Gothic & Graphic
“Ann Radcliffe, the
Gothic, and High Romanticism”
Anne Irmen Close, Truman Coll.
Ann Radcliffe’s (1764-1823) Gothic
tales of female virtue in distress, property-hungry villains, and supernatural
possibilities—most notably The Romance of
the Forest (1791), The Mysteries of
Udolpho (1794), and The Italian
(1797)—were among the best-selling works of the century, shaped the tastes of
middle-class reading audiences, and seemed to narrow the divide between popular
fiction and high Romantic art. However,
her earlier novel, A Sicilian Romance
(1790), differs critically from the later, more polished work that defines her
canon and is still read as normative of the tradition she popularized by
readers eager to separate Radcliffe’s novels from fiction that was accused, as
WilliamWordsworth put it, of mere imitation, pandering to the lowest possible
tastes, and trafficking in “gross and violent stimulants” (449).
In A Sicilian Romance, the developing
aesthetics and ideology of Radcliffe’s Gothic reveal an explicit critique of
hierarchical power structures assigned by gender, rank, and the ethos of high
Romanticism. This novel features a rougher
style as well as a more overtly political and transgressive plot, including
abrupt shifts of perspective, the expression of multiple points of view, and a
struggle between the heroine and villains that is characterized as an issue of
human rights instead of mere economics.
By dramatizing the conflict between institutionalized power and
individual rights that informed the rhetoric advanced by proponents of the
French Revolution, A Sicilian Romance
also indicts the power of the Church and state, the patriarchal family, and the
muted ideology of the female Gothic, depicting its heroine Julia as a wronged
individual who has every right to denounce their corrupt authority and “fly. .
.from the authority of a father who abuses his power, and assert the liberty of
choice, which nature assigned [her]” (61). The presentation will conclude with
a comparison of A Sicilain Romance to
her next novel, The Romance of the Forest,
to demonstrate how the latter’s muted handling of contemporary politics and
apparently conservative depiction of gendered and literary sensibilities have
become representative of what we think of now as the Gothic—and how this novel
and Radcliffe herself ultimately reinforced, not bridged, the gulf between high
Romanticism and popular Gothic fiction.
Works Cited
Radcliffe, Ann. A Sicilian Romance. Ed. Alison Milbank.
Wordsworth, William.
Preface. Lyrical Ballads (1802). Selected Poems by and Prefaces by William
Wordsworth. Ed. Jack
Stillinger.
“Sex, Smack, and
Samurais: ‘Queer-Core’ Culture in the Graphic Novel”
Stephanie Hart,
This essay, entitled “Sex, Smack, and Samurais: ‘Queer-Core’ Culture in the Graphic Novel” will examine the place of Ted Naifeh and Tristan Crane’s collaborative work How Loathsome in what can be called the field of ‘queer’ pop culture. Firstly, I will address the use of the graphic novel-- a medium that arguably falls into the realm of ‘low’ culture that has typically engaged a white, male, heterosexual audience-- as a new space in which to articulate “underclass” queer identities1. I will argue that the text presents a new logic of desire by rupturing generic and receptive boundaries in order to question a cohesive and linear relationship between high/low culture, self/other, sex/gender, text/ image, desire/disgust, and pleasure/pain. Secondly, I will examine the queering of the graphic novel (itself a problematic cultural signifier that will demand examination2) as a strategy that hinges on presenting the seamless body as a perversion. Central to this discussion is the idea that gender and desire are always performed in the present3. From transsexual high femmes to samurai-inspired heroin-addicted androgynes, How Loathsome unapologetically reverberates on a low frequency as it upsets dominant social and narrative categories. It presents a multiplicity of ‘queer- core’4 identities and subcultures and offers a noisy cultural space in which to live them.
1 This discussion will involve drug use/addiction, work in the sex trade, and BDSM.
2 I’m referring to how it differs from the term comic book.
3 This idea is taken from Peggy Phelan’s work on performativity.
4 Danielle Willis from the
introduction to How Loathsome.
Daydreams and Marketing: Winsor McCay,
Robert Crumb, and the Graphic Novel
Edward A. Shannon, Ramapo Coll. of
Many readers assume autobiographical comics a relatively new genre, a novelty pioneered by Art Spiegelman and Marjane Satrapi; however, Robert Crumb has been doing autobiographical comics for forty years. His work often features quasi-fictional figures like “Shuman the Human” or “Flakey Foont,” but fiction and non-fiction do not maintain stable borders in Crumb’s work. His fiction is autobiographical, while his autobiography is fictionalized, surreal, and fantastical. Crumb’s autobiographical impulses can be seen in recent works like Mystic Funnies and The Art and Beauty Magazine; while neither much resembles the offerings in the graphic novel section of a chain bookstore, both reflect Crumb’s interest in short form fiction informed by an ironic acknowledgement of Freudian sexual repression.
“Daydreams and Marketing: Winsor McCay, Robert Crumb, and the Graphic Novel” considers Crumb between two extremes: the pre-freudian influence of Winsor McCay and the contemporary phenomena of the graphic novel. So far, his free use of disturbing sexual and racial imagery and his decision to work in short-form fantasy (rather than book-length “graphic novels”), has kept Crumb from attracting the popular audience of Spiegelman, Satrapi, and those working in more conventional comics genres. Crumb’s ironic appropriation of McCay’s seemingly “innocent” imagery allows him to turn his pseudo-autobiographical comics into potent self- and political satire. In particular, Crumb’s exploration of the racist baggage of the comic strip as well as his self-consciously Freudian adaptation of McCay’s iconography transforms the innocence of Little Nemo’s “world of wonderful dreams” into a nightmare reflection of the American Dream, what Crumb ironically calls “something black” deep inside the American psyche. Mystic Funnies and The Art and Beauty Magazine are best understood as confessional pseudo-autobiography informed by a century of American comics iconography.