The Literature of Disharmony

Going native?

2009-04-27T18:08:00.000+02:00

Let’s go into the wild. Now, what do we do? Do we colonise the whole bunch of inferior beings we are bound to find there? Do we go native (knowing that it will be quite hard to face our fellow Englishmen if we dare go back)? Well, let us see how a well-known British author dealt with that very question, namely H. Rider Haggard in his King Solomon’s Mines (1885).Haggard supposedly deals with the

Really? Hamlet in Italy... That's weird, isn’t it?

2009-03-16T07:57:00.011+01:00

“Dumbarton Rock, Castle, Lime Kiln And The Clyde”John Stoddart, Sceneries & Manners In Scotland (1800)Remember, remember… Hamlet, written by dear old Shakespeare. What was the real title again? Ah, yes, of course: The Tragical History of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark for the 1603 edition. (Replace “tragical history” by “tragedy” for the 1623 version. But it really is the same… The point is that the

War!

2009-03-05T10:13:00.001+01:00

French 87th Regiment,during the 1916 Battle of Verdun.Arthur Conan Doyle did not only write Sherlock Holmes stories. I am sure you all know about The Lost World, probably thanks to Steven Spielberg. But we might be discussing that very novel later on this year. He also wrote what could be called an autobiography, aptly entitled Memories & Adventures. One of the chapters concerns his “Experiences

Why the hell are Gothic novels so often set in Italy?

2009-02-24T17:48:00.001+01:00

“John Dee and Edmund Kelly evoking a spirit”From The Astrologer of the Nineteenth Century.Illustration by Ebenezer Sibley (c. 1825).I do not know about you, but I would more easily imagine ghost stories taking place in a gloomy German castle… Do you remember Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade? Do you remember this castle in Austria? (I think it was Austria…) Well, a bit like that. But many

There are two kinds of people...

2009-02-16T21:34:00.001+01:00

I was going over some Sherlock Holmes short stories when something I had read before sprang to my mind. Have you ever heard of The Devil’s Dictionary? It is a fabulous book, written by Ambrose Bierce, and published in 1911, in which the author pinpoints most of his time’s hypocrisies by redefining common words of the English language. If you are a fan of sarcasm and cynicism, this should be your

Because we are just the monkeys who fell out of the trees...

2009-02-04T11:56:00.001+01:00

“The Murders in the Rue Morgue”Illustration by Aubrey Beardsley (1895).There is something unsettling about Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Murders in the Rue Morgue”. Analysis and intellectual faculties, which are called acumen by the author, are the key of the so-called “extraordinary murders”. There is always this issue of the “missing link”,

Happy birthday, dear Robert!

2009-01-25T16:59:00.010+01:00

Robert Burns, by Alexander Nasmyth (1787)Let us remember today, on the 250th anniversary of his birth, the great Scottish poet Robert Burns. For all of you who do not know him yet, he was also a central figure of British Romanticism.So, let us raise our glass to the man and eat haggis all night!Address To A HaggisFair fa’ your honest, sonsie face,Great chieftain o’ the puddin-race!Aboon them a’

Once a sinner, always a sinner...

2009-01-20T12:36:00.002+01:00

The world is shaking! The ground is crumbling! Man has fallen! Why? Just let me try this lovely figure of speech called analepsis:1859 A.D.Everything is hunky-dory, or let us pretend it is so. But one day, on a cold morning, the world is about to change. If anyone can prove that it was not a cold morning, well, just send me an email. Darwin had been thinking about birds in the Galapagos. And soon

The eye of the storm

2009-01-14T09:27:00.001+01:00

J. M. W. Turner, Snowstorm (1842)Our dear friend Gulliver arrived on Lilliput in the year of our Lord 1699. But that is not interesting in the least. Well, it might or might not, but that is beside the point. What is more interesting than that is that he arrives on November 5th. For all of you who have seen V for Vendetta, it should ring a bell:Remember, remember the fifth of November,The

Not so mysterious an island...

2009-01-08T20:55:00.009+01:00

We all understand that Jonathan Swift was not known to be a very good sailor. He actually did not know much about boats and sails. To write some of the long and sometimes boring descriptions you can find in one of his most famous books, Gulliver’s Travels, he pillaged some of the most prosaic navigation manuals of his time. Not very groovy, right?Well, the fact is that he did not have much of an

Was King Lear an utter buffoon?

2008-12-09T00:00:00.003+01:00

"King Learmlet"When I chose to write this article, I had no idea I would face so much trouble… As I researched King Lear’s madness, I was very surprised to see that there is no unequivocal theory of the meaning of Shakespeare’s madness. Each and every critic explains it by referring to different sciences, to different historical backgrounds. What sums it best is in a way Harold Bloom’s

What the hell is this?

2008-12-08T23:57:00.002+01:00

All right, do not panic and let me explain.This is the collection of all the articles I wrote/am writing for this wonderful magazine I am - ergo - writing in. It is called Disharmonies, and released once a month in France, mainly at the ENS (École Normale Supérieure).I hope you will like it... I can be quite weird sometimes.But I forgot the essentials: my deepest and fondest thanks to Tsum for