels, but it is her short tennis academy, and a gang of
enemies. Tanios is soon embroiled in stories that are regarded as her homicidal Quebec terrorists in
the wider conflict and becomes an
supreme achievement, as can be
wheelchairs. The addictions it
unlikely intermediary between the
seen in this collection from eight of
examines include entertainment,

Western and Middle Eastern powers.

her books. Mostly set in Huron
sex, nationalism, and drugs.

GREEN GRASS,

Alice Munro

(although Munro had moved

RUNNING WATER
from her home province ten years

A writer of exquisitely crafted,
earlier). Writing an impressive

(1993), THOMAS KING
compelling, and emotionally
range of short stories and novels
rich stories, Alice Munro has
over the decades since, she has

American-Canadian novelist and
developed and advanced the art
pioneered a narrative style that
broadcaster King (1943–), who is
of short-story writing over the
is simultaneously rich in imagery
part Cherokee, writes about Native
course of six decades. Born in
yet also lyrical, sparse, and

American culture in spare, colloquial

Ontario, Canada, in 1931, she
intense in its description of the
prose. Green Grass, Running Water
had her first writing published
complexities of ordinary lives.

is set in the Blackfoot territory of
in 1950 while studying English

Alberta, Canada. The novel’s
and journalism at the University

Key works
structure is complex, with four
of Western Ontario. Her first
collection of short stories, Dance 1978 Who Do You Think You Are?

plot lines each interspersed with
of the Happy Shades, appeared

1996 Selected Stories (see above)

a different creation myth. One
in 1968, featuring the lives of

1998 The Love of a Good Woman
strand features figures from Native
women in small-town Ontario

2004 Runaway

American and Christian traditions,

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338 FURTHER READING

Jhumpa Lahiri

INTERPRETER OF
on loss, memory, and dissolution,
through memoir, history, and

MALADIES
observation. The book’s title is the

Jhumpa Lahiri’s father

(1999), JHUMPA LAHIRI
name of the central character, who
emigrated to the UK from
was sent to England and placed

India, and Jhumpa was born

Jhumpa Lahiri’s first work of fiction, with foster parents. Later, after in London in 1967. Her family

Interpreter of Maladies was initially discovering his Czech identity and moved to the US—the country
rejected by several publishers, but
becoming an architectural historian,
that she considers her home—
went on to win the Pulitzer Prize. A he explores his troubled past.

when she was two years old.

After her school years she
collection of eight short stories, the
attended Boston University,
unifying theme is the experience of
where she earned multiple
first- and second-generation Indian

LIFE OF PI
degrees, and went on to
immigrants in America. Among

(2001), YANN MARTEL
teach creative writing there.

the other subjects explored are loss,

Renowned for her restrained,
disappointed expectations, the

In his acclaimed novel Life of Pi,
poignant prose, Lahiri has
disconnection between different

Canadian author Martel (1963–)

achieved acclaim with both
generations of immigrants, and the
follows the voyage of a teenage
her short stories and novels,
struggle to find a place in the West

Indian boy, the son of a zookeeper,
writing on themes informed
for the traditional culture of India,
who for 227 days drifts on a lifeboat
by her experience as a second-
where two of the stories are set. In
in the Pacific Ocean following
generation Indian American.

many of them, food plays a major
a shipwreck, with only a Bengal
role as a focus of human interaction.

tiger named Richard Parker as

Key works
his companion. The boy, en route

1999 Interpreter of Maladies

(see right)

AUSTERLITZ
to Canada, develops wisdom
through adversity. His experiences

2003 The Namesake

(2001), W. G. SEBALD

(including delirium, blindness,

2008 Unaccustomed Earth
meerkats, and carnivorous algae)

2013 The Lowland

Often writing in an intentionally
provide the occasion for urgent and
elaborate form of his native tongue,
thought-provoking reflections on

German author Sebald (1944–2001)

spirituality, religions, and zoology.

MY NAME IS RED
lived in England for the latter part
of his life. Austerlitz is typical of his

(1998), ORHAN PAMUK
work in its melancholy reflections

THE KITE RUNNER

(2003), KHALED HOSSEINI

An intellectual murder mystery
centered around 16th-century

Portraying themes of betrayal, guilt,
miniaturists, My Name is Red won
sin, atonement, and friendship, The
international acclaim for its author,

Kite Runner begins in Afghanistan

Turkish Nobel Laureate Orhan
in 1975. A 12-year-old boy plans to

No one can explain exactly

Pamuk (1952–). The book exhibits
win a kite-flying competition with
what happens within us
a postmodern consciousness of its
the help of his best friend, but an
when the doors behind
own artistry: characters know they
act of violence mars the day of the
which our childhood terrors
are fictional, and the reader is
contest. Exiled in California after
lurk are flung open.

frequently referenced. The narration
the Soviet invasion of 1979, he

Austerlitz
switches viewpoint, often between
eventually returns to a land under

W. G. Sebald
unexpected narrators—there are

Taliban rule. Khaled Hosseini
passages narrated by a coin and

(1965–) was inspired to write this
the color red. The novel’s themes
partly autobiographical novel after
include artistic devotion, love, and
reading that kite flying had been
tensions between East and West.

banned in his homeland.

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CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE 339

Africa and the West. Writing with

2666
feminist overtones, Adichio also

WE NEED NEW NAMES

(2004), ROBERTO BOLAÑO
questions the ethics of Western

(2013), NOVIOLET BULAWAYO
journalism and the function of the

The last, unrevised, labyrinthine
academic establishment, as well

Set initially in a Zimbabwean
novel by the Chilean writer Bolaño
as the effectiveness of relief aid.

shanty named Paradise, the

(1953–2003), 2666 (whose title is
coming-of-age novel We Need
never fully explained) focuses on
a mysterious writer, Archimboldi.

WIZARD OF THE CROW

New Names depicts lives scarred
by violence, poverty, disease,

Partly set on the eastern front of

(2006), NGUGI WA THIONG’O
and injustice. The young female

World War II, the story mainly takes
narrator, sent to live with her aunt
place in a Mexican town notorious

Set in an imaginary African
in the Midwestern US, is faced
for around 300 serial homicides of
dictatorship, Wizard of the Crow is a
with a new source of discontent:

women. After detailing the murders madcap satire of totalitarian politics. the exclusiveness of the American in a relentless series of police reports, Author Ngugi wa Thiong’o (1938–), Dream. The novel is especially

Bolaño rewards readers for their
a prisoner of conscience in his native memorable for its depiction of the stamina with a vivid historical

Kenya, emigrated to the US after
loyalty and vitality of childhood
reconstruction that illuminates
his release. In a parody of corrupt
friendships in Zimbabwe, where
the enigma at the novel’s core.

governments, the plot involves a
author NoViolet Bulawayo (1981–)

despotic ruler who wishes to climb
was born and raised.

to heaven by building a modern-
day Tower of Babel. Hope is found

Chimamanda Ngozi
in multiple voices of dissent—such

Adichie
as a group that causes chaos with
plastic snakes. Influenced by oral

Metaphors are our way

Born in 1977 in southeastern
traditions, the book operates by
of losing ourselves in

Nigeria, Chimamanda Ngozi
broad strokes of caricature, with

Adichie studied medicine and
semblances or treading
some scatological touches.

pharmacy at the University
water in a sea of seeming.

of Nigeria in Enugu, where

2666

Roberto Bolaño

THE RELUCTANT
her father was professor of
statistics and her mother was

FUNDAMENTALIST
the first female registrar. She

(2007), MOHSIN HAMID
studied communications and
political science in the US,

Presented as a monologue that
later obtaining a Master’s in
takes place in a Lahore (Pakistan)

African Studies from Yale. An
author of novels, short stories,
café, The Reluctant Fundamentalist

HALF OF A YELLOW SUN
and poetry, she won the 2007
captures the experiences of a

Orange Prize for Fiction for

(2006), CHIMAMANDA NGOZI

Pakistani man who comes home

Half of a Yellow Sun. Adichie

ADICHIE
from the US after a failed love affair
divides her time between the
and 9/11, turning his back on a

US and Nigeria, where she

Adichie named her masterpiece
well-paid business job. In Pakistan
teaches creative writing.

Half of a Yellow Sun—which traces
his disillusionment with American
the Nigerian Civil War (1967–70)

capitalism forms into more radical

Key works
through its impact on three main
views. Pakistani author Hamid
characters—after the symbol on

(1971–) uses the story line of the

2003 Purple Hibiscus
the Biafran flag. Themes include
narrator’s girlfriend’s inability to

2006 Half of a Yellow Sun
conflict’s human cost, politics and
free herself from a past relationship

(see left)

identity in postcolonial Africa,
as a metaphor of America’s nostalgic

2013 Americanah
and the relationship between
attachment to past glories.

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340

GLOSSARY
aesthetic Concerning beauty and
ballad A form of popular verse that
conceit An elaborate or unlikely
the appreciation of beauty; as a noun,
narrates a story, often set to music,
metaphor, especially popular in
used to denote the set of principles
and widespread throughout Europe

Elizabethan poetry, comparing two
and ideas that define an artistic
from the Middle Ages until the early
things that are not obviously similar.

movement (“a classical aesthetic”).

19th century.

English poet John Donne famously
compares parting lovers to the arms of

Aestheticism A movement, originating Bildungsroman A “novel of a compass, apart but still connected.

in the late 19th century in England,
formation” that tells of the early
which valued “art for art’s sake,” and
struggles and emotional education of
couplet Two successive lines of verse
rejected the idea that art or literature
a young protagonist, who grows and
that go together, often rhyming. When
should offer a moral message or social
matures during the process. The genre occurring at the conclusion of a poem purpose. Leading proponents included
originated in Germany in the late 18th

(such as a Shakespearean sonnet), it
playwright Oscar Wilde, artist James
century. Many Bildungsromans are
can form a summing-up of the poem’s

Whistler, and poet and artist Dante
regarded as partly autobiographical.

sentiment or message.

Gabriel Rossetti.

Byronic hero A hero having the
drama A work intended to be acted
alexandrine A poetic line consisting
qualities for which the English
out on a stage before an audience,
of 12 syllables split into six iambic feet

Romantic poet Lord Byron was
originating in Athens in the 6th and

(an unstressed syllable followed by a
famed, including rebelliousness,

5th centuries bce. The main genres
stressed syllable).

passion, defiance, contempt for
were originally tragedy and comedy.

conventional morality, and possibly

The term comes from the Greek word
allegory A work of art or literature
an appetite for self-destruction.

meaning “action.”

that contains a veiled meaning or
message, often conveyed symbolically.

canto From the Italian meaning
dystopia The opposite of utopia: a

For example, a tale about squabbling

“song,” a section of a long (or especially
vision (usually in novel form) of a
farmyard animals can be an allegory
epic) poem, comparable to a chapter in
future in which society is dominated
for a country’s corrupt political leaders.

a novel or long work of nonfiction.

by a totalitarian state, or has broken
down, often through environmental
alliteration The use of several words
chanson de geste A form of epic
disaster or war. Life in a dystopia
in a row or close together that begin
poem of the 11th to 13th centuries that
usually involves fear and hardship.

with the same consonant or sound,
incorporates legends about historical
often for deliberate poetic effect.

figures such as Charlemagne, and
epic poem A long narrative poem,
which was sung or recited at court.

detailing the adventures of a historic
antihero The protagonist of a

Often considered to be the beginning
or legendary hero. Epic poems are the
literary work who embodies a
of French literature. The term is from
oldest literary texts in the world, and
noticeably different moral code from
the Old French, “song of heroic deeds.”

probably originated in an oral tradition.

the conventional (or role model) hero,
because they are either unheroic or
classic In its literary sense, a work
epistolary novel A type of novel
actively villainous.

widely accepted as being of lasting
popular in 18th-century European
value and worthy of study.

literature in which the narrative
antinovel A term coined by the
is told entirely via letters or other
mid-20th century existentialist
comedy One of the two types of
documents written by the characters.

philosopher and writer Jean-Paul
drama created in ancient Greece (the

Sartre to refer to a novel in which
other being tragedy), whose purpose
existentialism A theory of philosophy
the conventions of the form are
is laughter, entertainment, and satire.

that emerged in Europe in the late 19th
deliberately ignored or subverted.

In contrast to tragedy, comedy tends to
century, focusing on the individual’s

A key development of postmodern
have a happy ending and to deal with
experience of the world and the
literature, an antinovel may have some
ordinary people and with the mundane
importance of individual agency and
features in common with metafiction.

aspects of life.

responsibility. Existentialist literature

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GLOSSARY 341
often contains elements of anxiety,
haiku A Japanese form comprising
or by having characters who are
loneliness, and paranoia in characters’

a short poem with three lines of five,
aware that they are in a story), to
reactions to a meaningless universe.

seven, and five syllables respectively,
draw attention to the relationship
and traditionally dealing with the
between fiction and real life.

fable A simple story with a moral
natural world. It flourished from the
message, often featuring animal

17th to the 19th centuries and became
metaphor A figure of speech that adds
characters and mythical elements.

popular in Western literature in the
an extra layer of meaning to an object

20th century.

by equating it with something else.

fairy tale A short tale featuring
folkloric fantasy characters and
hard-boiled fiction A type of urban
meter In poetry, the rhythm of a
wonderful events, and set in a magical,
crime fiction originating with the
piece of verse, dictated by the “feet”

timeless, and usually rural world.

American pulp-fiction detective

(stressed syllables) in a line.

magazines of the 1920s, often with a
fiction A work that is entirely invented, sardonic private investigator as the Modernism In literature, a movement
consisting of a made-up narrative and protagonist, and featuring gangsters, that lasted from the late 19th to the
imaginary characters. A work of fiction
prostitutes, guns, sex, and violence, as
mid-20th century. It broke with
may be wholly fantastical or embedded
well as fast, colloquial dialogue.

traditional forms and expanded
in the real world. In a wider sense,
the limits of poetry and fiction with
fiction is the genre consisting of

Harlem Renaissance A flourishing
experimental methods that sought
novels and stories.

of black American writing (also art and
a new level of psychological truth,
music) that came out of the new black
such as stream of consciousness.

folklore The traditional beliefs,
middle class in 1920s’ Harlem, New
legends, and customs of a culture,

York. Lasting from around 1918 to the
motif A theme that returns several
passed down by oral tradition for many
early 1930s, it helped establish a black
times throughout a work, and which
hundreds (or even thousands) of years.

cultural identity in the US.

may reflect on and enhance the other
themes or central message of a work.

folktale A popular or traditional tale
humanism During the Renaissance,
handed down from generation to
an intellectual movement springing
myth A symbolic account of gods or
generation by oral transmission;
from a revived interest in classical
superhuman beings existing in a time
another name for a fairy tale.

Greek and Roman thought; today, a
apart from ordinary human history,
largely secular, rationalist system of
used to explain the customs, rituals,
frame narrative An outer narrative
thought that emphasizes human rather
and beliefs of a people or culture. Often
that introduces a story (or stories)

than divine agency.

mentioned in the same phrase as, but
contained within it—generally via a
different from, legend.

character who narrates the main, inner
legend A traditional story, linked to
story. The frame provides context and
historical events, people, or locations,
narrative An account of a series of
structure, and sometimes incorporates
and operating within the realms of the
connected events, whether fictional
many different stories, as in Giovanni
possible (as opposed to a myth, which
or nonfictional.

Boccaccio’s The Decameron and Geoffrey incorporates supernatural elements), Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales.

although the exact dates and details
narrative voice The way in which
may have been lost.

a narrative is communicated to the
genre A style or category of literature
reader, for example via a first-person

(or art or music), such as tragedy,
magic realism A postmodern style
or an omniscient narrator.

comedy, history, spy fiction, science
of artistic expression that in literature
fiction, romance, or crime.

takes the form of a traditional realist
naturalism A literary movement that
narrative into which bizarre or
went further than realism in trying to
gothic A genre that explores the
supernatural elements are introduced,
recreate human behavior in exact and
limits of the imagination, originating
forcing the reader to reevaluate the
precise detail. It also tried to show how
in England and Germany in the late
reality of the surrounding fiction.

people (especially the poor) are formed

18th and early 19th centuries. Its
by their environments and social
features include gloomy, macabre
metafiction A type of postmodern
pressures, and it was often criticized
settings (such as castles, ruins, or
writing that uses techniques to
for concentrating on human misery.

graveyards), supernatural beings
remind the reader of the artificiality

It originated in France in the mid-19th

(such as ghosts and vampires), and
of a fictional work (for example by
century, and is perhaps best exemplified
an atmosphere of mystery and horror.

including the author as a character,
by the novels of Émile Zola.

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342 GLOSSARY
neoclassicism A fascination with the
praise of) a person, place, or thing. It
prose The ordinary, natural form
ideals of classical Greece and Rome
originated in ancient Greece, where it
of written or spoken language, as
that was prevalent in the arts in Europe was performed accompanied by music.

opposed to the more structured,
during the Enlightenment (1650–1800).

rhythmic forms of poetry.

In literature, neoclassicism developed
parody A work that mocks its target
most fully in France, with playwrights
by humorously, satirically, or ironically
protagonist The chief character in

Molière and Jean Racine writing
imitating and exaggerating its least
a story or narrative; the person to
comedies and tragedies respectively
effective elements.

whom the story happens.

that adhered to the classical unities.

In Britain, major proponents included
pathetic fallacy First coined by
realism The accurate depiction of life
poet Alexander Pope and satirist

Victorian critic John Ruskin in 1856,
as it is lived by ordinary people. Often

Jonathan Swift.

the term describes a literary device by
specifically referring to the literary
which human emotions are attributed
approach that was adopted in France

New Journalism A form of
to nature or the environment, in such

(particularly in the novels of Gustave
nonfiction writing that uses stylistic
a way that nature seems to offer a

Flaubert) in the 19th century, which
devices from fiction to achieve a
reflection of a character’s inner state.

stressed material facts and sociological
heightened literary effect, dramatizing
insight in reaction to the emotional
events rather than sticking to objective
picaresque novel From the Spanish
nature of Romantic literature.

journalistic truth. Key practitioners
word pícaro, meaning “rogue” or
included Hunter S. Thompson, Truman

“rascal,” an episodic prose narrative
rhyme A repetition of the same sound

Capote, Norman Mailer, and Joan
about a disreputable but likeable hero.

in two or more words; when this occurs

Didion. The name derives from the 1973
at the end of lines in a poem it creates
book by American author Tom Wolfe.

plot The main story, or the sequence
an effect, which poets use to achieve
and interrelationship of crucial events,
various ends (for example to enhance
nonfiction A work of prose in which
in a work of literature.

meaning, to round off a poem, or simply
nothing is made up, and which is about
for harmony).

and based on facts and real events (as
poetry Literary writing of concentrated
opposed to fiction).

expression, intended to evoke a greater
rhyme scheme The pattern of the
resonance than prose. Poetry uses a
rhymes in a poem. Certain types of
novel A sustained work of prose
wide variety of devices, including
poem have strict rhyme schemes, such
fiction, usually of several hundred
alliteration, rhyme, metaphor, and
as terza rima, the Shakespearean
pages, and typically containing
rhythm, to achieve its effects. Different
sonnet, and the Keatsian ode.

characters and a plot. The novel form
forms of poetry include the epic, the
developed gradually from the 16th
ballad, the sonnet, and, more recently, roman à clef A work in which real century onward.

the less structured form of free verse.

people and events are presented in
fictionalized form. From the French
novella A work of prose fiction that
postcolonial literature A branch
meaning “novel with a key.”

is shorter than a novel, but longer than of writing, especially novels, that a short story. A novella can touch on
developed in former colonies around
romance In the 16th to 18th centuries,
themes almost as broad in scope as
the world in the mid-20th century,
a work of fiction that contained
a full novel, although it retains some of
dealing with the aftermath of
extraordinary adventures or fanciful
the compact unity of the short story.

colonization and examining issues
elements. In contemporary fiction,
such as oppression and freedom,
a genre whose narrative and plot
novel of manners A literary style that cultural identity, and diaspora.

focus on romantic love.

examined (often satirically) the values
and contradictions of society through
postmodernism In literature, a

Romanticism In literature, a Europe-
the domestic scenarios of the middle
movement that began after World War
wide literary movement that began in
and upper classes, and in which

II, developing from the experimentation the late 18th century, in which writers literary realism was a key element.

of the Modernist era. Postmodernist
rejected the Enlightenment ideals

Developed partly in reaction to the
works exhibit differing approaches,
of objective reason, and wrote only
gothic novels of the late 18th century
but often mock previous traditions by
from their own personal perspective.

and the excesses of Romanticism.

parody, pastiche, and the mixing of

Rationality and restraint were replaced
elements of high and low art; they use
by inspiration and subjectivity. Themes
ode A usually rhyming lyric poem
techniques of metafiction to draw
included intense emotional experiences
written as an address to (often in
attention to a work’s artificiality.

and the sublime beauty of nature.

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GLOSSARY 343
saga A narrative from Iceland or
science fiction, the term now signifies a troubadour A traveling composer Norway written in the Middle Ages,
loose genre of work that deals with the
and singer in the courts of medieval
mainly in the Old Norse language, and
question “What if?” through science

Europe. The troubadours were usually
principally dealing with the founding
fiction, horror, fantasy, mystery, and
artists of noble birth who sang tales
of Iceland (family sagas), the kings of
other genres, sometimes all at the
about courtly love, rather than tales of

Norway (kings’ sagas), and legendary
same time.

bloody and heroic deeds.

or heroic exploits (sagas of antiquity).

Although written in prose, the saga
stream of consciousness A key
trouvère A composer of epic poems
shares characteristics with the epic.

experimental technique used by
in northern France, operating roughly

Modernist writers, which tries to
from the 11th to the 14th centuries.

satire Born out of the comedies of
portray a character’s thoughts, feelings,
ancient Greece, this is a literary form
and perceptions as they actually occur,
unities, the The three rules that
that uses such elements as irony,
often jumbled and unfinished, instead
governed the structure of neoclassical
sarcasm, ridicule, and wit to expose or
of in formal, composed sentences. Its
drama, following Aristotle’s notes on
attack human failings or vices, often
proponents include James Joyce,
ancient Greek drama. They are unity of
with the intent of inspiring reform.

Virginia Woolf, and William Faulkner.

action (a single plot or story line), unity
of time (a single day), and unity of place
science fiction Writing that explores

Sturm und Drang “Storm and urge,”

(a single location).

the possibility of scenarios that are
a German literary movement of the
at the time of writing technologically
late 18th century that overturned
utopia A theoretical perfect society in
impossible, extrapolating from present-

Enlightenment conventions, and
which all people live a harmonious
day science; or that deal with some
reveled in extremes of individuality,
existence. Taken from the name of the
form of speculative science-based
violence, and passionate expression.

1516 work by the English humanist and
conceit, such as a society (on Earth or

The young Johann Wolfgang von
statesman Sir Thomas More.

another planet) that has developed in

Goethe and Friedrich von Schiller
wholly different ways from our own.

were two of its main exponents.

vernacular The language of a specific
country; ordinary language as it is
slave narrative A nonfiction
terza rima A form of poetry that uses actually spoken, as opposed to formal narrative told by a slave who has
three-line verses with an interlocking
literary language.

escaped captivity or been granted
rhyme scheme, so that the first and
freedom. Necessarily quite rare
third lines rhyme with each other, and

Victorian literature British literature

(because education was denied to
the middle line rhymes with the first
written during the reign of Queen
slaves), they were used by anti-slavery
and third lines of the next verse.

Victoria (reigned 1837–1901), which
campaigners to bring the slaves’ plight

Developed (although not invented) by
often consisted of long and highly
to wider public attention, helping to
the Italian poet Dante Alighieri.

ambitious novels depicting broad
end European trading in slaves and the
cross-sections of society and often
abolition of slavery in North America.

tragedy One of two types of play
containing a moral lesson. Key authors
created in ancient Greece (the other
were Charles Dickens, George Eliot,
soliloquy A device in a play in
being comedy), in which events move
and William Makepeace Thackeray.

which a character speaks his or her
toward a catastrophic conclusion, and
innermost thoughts aloud, which has
which shows characters brought low

Weimar Classicism A German
the effect of sharing them directly
and experiencing terrible suffering,
literary movement that lasted from
with the audience.

often because of a tragic flaw.

the 1780s to 1805, named after the

German city of Weimar, home of its
sonnet A type of poem created in
tragic flaw In Greek tragedy, the
principal authors, Johann Wolfgang
medieval Italy, having 14 lines of a set
element of a protagonist’s character
von Goethe and Friedrich von Schiller.

number of syllables, and following a
that leads to his or her downfall.

These authors used the structure of
specific rhyme scheme. The two
classical Greek drama and poetry
most common types are the Petrarchan transcendentalism A 19th-century to create works of aesthetic balance

(or Italian) and the Shakespearean (or
movement in the US whose adherents
and harmony.

English) sonnet.

saw a divine beauty and goodness
in nature that they tried to express
world literature Literature that has
speculative fiction First used in 1947
through literature. Its most famous
developed an audience and had an
by American science fiction writer
writers were Henry David Thoreau
influence beyond its original culture

Robert A. Heinlein as a synonym for
and Ralph Waldo Emerson.

and language.

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INDEX

Numbers in bold refer to main entries.

Anglo-Saxon literature 19, 42–43,

“The Ballad of the Brown Girl”

Borges, Jorge Luis 245

48, 219

(Cullen) 235

A Universal History of Infamy 302

38th parallel 330

Animal Farm (Orwell) 245, 248, 252,

Balzac, Honoré de 151

Ficciones 245, 282, 298, 299

2666 (Bolaño) 339

253, 320

The Black Sheep 152

“Pierre Menard, Author of the

Anna Karenina (Tolstoy) 149, 178,

The Chouans 122, 151

Quixote” 81

A

200

La Comédie humaine 156, 160

Bradbury, Ray, Fahrenheit 451 252, 287

Annals (Ennius) 40

Old Goriot 151

Brave New World (Huxley) 243, 252,

Annie Allen (Brooks) 259
banned books 243, 260–61, 322

261

Abe, Ko¯bo¯, The Woman in the Dunes
antinovel 249, 274–75

Bao Town (Wang) 310

Brecht, Bertolt, Mother Courage and

263

Antony and Cleopatra (Shakespeare)

Barcas trilogy (Vicente) 103

Her Children 238, 244–45

Abu al-Alahijah 44

87, 89

Barrett Browning, Elizabeth 131

Bright Lights, Big City (McInerney) 313

Abu Nuwas 44

Apuleius, The Golden Ass 40, 56

Barrie, J. M., Peter Pan 169

Brink, André, A Dry White Season

Achebe, Chinua 269

Ariel (Plath) 276

Bartleby & Co. (Villa-Matas) 274

333–34

Things Fall Apart 248, 266–69

Ariosto, Ludovico, Orlando Furioso

Bartleby, the Scrivener (Melville) 140

Broch, Hermann, The Sleepwalkers

Acker, Kathy 313

63

Bashar ibn Burd 44

234

Adichie, Chimamanda Ngozi 339

Aristophanes 90

Basho¯, Matsuo, The Narrow Road to

The Broken Commandment

Half of a Yellow Sun 266, 339

The Clouds 36
the Interior 61, 92

(Shimazaki) 209

Purple Hibiscus 269, 339

Wasps 55

Baudelaire, Charles 157

Brontë, Charlotte 129

The Adventures of Caleb Williams

Wealth 39

Les Fleurs du mal 165

Jane Eyre 109, 118, 128–31, 137

(Godwin) 166

Aristotle, Poetics 39, 90
beat generation 243, 248, 249,

Villette 128

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

The Armies of the Night (Mailer) 291

264–65, 288

Brontë, Emily 131, 134

(Twain) 145, 157, 188–89, 270

Ars Amatoria (Art of Love) (Ovid) 57

The Beautiful and Damned

Wuthering Heights 69, 109, 128,

The Adventures of Pinocchio (Collodi)

Arthurian chivalric romance 19,

(Fitzgerald) 230

132, 134–37, 192, 271

168

50–51

Beckett, Samuel, Waiting for Godot

Bronze Age 20

Aeneid (Virgil) 19, 40–41, 62

As You Like It (Shakespeare) 85, 88, 89

210, 248, 262

Brooke, Rupert, “The Dead” 212

Aeschylus 18, 37, 54

Asbjørnsen, Peter Christen,

Bel Ami (Maupassant) 160

Brooks, Gwendolyn, Annie Allen 259

Oresteia 54–55

Norwegian Folktales 116

The Bell Jar (Plath) 185, 256, 290

The Brothers Karamazov (Dostoyevsky)

aestheticism 157, 194

Asturias, Miguel Angel

Beloved (Morrison) 145, 294, 306–09

149, 178, 200–01, 210

The Aesthetics of Resistance (Weiss)

Men of Maize 282

Ben Jelloun, Tahar, The Sand Child 223

Brown, Dan, The Da Vinci Code 261

333

Mr. President 282

Beowulf 14, 19, 42–43

Buddenbrooks (Mann) 194, 227

“The Afternoon of a Faun” (Mallarmé)

At Swim-Two-Birds (O’Brien) 274

Berlin Alexanderplatz (Döblin) 207,

Bukowski, Charles 313

165

Atwood, Margaret 14, 327

234

Ham on Rye 256

Against Nature (Huysmans) 194

The Blind Assassin 271, 295,

“Bernice Bobs Her Hair” (Fitzgerald)

Bulawayo, NoViolet, We Need New

“The Agony” (Herbert) 91

326–27

230

Names 339

Ah Cheng, Romances of the

The Edible Woman 327

Bhagavad Gita (Vyasa) 24, 25

Bulgakov, Mikhail, The Master and

Landscape 310

The Handmaid’s Tale 252, 327, 335

The Big Sleep (Chandler) 207,

Margarita 290–91

Al-Mu’allaqat 44

Auden, W. H. 117

236–37

Bunyan, John, The Pilgrim’s Progress

Alas, Leopolda, La Regenta 201

Collected Poetry 277

Bildungsroman 128, 206–07, 224–27

330

The Alchemist (Jonson) 75

Auschwitz, literature after 258

The Black Sheep (Balzac) 152

Burgess, Anthony, A Clockwork

Alcott, Louisa May, Little Women

Austen, Jane 14, 90, 119, 131, 317

Blake, William 105

Orange 252, 270, 289

169, 199

Pride and Prejudice 12, 108,

Songs of Innocence and

Burroughs, William S 265, 313

Alencar, José de, The Guarani 164

118–19

Experience 105, 110

Naked Lunch 260, 264

Alfonso X 57

Auster, Paul 336

Bleak House (Dickens) 109, 134,

Buson, Yosa 92

Cantigas de Santa María 57

The New York Trilogy 298, 336

146–49, 166, 195, 208

The Butcher Boy (McCabe) 313

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland

Austerlitz (Sebald) 338

Bleeding Edge (Pynchon) 296, 331

Butler, Octavia E., Kindred 126

(Carroll) 156, 168–71

Australian writing 311

The Blind Assassin (Atwood) 271,

Byatt, A. S., Possession: A Romance
allegorical satire 295, 320–21

The Awakening (Chopin) 203

295, 326–27

318

Allende, Isabel, The House of The

Blindness (Saramago) 295, 320–21

Byron, Lord 120, 124, 185

Spirits 302, 334

The Bloody Chamber (Carter) 116,

Don Juan 110

Almayer’s Folly (Conrad) 197

B

333

Amadis of Gaul (Montalvo) 102–03

The Bluest Eye (Morrison) 307, 309

American black humor 276

Ba Jin, The Family 222

Boccaccio, Giovanni 14, 71

C

American Psycho (Ellis) 261, 270, 313

Bâ, Mariama, So Long a Letter 334

The Decameron 60, 68, 72, 102

American voices 188–89

Baif, Jean Antoine de, Mimes,

Bolaño, Roberto, 2666 339

Cain, James M.

Amis, Kingsley, Lucky Jim 318

Lessons, and Proverbs 74

The Bonfire of the Vanities (Wolfe)

Double Indemnity 236

Amis, Martin 331

Baihua literature 222

149

The Postman Always Rings Twice

Andersen, Hans Christian, Fairy

Baldwin, James, Go Tell It on the

Book of Changes 18, 21

236

Tales 45, 151, 169

Mountain 259, 306

The Book of Disquiet (Pessoa) 216,

The Cairo Trilogy (Mahfouz) 223

Angelou, Maya 307

Ballard, J. G. 332

244

Calderón de la Barca, Pedro, Life is a

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

Crash 313, 332

Book of Odes ( Shijing) 46

Dream 78

259, 291

Empire of the Sun 332

The Book of Songs (Heine) 111

Call to Arms (Lu) 207, 222

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The Call of the Wild (London) 240

Chekhov, Anton 203

Cooper, James Fenimore 109

Defoe, Daniel 14, 94, 156

Calvino, Italo 295, 299

Uncle Vanya 203

The Last of the Mohicans 122, 150

Robinson Crusoe 61, 94–95, 196

The Castle of Crossed Destinies 274

Children’s and Household Tales

“Leatherstocking Tales” 122, 150,

DeLillo, Don 328, 335

If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler

(Grimm) 45, 108, 116–17,

188

Falling Man 331

69, 294, 298–99

168–69

The Pioneers 122, 188

Underworld 296, 335

Camões, Lúis de, The Lusiads 62, 103

China’s four great classical novels

Corneille, Pierre 61

White Noise 335–36
campus novel 318

61, 66–67

Le Cid 103

Demirkan, Renan, Schwarzer Tee mit

Camus, Albert 177, 211

Chopin, Kate, The Awakening 203

Psyché 90
drei Stuck Zucker 324

The Outsider 211, 245, 262

The Chouans (Balzac) 122, 151

The Corrections (Franzen) 182, 295,

Desai, Kiran, The Inheritance of Loss

Candide (Voltaire) 61, 96–97, 260

Chrétien de Troyes 48, 50

328–29, 331

314, 317

Cane (Toomer) 235

Lancelot, the Knight of the Cart

Cortázar, Julio, Hopscotch 249,
detective fiction 207, 208
cantar de gesta poetry 48

19, 50–51

274–75, 282

The Devil to Pay in the Backlands

Cantar de Mio Cid 56–57

Christie, Agatha 207

The Count of Monte Cristo (Dumas)

(Guimarães Rosa) 288

The Canterbury Tales (Chaucer) 60,

The Mysterious Affair at Styles

146, 152–53

Dhu al-Rummah 44

68–71

208

The Counterfeiters (Gide) 242

Diamond Sutra 19

Cantigas de Santa María (Alfonso X)

Chu¯shingura (Imuzo, Sosuke, and

The Country of the Pointed Firs

The Diary of a Superfluous Man

57

Shoraku) 93

(Jewett) 188

(Turgenev) 124

Cantos ( Pound) 213
civil rights movement 235, 259, 272,

Crane, Stephen 191

Dias, Gonçalves, I-Juca-Pirama 164

Cao Xueqin, Dream of the Red

273, 295, 306, 309

The Red Badge of Courage 190,

Díaz, Junot, Drown 306

Chamber 66

Clarissa (Richardson) 100, 104

202

Dickens, Charles 135–36, 137, 147,

Capote, Truman 279, 319
classical Arabic literature 44–45

Crash (Ballard) 313, 332

157, 166, 168, 182, 185

In Cold Blood 249, 273, 278–79
classical Greek drama 18–19, 34–39

Crime and Punishment (Dostoyevsky)

A Tale of Two Cities 198

The Caretaker (Pinter) 262

Claude’s Confession (Zola) 191

14, 156, 172–77, 178

Bleak House 109, 134, 146–49,

Carey, Peter

Clelia (Scudéry) 185

Crow (Hughes) 291

166, 195, 208

Oscar and Lucinda 311

A Clockwork Orange (Burgess) 252,

Cry, the Beloved Country (Paton)

David Copperfield 94, 153, 225, 226

The True History of the Kelly Gang

270, 289

286, 322

Great Expectations 198

311

Cloud Atlas (Mitchell) 69

The Crying of Lot 49 (Pynchon) 276,

Little Dorrit 109, 166

Caribbean writing 294, 312

The Clouds (Aristophanes) 36

290, 296

Martin Chuzzlewit 186

Carpentaria (Wright) 311

Coetzee, J. M. 323

Cullen, Countee, “The Ballad of the

The Old Curiosity Shop 146

Carpentier, Alejo 302

Disgrace 295, 322–23

Brown Girl” 235

Oliver Twist 134, 151

The Kingdom of this World 312

Coleridge, Samuel Taylor

Our Mutual Friend 166

Carroll, Lewis 171

Lyrical Ballads 108, 110

The Pickwick Papers 146, 147

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner

D

Dickinson, Emily 125, 131, 213

156, 168–71

144

A Dictionary of Maqiao (Han) 310

Carter, Angela 333

Collected Poetry (Auden) 277

The Da Vinci Code (Brown) 261

Diderot, Denis

The Bloody Chamber 116, 333

Collins, Suzanne, The Hunger Games

“Daffodils” (Wordsworth) 192

Encyclopédie 61, 96

Nights at the Circus 302

320

Dahl, Roald, Charlie and the

Jacques the Fatalist 96, 105

The Castle (Kafka) 211

Collins, Wilkie 198, 207

Chocolate Factory 171

Digenis Akritas 56

The Castle of Crossed Destinies

The Moonstone 146, 149, 198–99,
d’Alembert, Rond, Encyclopédie 61, 96

“Digging” (Heaney) 277

(Calvino) 274

208, 271

A Dance of the Forests (Soyinka) 266

The Discomfort Zone (Franzen) 329

The Castle of Otranto (Walpole) 120

Collodi, Carlo, The Adventures of

Dance of the Happy Shades (Munro)

Discourse on the Arts and Sciences

Castle Rackrent (Edgeworth) 122

Pinocchio 168

337

(Rousseau) 98

Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (Williams) 272
colonial literature 157, 196–97,

The Dancing Girl (O¯gais) 209

Disgrace (Coetzee) 295, 322–23

Catch-22 (Heller) 249, 276

248

Daniel Deronda (Eliot) 200

Disraeli, Benjamin, Sybil 166

The Catcher in the Rye (Salinger)

The Color Purple (Walker) 306

Dante Alighieri 65, 71

The Divine Comedy (Dante) 41, 60,

248, 256–57, 271, 328

The Comedy of Errors (Shakespeare)

The Divine Comedy 41, 60,

62–65, 312

Celan, Paul, Poppy and Memory 238,

88, 89

62–65, 312

Döblin, Alfred, Berlin Alexanderplatz

258
comedy of manners 13, 61, 90

Danticat, Edwidge, The Farming of

207, 234

Céline, Louis-Ferdinand, Journey to

Conan Doyle, Sir Arthur 69, 157, 207

Bones 306

Doctor Faustus (Marlowe) 60, 75
the End of The Night 243

The Hound of the Baskervilles

Dao De Jing (Laozi) 54

Doctor Zhivago (Pasternak) 288

“Cendrillon” (Perrault) 117

206, 208

A Dark Night’s Passing (Naoya) 209

A Doll’s House (Ibsen) 200

Cervantes, Miguel de 14, 78

The Lost World 184

Dark Romanticism 140–45, 152

Don Juan (Byron) 110

Don Quixote 51, 61, 67, 76–81,

Sherlock Holmes stories 149

Darwin, Charles, On the Origin of

Don Quixote (Cervantes) 51, 61, 67,

274, 298, 320

A Confederação dos Tamoios

Species 156, 190

76–81, 274, 298, 320

Césaire, Aimé 196

(Magalhães) 164

David Copperfield (Dickens) 94, 153,

Doña Barbara (Gallegos) 242

Return to My Native Land 312

A Confederacy of Dunces (Toole) 272

225, 226

Donne, John, “A Nocturnal Upon St.

Chamoiseau, Patrick, Texaco

Confucianism 18, 21

Davies, Robertson, Fifth Business

Lucy’s Day” 91

336–37

Conrad, Joseph 197

326

Dos Passos, John, U.S.A. trilogy 230

Chandler, Raymond 236

Almayer’s Folly 197

The Day of the Locust (West) 276

Dostoyevsky, Fyodor 174, 211

The Big Sleep 207, 236–37

Heart of Darkness 157, 196–97,

“The Dead” (Brooke) 212

The Brothers Karamazov 149, 178,

Chansons de geste 48, 50, 52

267, 271

Dead Souls (Gogol) 152

200–01, 210

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

Lord Jim 203

The Death of Artemio Cruz (Fuentes)

Crime and Punishment 14, 156,

(Dahl) 171

Nostromo 240

282, 290

172–77, 178

Chateaubriand, Francois-René, René
contemporary African-American

Death of a Naturalist (Heaney) 277

The Idiot 199

150
literature 294, 295,

Death in Venice (Mann) 194, 207,

Double Indemnity (Cain) 236

Chaucer, Geoffrey 14, 57, 71, 219

306–09

224–25, 240

Douglass, Frederick 127

The Canterbury Tales 60, 68–71

Conversation in the Cathedral

The Decameron (Boccaccio) 60, 68,

Narrative of the Life of Frederick

Troilus and Criseyde 69

(Vargas Llosa) 282

72, 102

Douglass 109, 126–27

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Dracula (Stoker) 157, 195

Eugene Onegin (Pushkin) 109, 124
frame narrative 23, 68–71, 102, 203

Gissing, George, New Grub Street 190

Dream of the Red Chamber (Cao) 66

Eugenides, Jeffrey, The Virgin

Frankenstein (Shelley) 108, 120–21,

The Glass Bead Game (Hesse) 234

“The Dream of the Rood” 42

Suicides 328

184, 192

The Glass Palace (Ghosh) 314, 317

Dream Story (Schnitzler) 194

Euripides 18, 37

Franz Sternbald’s Wanderings (Tieck)

Glenarvon (Lamb) 185

Dreiser, Theodore 191

Medea 55

224

Go (Holmes) 264

Sister Carrie 203

Evenings on a Farm near the Dikanka

Franzen, Jonathan 329

Go Set a Watchman (Lee) 273

Drown (Díaz) 306

(Gogol) 178

The Corrections 182, 295,

Go Tell It on the Mountain (Baldwin)

A Dry White Season (Brink) 333–34

Exeter Book 42

328–29, 331

259, 306

Du Fu 19, 46
existentialism 210–11

The Discomfort Zone 329

The God of Small Things (Roy) 314,

Dubliners (Joyce) 216

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

The French Lieutenant’s Woman

317

The Duchess of Malfi (Webster) 75

(Safran Foer) 295, 331

(Fowles) 291

Godwin, William, The Adventures of

Dujardin, Édouard, Les Lauriers sont

French neoclassicism 90, 103–04

Caleb Williams 166
coupés 216

French realism 156, 158–63

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von 99,

“Dulce et Decorum Est” (Owen) 206,

F

French symbolists 165

115, 183

212

Fuentes, Carlos, The Death of

Faust 98, 108, 109, 112–15

Dumas, Alexandre 123

Fables (La Fontaine) 90

Artemio Cruz 282, 290

The Sorrows of Young Werther 98,

The Count of Monte Cristo 146,

The Faerie Queene (Spenser) 63, 103

Fujiwara no Shunzei, Senzaishu¯

105, 256

152–53

Fahrenheit 451 (Bradbury) 252, 287

(Collection of a Thousand Years)

Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship

The Three Musketeers 109,

Fairy Tales (Andersen) 45, 151, 169

47

224–25

122–23

Falling Man (DeLillo) 331

Fuller, Margaret 125

Gogol, Nikolai 152

Duras, Marguerite, The Lover 335

The Family (Ba) 222

Futon (Katai) 209

Dead Souls 152
dysfunction in the modern family

The Famished Road (Okri) 269

Evenings on a Farm near the

295, 328–29

Far From the Madding Crowd (Hardy)

Dikanka 178
dystopian literature 250–55

190, 200

G

Golden Age of Latin literature 40–41

The Farming of Bones (Danticat) 306

The Golden Ass (Apuleius) 40, 56

E

Faulkner, William 243

Gaddis, William, The Recognitions

The Goldfinch (Tartt) 328

The Sound and the Fury 188, 216,

328

Golding, William 287

242–43, 271

Galgut, Damon, The Good Doctor

Lord of the Flies 287

Early Gothic 120–21

Faust (Goethe) 98, 108, 109, 112–15

322

Goldsmith, Oliver 90

Eça de Queirós 202

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

Galland, Antoine 45

The Good Doctor (Galgut) 322

The Maias 202

(Thompson) 332

Gallegos, Rómulo, Doña Barbara 242

Goodbye, Columbus (Roth) 276

Eddur 52

Fernando de Rojas, La Celestina 78

Gao Xingjian 310

Goodison, Lorna, To Us, All Flowers

Edgeworth, Maria, Castle Rackrent

Ficciones (Borges) 245, 282, 298, 299

García Márquez, Gabriel 15, 284,

Are Roses: Poems 312

122
fictional autobiography 94–95

287

Gordimer, Nadine 322

The Edible Woman (Atwood) 327

Fielding, Henry 61, 81, 156

The General in His Labyrinth 122

July’s People 261

Effi Briest (Fontane) 202

Tom Jones 94, 104, 182

Love in the Time of Cholera 335

The Grapes of Wrath (Steinbeck)

Egyptian Book of the Dead 20, 54

Fifth Business (Davies) 326

One Hundred Years of Solitude

188, 189, 244

Ekwensi, Cyprian, People of the City

Fight Club (Palahniuk) 313

249, 280–85, 302

Grass, Günter 271

266

Findley, Timothy, The Last of the

Garcilaso Inca de la Vega 78, 164

The Tin Drum 249, 270–71, 302

El Cantar de mio Cid 48

Crazy People 326

Gargantua and Pantagruel (Rabelais)

Gravity’s Rainbow (Pynchon) 294,

Eliot, George 109, 183

Finnegans Wake (Joyce) 206, 216

60, 61, 72–73, 260

295, 296–97

Daniel Deronda 200

Fires on the Plain (O¯oka) 263

Gaskell, Elizabeth 153

Great American Novel 145

Middlemarch 130–31, 156, 174,

First Folio (Shakespeare) 14, 61, 82–89

Mary Barton 153, 166

Great Expectations (Dickens) 198

182–83

Fitzgerald, F. Scott 230, 256, 319

North and South 153

The Great Gatsby (Fitzgerald) 145,

The Mill on the Floss 128

The Beautiful and Damned 230

The Gaucho Martín Fierro

207, 228–33

Eliot, T. S. 65

“Bernice Bobs Her Hair” 230

(Hernandez) 199

Greek epic 26–33

“The Love Song of J. Alfred

The Great Gatsby 145, 207,

Gautier, Théophile, Enamels and

Green Grass, Running Water (King)

Prufrock” 213

228–33

Cameos 165

337

The Waste Land 192, 206, 213,

Tender is the Night 233

The General in His Labyrinth (García

Green Henry (Keller) 224

216, 230, 232

This Side of Paradise 230

Márquez) 122

Grimm, Jacob and Wilhelm 117

Ellis, Bret Easton, American Psycho

Five Classics 18, 21

Genet, Jean, Les Nègres 262

Children’s and Household Tales

261, 270, 313

Five Weeks in a Balloon (Verne) 184

Geneva Bible 84

45, 108, 116–17, 168–69

Ellison, Ralph 249

Flaubert, Gustave 14, 160

German Romanticism 99, 111, 115

The Groves of Academe (McCarthy)

Invisible Man 145, 259, 306, 309

Madame Bovary 81, 146, 156,

Germinal (Zola) 157, 163, 166,

318

Emerson, Ralph Waldo 13, 108–09, 125

158–63, 190

190–91

The Guarani (Alencar) 164

Empire of the Sun (Ballard) 332

Sentimental Education 163, 199,

Ghosh, Amitav, The Glass Palace

Gubar, Susan, The Madwoman in the

Enamels and Cameos (Gautier) 165

225

314, 317

Attic 131
encyclopedic novel 296–97

The Temptation of Saint Anthony

Gibran, Khalil, The Prophet 223

The Guest (Hwang) 295, 330

Encyclopédie (d’Alembert/Diderot)

161

Gibson, William, Neuromancer

Guillaume de Lorris, Romance of the

61, 96
folklore collections 116–17

334–35

Rose 57

The English Patient (Ondaatje) 336

Fontane, Theodore, Effi Briest 202

Gide, André, The Counterfeiters 242

Guilleragues, Gabriel-Joseph de,

English Romantic poets 110

Forster, E. M., A Passage to India

Gilbert, Sandra M., The Madwoman

Letters of a Portuguese Nun

Enheduanna 20

196, 241–42
in the Attic 131

100

Ennius, Quintus, Annals 40

The Fountainhead (Rand) 245

Gilman, Charlotte Perkins, “The

Guimarães Rosa, João, The Devil to

The Epic of Gilgamesh 13, 18, 20, 28

Fowles, John, The French

Yellow Wallpaper” 128, 131

Pay in the Backlands 288
epistolary novel 15, 100–01, 104,

Lieutenant’s Woman 291

Ginsberg, Allen 265

Gulliver’s Travels (Swift) 61, 94, 95,

105, 174

Frame, Janet, The Lagoon and Other

Howl and Other Poems 248, 261,

104, 270, 321

Ethan Frome (Wharton) 240

Stories 286

264, 288

Gustavus Vassa, the African 126

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H

Hesperides (Herrick) 91

I-Juca-Pirama (Dias) 164

Journey to the West (Wu) 66

Hesse, Hermann

I-novel 209

Joyce, James 216

The Glass Bead Game 234

Ibsen, Henrik 200

Dubliners 216

Habila, Helon, Waiting for an Angel

Siddhartha 241

A Doll’s House 200

Finnegans Wake 206, 216

266

Hildebrandslied 56

Icelandic sagas 19, 52–53

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young
haiku and haibun 92, 209

Hilsenrath, Edgar, The Nazi and the

The Idiot (Dostoyevsky) 199

Man 217, 225, 241, 256

Haley, Alex 307

Barber 258

If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler

Ulysses 206, 214–21, 241, 260

Roots 306, 333
historical novel 122–23

(Calvino) 69, 294, 298–99

Jude the Obscure (Hardy) 202

Half of a Yellow Sun (Adichie) 266,

History (Morante) 332

Iliad (Homer) 18, 26–33, 41, 54, 62,

Julie, or the New Heloise (Rousseau)

339

The Hobbit (Tolkien) 171, 287

294, 312

100

Ham on Rye (Bukowski) 256

Hoffmann, E. T. A. 109
imperial Chinese poetry 46

Julius Caesar (Shakespeare) 87, 88,

Hamid, Mohsin, The Reluctant

Nachtstücke 111, 120

Imuzo, Takedo, Chu¯shingura 93

89

Fundamentalist 331, 339

“The Sandman” 111, 120

“In the Apartments of Death” (Sachs)

July’s People (Gordimer) 261

Hamlet (Shakespeare) 85, 87, 88,

Hölderlin, Friedrich, Hyperion 111

258

The Jungle Book (Kipling) 157, 168,

144, 174, 221

Holmes, John Clellon, Go 264

In the Castle of My Skin (Lamming)

202

Hammett, Dashiell

Holocaust 258

312

The Jungle (Sinclair) 166

The Maltese Falcon 236

Homer 28

In Cold Blood (Capote) 249, 273,

Red Harvest 236

Iliad 18, 26–33, 41, 54, 62, 294,

278–79

Hamsun, Knut, Hunger 202

312

In the Miso Soup (Murakami) 319

K

Han Shaogong, A Dictionary of

Odyssey 18, 28, 33, 41, 54, 62,

In Search of Lost Time (Proust) 216,

Maqiao 310

220–21, 312

240–41

Kabuki and Bunraku theatre 93

The Handmaid’s Tale (Atwood) 252,

Hopscotch (Cortázar) 249, 274–75,

In the Skin of a Lion (Ondaatje) 324

Kafka, Franz 211

327, 335

282

Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl

The Castle 211
hard-boiled detective fiction 207,

Horace 28, 40, 74

(Jacobs) 126

Letter to His father 211

236–37, 336

Hosseini, Khaled, The Kite Runner 338

Indian English writing 294, 295,

Metamorphosis 206, 210–11, 234

Hardy, Thomas 193

The Hound of the Baskervilles (Conan

314–17

The Trial 211, 242

Far From the Madding Crowd

Doyle) 206, 208

Indianism/Indianismo 164

Kafka on the Shore (Murakami) 302,

190, 200

A House For Mr Biswas (Naipaul)

Infinite Jest (Wallace) 296, 337

319

Jude the Obscure 202

289

The Inheritance of Loss (Desai) 314,

Kalevala (Lönnrot) 116, 151

Tess of the d’Urbervilles 157,

The House of Mirth (Wharton) 118

317

Kalidasa 19

192–93

The House of the Seven Gables

Interpreter of Maladies (Lahiri) 338

Karlamagnús saga 48

Harlem Renaissance 235

(Hawthorne) 140
invention of childhood 168–71

Katai, Tayama, Futon 209

Harmonium (Stevens) 213

The House of The Spirits (Allende)

Invisible Man (Ellison) 145, 259, 306,

Kawabata, Yasunari, Snow Country

Harry Potter (Rowling) 170, 261

302, 334

309

286

The Hawk in the Rain (Hughes) 277

Howl and Other Poems (Ginsberg)

Ionesco, Eugène, Rhinocéros 262

Keats, John 256

Hawthorne, Nathaniel 141

248, 261, 264, 288

Irving, Washington, The Sketch Book

“Ode to a Nightingale” 110

The House of the Seven Gables

Hughes, Langston, The Ways of

150

Keller, Gottfried, Green Henry 224

140

White Folks 235

Islamic Golden Age 19, 44–45

Kemal, Yasar 288

The Scarlet Letter 140, 153

Hughes, Ted

Issa, Kobayashi, The Spring of My

Memed, My Hawk 288

Heaney, Seamus

Crow 291

Life 92

Keneally, Thomas, Schindler’s Ark

Death of a Naturalist 277

The Hawk in the Rain 277

Ivanhoe (Scott) 122, 150

311

“Digging” 277

Hughes, Thomas, Tom Brown’s

Jacobethan theater 75

Kerouac, Jack 265

Heart of Darkness (Conrad) 157,

School Days 169

Jacobs, Harriet 109

On the Road 185, 248, 264–65

196–97, 267, 271

Hugo, Victor 122, 157, 167, 181, 182

Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl

Kesey, Ken, One Flew Over the

The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter

Les Miserables 156, 166–67, 182

126

Cuckoo’s Nest 271, 289

(McCullers) 272

The Human Stain (Roth) 318

Jacques the Fatalist (Diderot) 96,

Kindred (Butler) 126

The Heart of Redness (Mda) 322

Hunger (Hamsun) 202

105

King Lear (Shakespeare) 88, 144

The Heartless (Yi) 241

The Hunger Games (Collins) 320

James, Henry 177, 183, 187, 217

King, Thomas, Green Grass, Running

Heian court, Japan 19, 47

Hurston, Zora Neale, Their Eyes Were

The Portrait of a Lady 157, 174,

Water 337

Heidi (Spyri) 169

Watching God 207, 235

186–87

The Kingdom of this World

Heine, Heinrich, The Book of Songs

Hussein, Taha, A Man of Letters 223

The Turn of the Screw 203, 271

(Carpentier) 312

111

Huxley, Aldous, Brave New World

Jane Eyre (Brontë) 109, 118, 128–31,

Kingsley, Charles, The Water Babies

Heller, Joseph, Catch-22 249, 276

243, 252, 261

137

168

Hemingway, Ernest 188–89, 286

Huysmans, Joris-Karl, Against Nature

Jean de Meun, Romance of the Rose

Kipling, Rudyard 196

The Old Man and the Sea 287

194

57

The Jungle Book 157, 168, 202

The Sun Also Rises 186, 230, 264,

Hwang Sok-yong

Jewett, Sarah Orne, The Country of

Kitchen (Yashimoto) 319

286

The Guest 295, 330
the Pointed Firs 188

The Kite Runner (Hosseini) 338

Henry IV (Shakespeare) 75, 88, 89

The Shadow of Arms 330

Jewish Holocaust 258

Kivi, Aleksis, Seven Brothers 199

The Heptameron (Marguerite de

Hymns (Ronsard) 74

Johannes von Tepl, Ploughman of

Klinger, Friedrich Maximilian von,

Navarre) 68

Hyperion (Hölderlin) 111

Bohemia 72

Sturm und Drang 98

Herbert, George, “The Agony” 91

Johnson, Samuel 91

Kokinshu¯ poetry collection 47

Herder, Gottfried 112, 113

Jonson, Ben 61, 84

Konjaku monogatari 47

Hernandez, José, The Gaucho Martín

IJ

The Alchemist 75

Koran (“Recitation”) 44

Fierro 199

Works 84, 85–86

Kundera, Milan 334

A Hero of Our Time (Lermontov) 124,

I Am a Cat (So¯seki) 209

Journey to the Center of the Earth

The Unbearable Lightness of

151–52

I Ching 21

(Verne) 184

Being 334

Herrick, Robert, Hesperides 91

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

Journey to the End of The Night

Kyd, Thomas, The Spanish Tragedy

Hesiod, Theogony 28, 54

(Angelou) 259, 291

(Céline) 243

75

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348 INDEX

L

Letters of a Portuguese Nun

McCullers, Carson, The Heart Is a

A Midsummer Night’s Dream

(Guilleragues) 100

Lonely Hunter 272

(Shakespeare) 85, 87, 88–89

Levi, Primo, Survival in Auschwitz 258

McEwan, Ian 331

The Mill on the Floss (Eliot) 128

La Celestina (Fernando de Rojas) 78

Levy, Andrea, Small Island 324

McInerney, Jay, Bright Lights, Big

Miller, Henry, Tropic of Cancer 243,

La Comédie humaine (Balzac) 156,

Lewis, C. S., Narnia series 171

City 313

260

160

Lewis, Matthew, The Monk 121

Madame Bovary (Flaubert) 81, 146,

Milton, John 61, 103

La Fayette, Madame de, The Princess

L’homme rapaillé (Miron) 332

156, 158–63, 190

Paradise Lost 62, 103, 144
of Cleves 104

Li Bai 19, 46

Madame de Treymes (Wharton) 186

Mimes, Lessons, and Proverbs (Baif)

La Fontaine, Jean de, Fables 90

Life is a Dream (Calderón de la Barca)

The Madwoman in the Attic (Gilbert

74

La Jalousie (Robbe-Grillet) 288–89

78
and Gubar) 131

Miron, Gaston, L’homme rapaillé 332

La Regenta (Alas) 201

The Life of Lazarillo de Tormes 78

Magalhães, Gonçalves de, A

The Misanthrope (Molière) 90

Laclos, Pierre Choderlos de 101

Life of Pi (Martel) 270, 338

Confederação dos Tamoios 164

Miscellaneous Poems (Marvell) 91

Les Liaisons dangereuses 13,

Life A User’s Manual (Perec) 333

The Magic Mountain (Mann) 206–07,

Mishima, Yukio, The Temple of the

100–01
literature

224–27

Golden Pavilion 263

Lady Chatterley’s Lover (Lawrence)

definition and literary canon
magic realism 15, 234, 294, 295,

Mitchell, David, Cloud Atlas 69

260

12–13

302–05

Mo Yan, Red Sorghum 310

The Lagoon and Other Stories
global explosion 15

Mahabharata (Vyasa) 13, 18, 22–25, 28

Moby-Dick (Melville) 109, 138–45, 296

(Frame) 286
story of 13–14

Mahfouz, Naguib, The Cairo Trilogy

Modern Arabic voices 223

Lahiri, Jhumpa 317, 338
vocabulary, expanded 15

223

Modernism 15, 69, 200, 206–07, 224,

Interpreter of Maladies 338

Little Dorrit (Dickens) 109, 166

The Maias (Eça de Queirós) 202

235

Lamb, Lady Caroline, Glenarvon 185

The Little Prince (Saint-Exupéry)

Mailer, Norman 291

Modernist poetry 213, 232

Lamming, George, In the Castle of

207, 238–39

The Armies of the Night 291

Moe, Jørgen, Norwegian Folktales 116

My Skin 312

Little Women (Alcott) 169, 199

Mallarmé, Stéphane 157

Molière 13, 61

Lancelot, the Knight of the Cart

Lolita (Nabokov) 186, 248, 260–61, 270

“The Afternoon of a Faun” 165

The Misanthrope 90

(Chrétien de Troyes) 19, 50–51

London, Jack 191

Malory, Sir Thomas, Le Morte

Psyché 90

Lancelot-Grail cycle (Vulgate Cycle)

The Call of the Wild 240
d’Arthur 50, 51, 102

The Monk (Lewis) 121

50

Lönnrot, Elias, Kalevala 116, 151

The Maltese Falcon (Hammett) 236

Montalvo, Garci Rodríguez de,

The Land (Park) 330

Lope de Vega, New Rules for Writing

A Man of Letters (Hussein) 223

Amadis of Gaul 102–03

Laozi, Dao De Jing 54

Plays at this Time 78

The Man Without Qualities (Musil)

Montesquieu, Persian Letters 96

Larkin, Philip, Whitsun Weddings 277

Lord of the Flies (Golding) 287

234, 243

Monzaemon, Chikamatsu, The Love

L’Assommoir (Zola) 166

Lord Jim (Conrad) 203

Mann, Thomas 227

Suicides at Sonezaki 93

The Last of the Crazy People

The Lord of the Rings (Tolkien) 287

Buddenbrooks 194, 227

The Moonstone (Collins) 146, 149,

(Findley) 326

Lost Generation literature 207,

Death in Venice 194, 207, 224–25,

198–99, 208, 271

The Last of the Mohicans (Cooper)

228–33

240

Morante, Elsa, History 332

122, 150

The Lost World (Conan Doyle) 184

The Magic Mountain 206–07,

More, Thomas, Utopia 252

Latin American Boom 282–85

“The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”

224–27

Morrison, Toni 295, 309

Lawrence, D. H. 241

(Eliot) 213

Marguerite de Navarre, The

Beloved 145, 294, 306–09

Lady Chatterley’s Lover 260

The Love Suicides at Sonezaki

Heptameron 68

The Bluest Eye 307, 309

Sons and Lovers 192, 240

(Monzaemon) 93

Marlowe, Christopher 61, 89, 114

Song of Solomon 307, 309

Lazarillo de Tormes 78

Love in the Time of Cholera (García

Doctor Faustus 60, 75

Sula 307

Le Cid (Corneille) 103

Márquez) 335

Martel, Yann, Life of Pi 270, 338

Moses Ascending (Selvon) 324

Le Morte d’Arthur (Malory) 50, 51,

The Lover (Duras) 335

Martin Chuzzlewit (Dickens) 186

Mother Courage and Her Children

102

Love’s Labour’s Lost (Shakespeare)

Marvell, Andrew, Miscellaneous

(Brecht) 238, 244–45

“Leatherstocking Tales” (Cooper)

87, 88

Poems 91

Mr. President (Asturias) 282

122, 150, 188

Lu Xun

Mary Barton (Gaskell) 153, 166

Mrs. Dalloway (Woolf) 182, 217, 242

Leaves of Grass (Whitman) 109, 125

Call to Arms 207, 222

The Master and Margarita (Bulgakov)

multiculturalism 294–95, 324–25

Lee, Harper 273, 278

Old Tales Retold 222

290–91

Munro, Alice 337

Go Set a Watchman 273

Lucky Jim (Amis) 318

Maupassant, Guy de, Bel Ami 160

Dance of the Happy Shades 337

To Kill a Mockingbird 249, 271,

Luo Guanzhong 66

Mda, NoZakes, The Heart of Redness

Selected Stories 337

272–73

Romance of the Three Kingdoms

322

Too Much Happiness 326

Lermontov, Mikhail 108

60, 66–67

Measure for Measure (Shakespeare)

Murakami, Haruki

A Hero of Our Time 124, 151–52

The Lusiads (Camões) 62, 103

87, 88

Kafka on the Shore 302, 319

Leroux, Gaston, The Phantom of the
lyric poetry 49

Medea (Euripides) 55

Norwegian Wood 319

Opera 195

Lyrical Ballads (Wordsworth/

Melville, Herman 140

The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle 319

Les Amours de Cassandre (Ronsard)

Coleridge) 108, 110

Bartleby, the Scrivener 140

Murakami, Ryu, In the Miso Soup

74

Moby-Dick 109, 138–45, 296

319

Les Fleurs du mal (Baudelaire) 165

Memed, My Hawk (Kemal) 288

Murasaki Shikibu, The Tale of Genji

Les Lauriers sont coupés (Dujardin)

M

Men of Maize (Asturias) 282

19, 47, 61, 174

216
metafiction 295, 298–99, 302–03

The Murders in the Rue Morgue (Poe)

Les Liaisons dangereuses (Laclos)

Maalouf, Amin, The Rock of Tanios

Metamorphoses (Ovid) 40, 55–56,

208

13, 100–01

337

84

Musäus, Johann Karl August 116

Les Miserables, (Hugo) 156, 166–67,

Mabinogion 56, 116

Metamorphosis (Kafka) 206, 210–11,

Musil, Robert, The Man Without

182

Macbeth (Shakespeare) 85, 87, 88,

234

Qualities 234, 243

Les Nègres (Genet) 262

144

Metaphysical Poets 91

My Name is Red (Pamuk) 338

Lessing, Gotthold Ephraim, Nathan

McCabe, Patrick, The Butcher Boy

Middlemarch (Eliot) 130–31, 156,

The Mysteries of Udolpho (Radcliffe)

the Wise 96

313

174, 182–83

120

Letters Concerning the English

McCarthy, Mary, The Groves of

Midnight’s Children (Rushdie) 227,

The Mysterious Affair at Styles

Nation (Voltaire) 97

Academe 318

271, 294, 300–05, 314, 315

(Christie) 208

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INDEX 349

NO

Old English poetry 42–43

Perdita (Scharper) 326

Prose Edda (Sturluson) 52

Old French 48, 51

Perec, Georges, Life A User’s Manual
protest novel 259

Old Goriot (Balzac) 151

333

Proust, Marcel 217

Nabokov, Vladimir 261

The Old Man and the Sea

Perfume (Süskind) 227

In Search of Lost Time 216,

Lolita 186, 248, 260–61, 270

(Hemingway) 287

Perrault, Charles

240–41

Nachtstücke (Hoffmann) 111, 120

Old Tales Retold (Lu) 222

“Cendrillon” 117

Psyché (Molière/Corneille/Quinault)

Naevius, Gnaeus 40

Oliver Twist (Dickens) 134, 151

Tales of Mother Goose 116

90

Naipaul, V. S. 294

Omeros (Walcott) 294, 312

Persian Letters (Montesquieu) 96
psychological realism 172–77

A House For Mr Biswas 289
omniscient narrator 182–83

Pessoa, Fernando, The Book of

Puranas (Hindu texts) 22

Naked Lunch (Burroughs) 260, 264

On the Origin of Species (Darwin)

Disquiet 216, 244

Purple Hibiscus (Adichie) 269, 339

Naoya, Shiga, A Dark Night’s Passing

156, 190

Peter Pan (Barrie) 169

Pushkin, Alexander 108

209

On the Road (Kerouac) 185, 248,

Petrarch 72, 74

Eugene Onegin 109, 124

Narayan, R. K. 315

264–65

The Phantom of the Opera (Leroux)

Tales of Belkin 178

Narnia series (Lewis) 171

Ondaatje, Michael

195

Pynchon, Thomas 296

Narrative of the Life of Frederick

The English Patient 336

Phèdre (Racine) 90, 103–04

Bleeding Edge 296, 331

Douglass (Douglass) 109,

In the Skin of a Lion 324
philosophes 96–97

The Crying of Lot 49 276, 290,

126–27

One Day in the Life of Ivan
picaresque novel 78, 127

296

The Narrow Road to the Interior

Denisovich (Solzhenitsyn) 289

The Pickwick Papers (Dickens) 146,

Gravity’s Rainbow 294, 295,

(Basho¯) 61, 92

One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest

147

296–97

Nathan the Wise (Lessing) 96

(Kesey) 271, 289

The Picture of Dorian Gray (Wilde)

V. 296

Native Son (Wright) 259

One Hundred Years of Solitude

157, 194, 195

Naturalism 190–91, 219

(García Márquez) 249, 280–85,

“Pierre Menard, Author of the

Nausea (Sartre) 210, 244

302

Quixote” (Borges) 81

QR

The Nazi and the Barber (Hilsenrath)

One Thousand and One Nights 14,

The Pilgrim’s Progress (Bunyan) 330

258

19, 44–45, 68

The Pillow Book (Sei Sho¯nagon) 19,

Qu Yuan, Songs of Chu 46, 55

Négritude literary movement 196

O¯oka, Sho¯hei, Fires on the Plain 263

47, 56

Quan Tangshi 46

Negro literature 235

Oresteia (Aeschylus) 54–55

Pinter, Harold, The Caretaker 262

Quinault, Philippe

Neuromancer (Gibson) 334–35

Orlando Furioso (Ariosto) 63

The Pioneers (Cooper) 122, 188

Psyché 90

New Grub Street (Gissing) 190

Orwell, George 252

Plath, Sylvia

The Rivals 90

New Journalism 278–79

Animal Farm 245, 248, 252, 253,

Ariel 276

“Rabbit” series (Updike) 328

New Rules for Writing Plays at this

320

The Bell Jar 185, 256, 290

Rabelais, François 73, 219

Time (Lope de Vega) 78

Nineteen Eighty-Four 248,

Playing for Thrills (Wang) 336

Gargantua and Pantagruel 60, 61,

The New York Trilogy (Auster) 298,

250–55, 261

The Pléiade 74

72–73, 260

336

Oscar and Lucinda (Carey) 311

Ploughman of Bohemia (Johannes

Racine, Jean 61

Ngugi wa Thiong’o, Wizard of the

Other Voices, Other Rooms (Capote)

von Tepl) 72

Phèdre 90, 103–04

Crow 339

279

The Plum in the Golden Vase 66

Radcliffe, Ann, The Mysteries of

Nibelungenlied 57

Oulipo group 299, 333

Poe, Edgar Allan 109, 134, 141, 207,

Udolpho 120

Nietzsche, Friedrich, Thus Spoke

Our Mutual Friend (Dickens) 166

327

The Radetzky March (Roth) 238

Zarathustra 210

The Outsider (Camus) 211, 245, 262

The Murders in the Rue Morgue

Radical Chic and Mau-Mauing the

Nigerian voices 266–69

Ovid 28, 71

208

Flak Catchers (Wolfe) 278

Nights at the Circus (Carter) 302

Ars Amatoria (Art of Love) 57

“The Raven” 140

Ramayana (Valmiki) 18, 22, 23, 25, 55

Nineteen Eighty-Four (Orwell) 248,

Metamorphoses 40, 55–56, 84

Tales of the Grotesque and

Rand, Ayn, The Fountainhead 245

250–55, 261

Owen, Wilfred

Arabesque 152

“The Raven” (Poe) 140

Njal’s Saga 52–53

“Dulce et Decorum Est” 206, 212

Poems (Owen) 206, 207, 212

“Recitation” (Qur’an) 44

“A Nocturnal Upon St. Lucy’s Day”

Poems 206, 207, 212

Poetics (Aristotle) 39, 90

The Recognitions (Gaddis) 328

(Donne) 91

“Ozymandias” (Shelley) 110

Poppy and Memory (Celan) 238, 258

The Red Badge of Courage (Crane)

Nordic sagas 52–53

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young

190, 202

North and South (Gaskell) 153

Man (Joyce) 217, 225, 241, 256

The Red and the Black (Stendhal)

Northup, Solomon 109

P

The Portrait of a Lady (James) 157,

150–51, 160, 174

Twelve Years a Slave 127

174, 186–87

Red Harvest (Hammett) 236

Norwegian Folktales (Asbjørnsen/

Palahniuk, Chuck, Fight Club 313

Possession: A Romance (Byatt) 318

The Red Room (Strindberg) 185

Moe) 116

The Palm-Wine Drinkard (Tutuola)

post 9/11 America 331

Red Sorghum (Mo) 310

Norwegian Wood (Murakami) 319

266
postclassical epic poetry 62–63

The Reluctant Fundamentalist

Nostromo (Conrad) 240

Pamela (Richardson) 94, 100, 104,
postwar Japanese writing 263

(Hamid) 331, 339

Notes from the Underground

118, 174, 217
postwar poetry 277

Renaissance humanism 14, 72–73

(Dostoyevsky) 219

Pamuk, Orhan, My Name is Red 338

The Postman Always Rings Twice

René (Chateaubriand) 150
novel of manners 118–19

Paradise Lost (Milton) 62, 103, 144

(Cain) 236

Return to My Native Land (Césaire)

O’Brien, Flann, At Swim-Two-Birds

Park Kyong-ni, The Land 330

Pound, Ezra 206, 216, 230

312

274

Paroles (Prévert) 286

Cantos 213

Rhinocéros (Ionesco) 262

“Ode to a Nightingale” (Keats) 110

A Passage to India (Forster) 196,

The Prelude (Wordsworth) 168

Rhys, Jean, Wide Sargasso Sea 131,

Odyssey (Homer) 18, 33, 38, 41, 54,

241–42

Prévert, Jacques, Paroles 286

290

62, 220–21, 312

Pasternak, Boris, Doctor Zhivago

Pride and Prejudice (Austen) 12, 108,

Richard III (Shakespeare) 87, 88, 89

Oedipus the King (Sophocles)

288

118–19

Richardson, John, Wacousta 326

34–39
pathetic fallacy 192–93

The Prince of Homburg (von Kleist)

Richardson, Samuel 104

Of Mice and Men (Steinbeck) 244

Paton, Alan, Cry, the Beloved Country

111

Clarissa 100, 104

O¯gais, Mori, The Dancing Girl 209

286, 322

The Princess of Cleves (La Fayette)

Pamela 94, 100, 104, 118, 174, 217

Okri, Ben, The Famished Road 269

Pedro Páramo (Rulfo) 287–88

104

Rimbaud, Arthur, A Season in Hell

The Old Curiosity Shop (Dickens) 146

People of the City (Ekwensi) 266

The Prophet (Gibran) 223

165, 199–200

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350

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner

Saramago, José 287, 295, 321

Sheridan, Richard Brinsley 90

Stevens, Wallace, Harmonium 213

(Coleridge) 144

Blindness 295, 320–21

Sherlock Holmes stories (Doyle) 149

Stevenson, Robert Louis 201

The Rivals (Quinault) 90

Sartre, Jean-Paul 177, 211, 249, 274

Shi Nai’an, The Water Margin 60, 66

The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and

Rob Roy (Scott) 122

Nausea 210, 244
shi tradition 46

Mr. Hyde 157, 195, 201–02

Robbe-Grillet, Alain, La Jalousie

Sassoon, Siegfried 212

Shika, Masaoka 92

Treasure Island 201

288–89

The Satanic Verses (Rushdie) 260,

Shimazaki, To¯son, The Broken

Stoker, Bram, Dracula 157, 195

The Robbers (Schiller) 61, 98–99

261, 302, 336

Commandment 209

The Story of an African Farm

Robinson Crusoe (Defoe) 61, 94–95,

The Scarlet Letter (Hawthorne) 140,

Shoraku, Miyoshi, Chu¯shingura 93

(Schreiner) 201, 322

196

153

Shriver, Lionel, We Need to Talk

The Story of Bayad and Riyad 44

The Rock of Tanios (Maalouf) 337

Scharper, Hilary, Perdita 326
about Kevin 328

Stowe, Harriet Beecher 15
roman à clef 185

Schiller, Friedrich 99, 112, 113–14, 115

Siddhartha (Hesse) 241

Uncle Tom’s Cabin 145, 153, 166,

Roman literature 40–41

The Robbers 61, 98–99

Sinclair, Upton 191

188, 261

Romance of the Rose (Guillaume de

Wallenstein 112

The Jungle 166

The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and

Lorris/Jean de Meun) 57

Schindler’s Ark (Keneally) 311

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight 71,

Mr. Hyde (Stevenson) 157, 195,

Romance of the Three Kingdoms

Schnitzler, Arthur, Dream Story 194

102

201–02

(Luo) 60, 66–67

Schreiner, Olive, The Story of an

Sister Carrie (Dreiser) 203
stream of consciousness 15, 105,

Romances of the Landscape (Ah

African Farm 201, 322

The Sketch Book (Irving) 150

206, 216–21, 282

Cheng) 310

Schwarzer Tee mit drei Stuck Zucker

Slaughterhouse-Five (Vonnegut) 276,

Strindberg, August, The Red Room

Ronsard, Pierre de

(Demirkan) 324

291

185

Hymns 74
scientific romance 184
slave naratives 126–27

Sturlunga Saga 52

Les Amours de Cassandre 74

Scott, Sir Walter 53, 109, 150, 162

The Sleepwalkers (Broch) 234

Sturluson, Snorri, Prose Edda 52

Sonnets for Hélène 74

Ivanhoe 122, 150

Small Island (Levy) 324

Sturm und Drang (Klinger) 98

Roots (Haley) 306, 333

Rob Roy 122

Smith, Zadie 325

Sturm und Drang movement 14,

“roots-seeking” ( xungen) movement

Waverley 122, 150

White Teeth 295, 324–25

98–99, 105, 108, 113

310

Scudéry, Madeleine de, Clelia 185

Snow Country (Kawabata) 286

A Suitable Boy (Seth) 295, 314–17

Rossetti, Christina 131

A Season in Hell (Rimbaud) 165,

So Long a Letter (Bâ) 334

Sula (Morrison) 307

Roth, Joseph, The Radetzky March 238

199–200
social protest novel 166–67

The Sun Also Rises (Hemingway)

Roth, Philip 328

Sebald, W. G., Austerlitz 338

Solzhenitsyn, Aleksandr, One Day in

186, 230, 264, 286

Goodbye, Columbus 276

“The Second Coming” (Yeats) 266
the Life of Ivan Denisovich 289
superfluous man 108, 124

The Human Stain 318

The Secret History (Tartt) 318

The Song of Roland (Turold) 49

Survival in Auschwitz (Levi) 258

Rousseau, Jean-Jacques 96

Sei Sho¯nagon 56

Song of Solomon (Morrison) 307, 309

Süskind, Patrick, Perfume 227

Discourse on the Arts and

The Pillow Book 19, 47, 56

Songs of Chu (Qu Yuan) 46, 55

Swift, Jonathan, Gulliver’s Travels

Sciences 98

Selected Stories (Munro) 337

Songs of Innocence and Experience

61, 94, 95, 104, 270, 321

Émile 168

Selvon, Sam, Moses Ascending 324

(Blake) 105, 110

Swiss Family Robinson (Wyss) 168

Julie, or the New Heloise 100

Senghor, L-S 196

Songs without Words (Verlaine) 165

Sybil (Disraeli) 166

Rowe, Nicholas, Shakespeare’s

Sentimental Education (Flaubert)

Sonnets for Hélène (Ronsard) 74

Complete Works 84

163, 199, 225

Sons and Lovers (Lawrence) 192, 240

Rowling, J. K., Harry Potter series

Senzaishu¯ (Collection of a Thousand

Sophocles 18, 36

T

170, 261

Years) (Fujiwara) 47

Oedipus the King 34–39

Roy, Arundhati, The God of Small
serial novel 146–49

The Sorrows of Young Werther

The Tale of Genji (Murasaki) 19, 47, Things 314, 317

Seth, Vikram 294, 315

(Goethe) 98, 105, 256

61, 174

The Royal Game (Zweig) 238

A Suitable Boy 295, 314–17

So¯seki, Natsume, I Am a Cat 209

The Tale of Igor’s Campaign 57

Rulfo, Juan, Pedro Páramo 287–88

Seven Brothers (Kivi) 199

Sosuke, Namiki, Chu¯shingura 93

The Tale of the Lady Ochikubo 46

Rushdie, Salman 294, 302, 317, 325

The Shadow of Arms (Hwang) 330

The Sound and the Fury (Faulkner)

A Tale of Two Cities (Dickens) 198

Midnight’s Children 227, 271, 294,

Shakespeare, William 82–89, 125

188, 216, 242–43, 271

Tales of Belkin (Pushkin) 178

300–05, 314, 315

A Midsummer Night’s Dream 85,

South African literature 295, 322–23

Tales of the Grotesque and

The Satanic Verses 260, 261, 302,

87, 88–89

South Korea, 38th parallel 330

Arabesque (Poe) 152

336

Antony and Cleopatra 87, 89
southern gothic 272–73

Tales of Mother Goose (Perrault) 116

Ruskin, John 137, 171, 192

As You Like It 85, 88, 89

Southern Ontario Gothic 326–27

Talese, Gay 278

Russia’s Golden Age 178–81
authorship debate 89

Soyinka, Wole, A Dance of the

Tanpinar, Ahmet Hamdi, The Time

The Comedy of Errors 88, 89

Forests 266

Regulation Institute 289

S

First Folio 14, 61, 82–89

Spain’s Golden Century 78–81

Tartt, Donna

Hamlet 85, 87, 88, 144, 174, 221

The Spanish Tragedy (Kyd) 75

The Goldfinch 328

Henry IV 75, 88, 89

Spenser, Edmund 61

The Secret History 318

Sachs, Nelly, “In the Apartments of

Julius Caesar 87, 88, 89

The Faerie Queene 63, 103
teenager, birth of the 256–57

Death” 258

King Lear 88, 144

The Spring of My Life (Issa) 92

The Tempest (Shakespeare) 84, 87,

Safran Foer, Jonathan, Extremely

Love’s Labour’s Lost 87, 88

Spyri, Johanna, Heidi 169

88, 89, 196, 243

Loud and Incredibly Close 295,

Macbeth 85, 87, 88, 144

Stein, Gertrude 230

The Temple of the Golden Pavilion

331

Measure for Measure 87, 88

Steinbeck, John 12, 244

(Mishima) 263

Saint-Exupéry, Antoine de 239
recurring motifs 88

The Grapes of Wrath 188, 189, 244

The Temptation of Saint Anthony

The Little Prince 207, 238–39

Richard III 87, 88, 89

Of Mice and Men 244

(Flaubert) 161

Sakurajima (Umezaki) 263

The Tempest 84, 87, 88, 89, 196, 243

Stendhal

Tender is the Night (Fitzgerald) 233

Salinger, J. D. 257

Twelfth Night 84, 85, 87, 88, 89

The Charterhouse of Parma 160

Tess of the d’Urbervilles (Hardy) 157,

The Catcher in the Rye 248,

Shelley, Mary 121, 131

The Red and the Black 150–51,

192–93

256–57, 271, 328

Frankenstein 108, 120–21, 184,

160, 174

Texaco (Chamoiseau) 336–37

The Sand Child (Ben Jelloun) 223

192

Sterne, Laurence 12

Thackeray, William Makepeace,

“The Sandman” (Hoffmann) 111, 120

Shelley, Percy Bysshe 120, 121

Tristram Shandy 61, 104–05, 221,

Vanity Fair 118, 153

Sanskrit epics 18, 19, 22–25

“Ozymandias” 110

271, 298

Theater of the Absurd 262

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Their Eyes Were Watching God

Turold, The Song of Roland 49

Vonnegut, Kurt, Slaughterhouse-Five

White Noise (DeLillo) 335–36

(Hurston) 207, 235

Tutuola, Amos, The Palm-Wine

276, 291

White, Patrick, Voss 311

Theogony (Hesiod) 28, 54

Drinkard 266

Voss (White) 311

White Teeth (Smith) 295, 324–25

Thérèse Raquin (Zola) 198

Twain, Mark 15, 189

Vulgate Cycle (Lancelot-Grail) 50

Whitman, Walt 108–09

Things Fall Apart (Achebe) 248,

The Adventures of Huckleberry

Vyasa

Leaves of Grass 109, 125

266–69

Finn 145, 157, 188–89, 270

Bhagavad Gita 24, 25

Whitsun Weddings (Larkin) 277

This Side of Paradise (Fitzgerald) 230

Twelfth Night (Shakespeare) 84, 85,

Mahabharata 13, 18, 22–25, 28

Wide Sargasso Sea (Rhys) 131, 290

Thomas of Britain, Tristan 50

87, 88, 89

Wieland, Christoph Martin 113

Thompson, Hunter S., Fear and

Twelve Years a Slave (Northup) 127

Wilde, Oscar 90

Loathing in Las Vegas 332

Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the

W

The Picture of Dorian Gray 157,

Thoreau, Henry David 108–09

Sea (Verne) 184

194, 195

Walden 125

Wacousta (Richardson) 326

Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship

Three Hundred Tang Poems (Tang

Waiting for an Angel (Habila) 266

(Goethe) 224–25
shisanbai shou) 46

UV

Waiting for Godot (Beckett) 210, 248,

Williams, Tennessee, Cat on a Hot

The Three Musketeers (Dumas) 109,

262

Tin Roof 272

122–23

Ulysses (Joyce) 206, 214–21, 241,

Walcott, Derek 294

The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle

Thus Spoke Zarathustra (Nietzsche)

260

Omeros 294, 312

(Murakami) 319

210

Umezaki, Haruo, Sakurajima 263

Walden (Thoreau) 125

Wizard of the Crow (Ngugi wa

Tibet (Zhaxi (Tashi) Dawa) 310

The Unbearable Lightness of Being

Waldere 42

Thiong’o) 339

Tieck, Ludwig, Franz Sternbald’s

(Kundera) 334

Walker, Alice 307

Wolfe, Tom

Wanderings 224

Uncle Tom’s Cabin (Stowe) 145, 153,

The Color Purple 306

Radical Chic and Mau-Mauing the

The Time of the Hero (Vargas Llosa)

166, 188, 261

Wallace, David Foster, Infinite Jest

Flak Catchers 278

290

Uncle Vanya, (Chekhov) 203

296, 337

The Bonfire of the Vanities 149

The Time Machine (Wells) 184

“Under the Linden Tree” (Walther) 49

Wallenstein, (Schiller) 112

Wollstonecraft, Mary 121

The Time Regulation Institute

Underworld (DeLillo) 296, 335

Walpole, Horace, The Castle of

The Woman in the Dunes (Abe)

(Tanpinar) 289

A Universal History of Infamy

Otranto 120

263

The Tin Drum (Grass) 249, 270–71,

(Borges) 302

Walther von der Vogelweide, “Under

Woolf, Virginia 135, 242

302
universal (world) writing 319
the Linden Tree” 49

Mrs. Dalloway 182, 217, 242

To Kill a Mockingbird (Lee) 249, 271,
unreliable narrator 270–71

Wang Anyi, Bao Town 310

To the Lighthouse 216, 217

272–73

Up From Slavery (Washington) 306

Wang Shuo, Playing for Thrills 336

Wordsworth, William

To the Lighthouse (Woolf) 216, 217

Updike, John, “Rabbit” series 328

Wang Wei 19, 46

“Daffodils” 192

To Us, All Flowers Are Roses: Poems
urban gothic 157, 195

War and Peace (Tolstoy) 109, 156,

Lyrical Ballads 108, 110

(Goodison) 312

U.S.A. trilogy (Dos Passos) 230

178–81, 182

The Prelude 168

Tolkien, J. R. R. 43, 53

Utopia (More) 252

Washington, Booker T., Up From

Works (Jonson) 84, 85–86

The Hobbit 171, 287

V. (Pynchon) 296

Slavery 306

“The World” (Vaughan) 91

The Lord of the Rings 287

Valmiki 55

Wasps (Aristophanes) 55

World War I poets 206, 207, 212

Tolstoy, Leo 181, 182

Ramayana 22, 23, 25, 55

The Waste Land (Eliot) 192, 206, 213, world (universal) writing 319

Anna Karenina 149, 178, 200

Vanity Fair (Thackeray) 118, 153

216, 230, 232

Wright, Alexis, Carpentaria 311

War and Peace 109, 156, 178–81,

Vargas Llosa, Mario

The Water Babies (Kingsley) 168

Wright, Richard, Native Son 259

182

Conversation in the Cathedral 282

The Water Margin (Shi) 60, 66
writers in exile 238–39

Tom Brown’s School Days (Hughes)

The Time of the Hero 290

Waverley (Scott) 122, 150

Wu Cheng’en, Journey to the West

169

Vaughan, Henry, “The World” 91

The Way We Live Now (Trollope) 186

66

Tom Jones (Fielding) 94, 104, 182

Vedas 20, 22–23

The Ways of White Folks (Hughes)

Wuthering Heights (Brontë) 69, 109,

Too Much Happiness (Munro) 326

Verlaine, Paul, Songs without Words

235

128, 132, 134–37, 192, 271

Toole, John Kennedy, A Confederacy

165

We (Zamyatin) 252, 253

Wyss, Johann David, Swiss Family
of Dunces 272

Verne, Jules 157

We Need New Names (Bulawayo)

Robinson 168

Toomer, Jean, Cane 235

Five Weeks in a Balloon 184

339
transatlantic fiction 186–87

Journey to the Center of the Earth

We Need to Talk about Kevin
transcendentalism 14, 125, 140, 141

184

(Shriver) 328

XYZ
transgressive fiction 313

Twenty Thousand Leagues Under

Wealth (Aristophanes) 39

Treasure Island (Stevenson) 201
the Sea 184

Webster, John, The Duchess of Malfi
xungen (“roots-seeking”) movement

The Trial (Kafka) 211, 242

Vestiges of the Natural History of

75

310

Tristan (Thomas of Britain) 50

Creation 184

Weimar Classicism 99, 108, 111,

Yashimoto, Banana, Kitchen 319

Tristram Shandy (Sterne) 61,

Vicente, Gil, Barcas trilogy 103

112–15

Yeats, W. B., “The Second Coming”

104–05, 221, 271, 298

Victorian feminism 128–31

Weimar-era experimentalism 207,

266

Troilus and Criseyde (Chaucer) 69

Victorian Gothic 134–37

234

“The Yellow Wallpaper” (Gilman)

Trollope, Anthony, The Way We Live

Villa-Matas, Enrique, Bartleby & Co.

Weiss, Peter, The Aesthetics of

128, 131

Now 186

274

Resistance 333

Yi Kwang-su, The Heartless 241

Tropic of Cancer (Miller) 243, 260

Villette (Brontë) 128

The Well Cradle (Izutsu) (Zeami

Zamyatin, Yevgeny, We 252, 253
troubadours and minnesingers 19,

Virgil 28, 40, 64

Motokiyo) 102

Zeami Motokiyo, The Well Cradle

49, 50–51

Aeneid 19, 40–41, 62

Wells, H. G., The Time Machine 184

(Izutsu) 102

The True History of the Kelly Gang

The Virgin Suicides (Eugenides) 328

Wen of Zhou, King 18, 21

Zhaxi (Tashi) Dawa, Tibet 310

(Carey) 311

Voltaire 97

West, Nathanael, The Day of the

Zola, Émile 191, 218–19

Turgenev, Ivan 108

Candide 61, 96–97, 260

Locust 276

Claude’s Confession 191

The Diary of a Superfluous Man

Letters Concerning the English

Wharton, Edith 187

Germinal 157, 163, 166, 190–91

124

Nation 97

Ethan Frome 240

L’Assommoir 166

The Turn of the Screw (James) 203, Von Kleist, Heinrich, The Prince of

The House of Mirth 118

Thérèse Raquin 198

271

Homburg 111

Madame de Treymes 186

Zweig, Stefan, The Royal Game 238

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Document Outline

6 Contents
10 INTRODUCTION
20 Only the gods dwell forever in sunlight

21 To nourish oneself on ancient virtue induces perseverance

22 What is this crime I am planning, O Krishna?

26 Sing, O goddess, the anger of Achilles

34 How dreadful knowledge of the truth can be when there’s no help in truth!

40 The gates of hell are open night and day; smooth the descent, and easy is the way

42 Fate will unwind as it must

44 So Scheherazade began…

46 Since life is but a dream, why toil to no avail?

47 Real things in the darkness seem no realer than dreams

48 A man should suffer greatly for his Lord

49 Tandaradei, sweetly sang the nightingale

50 He who dares not follow love’s command errs greatly

52 Let another’s wound be my warning
54 Further reading
62 I found myself within a shadowed forest

66 We three will swear brotherhood and unity of aims and sentiments

68 Turn over the leef and chese another tale

72 Laughter’s the property of man. Live joyfully

74 As it did to this flower, the doom of age will blight your beauty

75 He that loves pleasure must for pleasure fall

76 Every man is the child of his own deeds
82 One man in his time plays many parts
90 To esteem everything is to esteem nothing

91 But at my back I always hear Time’s winged chariot hurrying near

92 Sadly, I part from you; like a clam torn from its shell, I go, and autumn too

93 None will hinder and none be hindered on the journey to the mountain of death

94 I was born in the Year 1632, in the City of York, of a good family

96 If this is the best of all possible worlds, what are the others?

98 I have courage enough to walk through hell barefoot

100 There is nothing more difficult in love than expressing in writing what one does not feel

102 Further reading

110 Poetry is the breath and the finer spirit of all knowledge

111 Nothing is more wonderful, nothing more fantastic than real life

112 Man errs, till he has ceased to strive

116 Once upon a time…

118 For what do we live, but to make sport for our neighbours, and laugh at them in our turn?

120 Who shall conceive the horrors of my secret toil

122 All for one, one for all

124 But happiness I never aimed for, it is a stranger to my soul

125 Let your soul stand cool and composed before a million universes

126 You have seen how a man was made a slave; you shall see how a slave was made a man

128 I am no bird; and no net ensnares me

132 I cannot live without my life! I cannot live without my soul!

138 There is no folly of the beast of the Earth which is not infinitely outdone by the madness of men

146 All partings foreshadow the great final one

150 Further reading

158 Boredom, quiet as the spider, was spinning its web in the shadowy places of her heart

164 I too am a child of this land; I too grew up amid this scenery

165 The poet is a kinsman in the clouds
166 Not being heard is no reason for silence
168 Curiouser and curiouser!

172 Pain and suffering are always inevitable for a large intelligence and a deep heart

178 To describe directly the life of humanity or even of a single nation, appears impossible

182 It is a narrow mind which cannot look at a subject from various points of view

184 We may brave human laws, but we cannot resist natural ones

185 In Sweden all we do is to celebrate jubilees

186 She is written in a foreign tongue

188 Human beings can be awful cruel to one another

190 He simply wanted to go down the mine again, to suffer and to struggle

192 The evening sun was now ugly to her, like a great inflamed wound in the sky

194 The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it

195 There are things old and new which must not be contemplated by men’s eyes

196 One of the dark places of the earth

198 Further reading

208 The world is full of obvious things which nobody by any chance ever observes

209 I am a cat. As yet I have no name. I’ve no idea where I was born

210 Gregor Samsa found himself, in his bed, transformed into a monstrous vermin

212 Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori

213 Ragtime literature which flouts traditional rhythms

214 The heaventree of stars hung with humid nightblue fruit

222 When I was young I, too, had many dreams

223 Love gives naught but itself and takes naught but from itself

224 Criticism marks the origin of progress and enlightenment

228 Like moths among the whisperings and the champagne and the stars

234 The old world must crumble. Awake, wind of dawn!

235 Ships at a distance have every man’s wish on board

236 Dead men are heavier than broken hearts

238 It is such a secret place, the land of tears

240 Further reading

250 BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU

256 I’m seventeen now, and sometimes I act like I’m about thirteen

258 Death is a gang-boss aus Deutschland

259 I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me

260 Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul

262 He leaves no stone unturned, and no maggot lonely

263 It is impossible to touch eternity with one hand and life with the other

264 He was beat—the root, the soul of beatific

266 What is good among one people is an abomination with others

270 Even wallpaper has a better memory than human beings

272 I think there’s just one kind of folks. Folks.

274 Nothing is lost if one has the courage to proclaim that all is lost and we must begin anew

276 He had decided to live forever or die in the attempt

277 Everyday miracles and the living past

278 There’s got to be something wrong with us. To do what we did

280 Ending at every moment but never ending its ending

286 Further reading

296 Our history is an aggregate of last moments

298 You are about to begin reading Italo Calvino’s new novel

300 To understand just one life you have to swallow the world

306 Freeing yourself was one thing; claiming ownership of that freed self was another

310 Heaven and Earth were in turmoil

311 You could not tell a story like this. A story like this you could only feel

312 A historical vision, the outcome of a multicultural commitment

313 I felt lethal, on the verge of frenzy

314 Quietly they moved down the calm and sacred river

318 It’s a very Greek idea, and a profound one. Beauty is terror

319 What we see before us is just one tiny part of the world

320 Perhaps only in a world of the blind will things be what they truly are

322 English is an unfit medium for the truth of South Africa

324 Every moment happens twice: inside and outside, and they are two different histories

326 The best way of keeping a secret is to pretend there isn’t one

328 There was something his family wanted to forget

330 It all stems from the same nightmare, the one we created together

331 I regret that it takes a life to learn how to live

332 Further reading
340 GLOSSARY
344 INDEX
352 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Table of Contents

6 Contents
10 INTRODUCTION
20 Only the gods dwell forever in sunlight

21 To nourish oneself on ancient virtue induces perseverance

22 What is this crime I am planning, O Krishna?

26 Sing, O goddess, the anger of Achilles

34 How dreadful knowledge of the truth can be when there’s no help in truth!

40 The gates of hell are open night and day; smooth the descent, and easy is the way

42 Fate will unwind as it must

44 So Scheherazade began…

46 Since life is but a dream, why toil to no avail?

47 Real things in the darkness seem no realer than dreams

48 A man should suffer greatly for his Lord

49 Tandaradei, sweetly sang the nightingale

50 He who dares not follow love’s command errs greatly

52 Let another’s wound be my warning
54 Further reading
62 I found myself within a shadowed forest

66 We three will swear brotherhood and unity of aims and sentiments

68 Turn over the leef and chese another tale

72 Laughter’s the property of man. Live joyfully

74 As it did to this flower, the doom of age will blight your beauty

75 He that loves pleasure must for pleasure fall

76 Every man is the child of his own deeds
82 One man in his time plays many parts
90 To esteem everything is to esteem nothing

91 But at my back I always hear Time’s winged chariot hurrying near

92 Sadly, I part from you; like a clam torn from its shell, I go, and autumn too

93 None will hinder and none be hindered on the journey to the mountain of death

94 I was born in the Year 1632, in the City of York, of a good family

96 If this is the best of all possible worlds, what are the others?

98 I have courage enough to walk through hell barefoot

100 There is nothing more difficult in love than expressing in writing what one does not feel

102 Further reading

110 Poetry is the breath and the finer spirit of all knowledge

111 Nothing is more wonderful, nothing more fantastic than real life

112 Man errs, till he has ceased to strive

116 Once upon a time…

118 For what do we live, but to make sport for our neighbours, and laugh at them in our turn?

120 Who shall conceive the horrors of my secret toil

122 All for one, one for all

124 But happiness I never aimed for, it is a stranger to my soul

125 Let your soul stand cool and composed before a million universes

126 You have seen how a man was made a slave; you shall see how a slave was made a man

128 I am no bird; and no net ensnares me

132 I cannot live without my life! I cannot live without my soul!

138 There is no folly of the beast of the Earth which is not infinitely outdone by the madness of men

146 All partings foreshadow the great final one

150 Further reading

158 Boredom, quiet as the spider, was spinning its web in the shadowy places of her heart

164 I too am a child of this land; I too grew up amid this scenery

165 The poet is a kinsman in the clouds
166 Not being heard is no reason for silence
168 Curiouser and curiouser!

172 Pain and suffering are always inevitable for a large intelligence and a deep heart

178 To describe directly the life of humanity or even of a single nation, appears impossible

182 It is a narrow mind which cannot look at a subject from various points of view

184 We may brave human laws, but we cannot resist natural ones

185 In Sweden all we do is to celebrate jubilees

186 She is written in a foreign tongue

188 Human beings can be awful cruel to one another

190 He simply wanted to go down the mine again, to suffer and to struggle

192 The evening sun was now ugly to her, like a great inflamed wound in the sky

194 The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it

195 There are things old and new which must not be contemplated by men’s eyes

196 One of the dark places of the earth

198 Further reading

208 The world is full of obvious things which nobody by any chance ever observes

209 I am a cat. As yet I have no name. I’ve no idea where I was born

210 Gregor Samsa found himself, in his bed, transformed into a monstrous vermin

212 Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori

213 Ragtime literature which flouts traditional rhythms

214 The heaventree of stars hung with humid nightblue fruit

222 When I was young I, too, had many dreams

223 Love gives naught but itself and takes naught but from itself

224 Criticism marks the origin of progress and enlightenment

228 Like moths among the whisperings and the champagne and the stars

234 The old world must crumble. Awake, wind of dawn!

235 Ships at a distance have every man’s wish on board

236 Dead men are heavier than broken hearts

238 It is such a secret place, the land of tears

240 Further reading

250 BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU

256 I’m seventeen now, and sometimes I act like I’m about thirteen

258 Death is a gang-boss aus Deutschland

259 I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me

260 Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul

262 He leaves no stone unturned, and no maggot lonely

263 It is impossible to touch eternity with one hand and life with the other

264 He was beat—the root, the soul of beatific

266 What is good among one people is an abomination with others

270 Even wallpaper has a better memory than human beings

272 I think there’s just one kind of folks. Folks.

274 Nothing is lost if one has the courage to proclaim that all is lost and we must begin anew

276 He had decided to live forever or die in the attempt

277 Everyday miracles and the living past

278 There’s got to be something wrong with us. To do what we did

280 Ending at every moment but never ending its ending

286 Further reading

296 Our history is an aggregate of last moments

298 You are about to begin reading Italo Calvino’s new novel

300 To understand just one life you have to swallow the world

306 Freeing yourself was one thing; claiming ownership of that freed self was another

310 Heaven and Earth were in turmoil

311 You could not tell a story like this. A story like this you could only feel

312 A historical vision, the outcome of a multicultural commitment

313 I felt lethal, on the verge of frenzy

314 Quietly they moved down the calm and sacred river

318 It’s a very Greek idea, and a profound one. Beauty is terror

319 What we see before us is just one tiny part of the world

320 Perhaps only in a world of the blind will things be what they truly are

322 English is an unfit medium for the truth of South Africa

324 Every moment happens twice: inside and outside, and they are two different histories

326 The best way of keeping a secret is to pretend there isn’t one

328 There was something his family wanted to forget

330 It all stems from the same nightmare, the one we created together

331 I regret that it takes a life to learn how to live

332 Further reading
340 GLOSSARY
344 INDEX
352 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS