The seduction of the occult and the rise of the fantastic tale
This book examines the early development of the fantastic tale through the works of of the German romantics Ludwig Tieck, Achim von Arnim, and E. T. A. Hoffmann; the subsequent French rediscovery of the genre in works by Théophile Gautier and Prosper Mérimée; and Edgar Allan Poe's contributions to the literary form.
Print Book, English, 2003
Stanford University Press, Stanford, Calif., 2003
Criticism, interpretation, etc
x, 289 pages ; 24 cm
9780804738590, 9780804738606, 0804738599, 0804738602
50630523
1. The fantastic in the cultural history of reading ; Cazotte's Le diable amoureux and Hoffmann's "Der Elementargeist" ; The Devil in love ; "Che Vuoi?" ; The glance behind the lure ; "The elementary spirit" ; Seduction through reading ; The passion of the lonely reader ; Manly valor and bachelordom by choice
2. The aesthetics of shock and the poetics of the perverse ; Paranoid Eckbert, melancholy Emil, and "the imp of the perverse" ; The limits of representation ; Blond Eckbert's paranoia ; Confessions gone awry: Eckbert's paranoia ; Bertha's story and the origin of sexuality ; "Rear window" or "love charm" ; The pathology of aesthetic subjectivity ; The love charm, the fantastic, and seduction by shock ; Between pathology and amorality: "the imp of the perverse"
3. The power of the artist ; Schmolling's insanity defense ; "Das Fräulein Von Scuderi" ; "Automata" and the simulation of life
4. Artificial paradise and the medial woman ; "Serapion," "Rat Krespel," "La morte amoureuse," and "Ligeia" ; Temporality, ideal beauty, and mortality ; Serapion: radical visionary bliss and the denial of the body's mortality ; "Councillor Krespel": narration and fantasy between two deaths, "La morte amoureuse" ; Ligeia: "her large and luminous orbs" ; Poe's arabesque, or, death by drapery ; "Hideous animation"
5. Fantastic encounters with the marvels of history ; "Isabella von Ägypten" and "La Vénus d'Ille" ; Bella's blood ; The political mixture of legend and history ; Isabella's sexuality and femininity ; The uses of blood ; The living past and its resistance to modernization ; "The Venus of Ille" ; The idol's looks and the idol's look ; The inspector's investment ; Signature, event, context: the narrator's blind spot
Epilogue, or, turning the screw from shock to fascination