Random Thesis Musing No 1
In her essay, On Ghosts, Mary Shelley laments the way the world is changing to a more rational, more understood and more linear place. The way the sun is known to be a star filled with gas as opposed to a mysterious orb that might be the chariot of a god, for instance. In this she neatly summarises a general feeling within the Romantic movement and with the Gothics in particular – that the new ways following the various revolutions at the end of the 18th century were potentially robbing us of our sense of wonder; hence the romanticising of the past and the insistence (at times) in the existence of the supernatural.
As progress has not slowed since that time it is little wonder these feelings have lingered and the rebellious medievalist spirit of the Gothics has continued in many forms of storytelling as well. But while mad monks, ghosts, mouldering castles and star-crossed lovers gave escape from the modernising of the world, Shelly went further and commented on the very progress she lamented in her essay.
In Frankenstein she inverts the supernatural threat by having the devils and monsters made by humans overstepping their mortal bounds as opposed to things beyond our mortal ken. In so doing she of course established an archetype and moved us closer to a genre which would become science fiction. Taking the novel with On Ghosts and her other major work, The Last Man, however we see a different tradition arise.
Shelley gives us a world we think we understand but do not. Her works threaten us with destruction because of this assumed knowledge and the failure to understand the greater mystery.
Taking this view, a new tradition can be seen to have risen from Shelley, one of a shrinking, rationalised world left at the mercy of the forgotten things, or inversely, the tragic lingering of the old ways against the rise of the new. The first half of this is best represented in HP Lovecraft’s Cthulu and Dream Quest stories, while the latter is seen in Michael Moorcock’s Elric saga. More recently, Tim Powers’ The Anubis Gates and Neil Gaiman’s American Gods combine both sides of the tradition.
As progress has not slowed since that time it is little wonder these feelings have lingered and the rebellious medievalist spirit of the Gothics has continued in many forms of storytelling as well. But while mad monks, ghosts, mouldering castles and star-crossed lovers gave escape from the modernising of the world, Shelly went further and commented on the very progress she lamented in her essay.
In Frankenstein she inverts the supernatural threat by having the devils and monsters made by humans overstepping their mortal bounds as opposed to things beyond our mortal ken. In so doing she of course established an archetype and moved us closer to a genre which would become science fiction. Taking the novel with On Ghosts and her other major work, The Last Man, however we see a different tradition arise.
Shelley gives us a world we think we understand but do not. Her works threaten us with destruction because of this assumed knowledge and the failure to understand the greater mystery.
Taking this view, a new tradition can be seen to have risen from Shelley, one of a shrinking, rationalised world left at the mercy of the forgotten things, or inversely, the tragic lingering of the old ways against the rise of the new. The first half of this is best represented in HP Lovecraft’s Cthulu and Dream Quest stories, while the latter is seen in Michael Moorcock’s Elric saga. More recently, Tim Powers’ The Anubis Gates and Neil Gaiman’s American Gods combine both sides of the tradition.
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