Uncle Silas: Background and Resources

[Silver]

Here you can place any information about the author, or any other materials which you think will be helpful to the further enjoyment and understanding of the book.

Please use spoiler warnings where needed.

[Silver]

Here is some information about Swedenborg and Swedenborgism which you may find helpful to you during your reading

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emanuel_...

http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/14355...

http://www.esoteric.msu.edu/VolumeV/B...

http://www.shs.psr.edu/about/tenets.asp

And this I thought of some personal interest. It is a list of historically famous Swedenborg's


http://www.adherents.com/largecom/fam...

[MadgeUK]

Thanks a lot Silver although I don't think my pragmatism will be able to cope with all that religiosity and mysticism!:) This, together with the fact that you can apparently sin in heaven, is interesting:-

'The predominant subject in the teacher’s mind was “conjugal love,” which was indeed in his view “heavenly love in its highest form,” and is according to him a great subject of interest, and conversation among the angels. In spite of our Lord’s denial, they do “marry and are given in marriage in heaven!” There are passages in Swedenborg’s writings so grossly indelicate, Dr Pond assures us, that they ought never to have been translated. Swedenborg gives 55 cases in which a married man may judge himself free to be unfaithful to his marriage vows; and in certain cases he permits and even recommends flagrant immorality.'

:O:O:O

It is available to read online:-

http://www.online-literature.com/lefa...

There are also some clips on Youtube from the old black and white movie with Jean Simmons, called the Inheritance - very scary! (SPOILERS)

http://www.youtube.com/results?search...

[Sasha]

I'm not the only person who can't hear "Swedenborg" without picturing the Swedish chef, right?

[MadgeUK]

LOL. I had forgotten him!

[Silver]

LOL I just think of my middle school science teacher who's name was Swedenborg

[SusannaW]

Once past the first 8 chapters, (spoiler alert) this is an interesting article on Sheridan and the mania for phantasmagoria in 19th century London and Paris. Not just in relation to the Swedenborgs and their magic (ghost) lanterns, but also the gothic more generally.

http://irishgothichorrorjournal.homes...

Maybe today, with our love of tv, films and computer screens, (modern-day magic lanterns) we're all neo-phantasmagorists...??? ;)

[MadgeUK]

BTW beware of SPOILERS in the above link!


Yes, the Victorians were heavily into fantasy, spiritualism, fairies etc. Perhaps because their lives were full of death because of the high mortality rates, particularly those of children.

Here is something about Victorian fantasy writing:-

http://www.enotes.com/victorian-fanta...

[Sasha]

What a cool article, Madge. Thanks for that. Have you read George MacDonald or Charles Kingsley? I was psyched to see Goblin Market cited. That's an amazing poem.

[Susan Margaret]

MadgeUK wrote: "Yes, the Victorians were heavily into fantasy, spiritualism, fairies etc. Perhaps because their lives were full of death because of the high mortality r..."

Very interesting article Madge. I had no idea that some of the children's fairy tales contained sexual overtones. I guess I will have to go back and reread some of those stories!

[SusannaW]

Seeunder, if you're interested in the sexual overtones of children's fairy tales, the key text people often use is Bruno Bettleheim's 'The Uses of Enchantment'

http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/0140137270

Definitely something going on in the woods of 'Uncle Silas'. lol

[Sasha]

I spent some time reading old-school fairy tales a while back. Andrew Lang's series of colored fairy books are excellent. It turns out...yeah, they're filthy. The original version of Little Red Riding Hood is all kinds of weird.

[MadgeUK]

And of course many were intended to frighten children into being good! Here is a nice little presentation of some Grimms Fairy Tales:-

http://www.nationalgeographic.com/gri...

This is an interesting essay on the history of fairy tales, which apparently originated in India:-

http://www.sacred-texts.com/etc/sft/s...

[Deborah, Moderator]

I read Grimm and Anderson fairy tales while I was in middle school (for fun...nerdy I know). I was surprised at how scary and graphic they can be. Most of us are given watered down versions by our parents. I think that children were really a part of the everyday world in past generations. They wore adult like clothing for the most part and were not as sheltered from death and hardship. Many worked. Maybe due to these facts previous generations didn't find them quite so graphic.

[Malcolm]

If you enjoy Uncle Silas, when you finish reading it you should hunt out the earlier short story versions A Passage in the Secret History of an Irish Countess, and The Murder Cousin for comparisons and development.

A Passage etc., is part of a series of short stories known collectively as The Purcell Papers. Some of them likewise are gothic romances like Uncle Silas, such as The Last Heir of Castle Connor, A Chapter in the History of a Tyrone Family, and The Bridal of Carrigvarah, others however are more Irish folklore/fairytales concering leprechauns etc. You can download The Purcell Papers from Project Gutenburg. It has a very interesting Memoir of Sheridan Le Fanu as an introduction.

You might also like his short story The Evil Guest.

[Laura]

thanks for this tips Malcolm, sounds quite interesting.

[MadgeUK]

Has anyone got an illustrated edition of Uncle Silas?One of its illustrators was Charles William Stewart, who has an interesting background. Shambellie House is now the National Museum of Costume in Dumfries, Scotland.:-

http://www.artistsfootsteps.co.uk/sto...

http://www.undiscoveredscotland.co.uk...

There are some early illustrations of Uncle Silas on this Russian website:-

http://metalonmetalblog.blogspot.com/...

It is said that Le Fanu did not collaborate well with his illustrators, being more interested in painting illustrations in words.

Phiz, Dickens' famous illustrator, illustrated Le Fanu's The Fortunes of Colonel Torlogh O’Brien (1847): 'In O’Brien the artist draws out the horror of the author’s tableaux by offering a replication of carefully specified details. A good example is provided by the moment when ‘The Black Guest of Drumgunniol’ appears. Le Fanu described this as a ‘spectacle’ in which:

"Through the bars of a window…were thrust the knees and head of a figure, whose escape had been
rendered impracticable by two transverse bars. . . . The head, and one arm and shoulder, as well as one knee, were thrust through the iron stanchions, and all black and shrunk, the clothes burned entirely away, and the body roasted and shrivelled to a horrible tenuity; the lips dried up and drawn, so that the white teeth grinned and glittered in hideous mockery...."

‘Appalling’ in itself, Phiz re-visualizes the scene as a piece of black humour in which the
ugliness of the situation is given an ungainly physical register. The ‘shrunk’ body is shown
as a dangling corpse, its knee awkwardly stuck through the bars; the face—described by Le Fanu
as the face of a ‘grinning ape’—is made into a burnt skull, while the eyes and teeth peer out at
Tisdal in a charnel-house version of ‘hideous mockery’. The artist also registers the horrors of the ‘reeking ruin’, creating a close correspondence between the adjectives ‘hideous’ and ‘horrible’,
and the restless, tumbling composition that seems to spill into the viewer’s space. Coarse, dynamic and visually imposing, Phiz’s illustration leaves no doubt as to the physical impact of Tisdal’s experience; forced to contemplate a ‘real’ scene, the viewer is immersed in a ‘shuddering’ contemplation of the unambiguous facts of a terrible death. Phiz thus provides a careful underlining of his source material: following what is described, he nevertheless gives an added twist. The grotesqueries of Le Fanu are well matched and given physical form by the grotesqueries of Phiz; occupying the same sort of imaginative territory as the author, the artist is
well-placed to provide a series of visual equivalences, overwhelmingly gruesome pictures of the text’s mordant ‘reality’.'