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Body Horror

Body horror

Body horror is horror based on a sense of physical "wrongness" in the body. Bizarre birth defects and mutations are a common theme in body horror, as is unwanted physical transformation or invasion. Examples of the genre include Rosemary's Baby, Alien, The Thing, several films of Shinya Tsukamoto including Tetsuo: The Iron Man, many of Clive Barker's novels and films, and many of the films of David Cronenberg. Body horror often combines psychological horror with gore and other shocking imagery.

Notable films

- Rosemary's Baby (1968)
- Shivers (1975)
- Rabid (1977)
- The Brood (1979)
- Alien (1979)
- Basket Case (1982)
- The Thing (1982)
- Videodrome (1983)
- Re-Animator (1985)
- The Fly (1986)
- Dead Ringers (1988)
- Tetsuo (1988)
- Society (1989)
- eXistenZ (1999)
- Slither (2006)
See also

- List of films about independent body parts Category:Horror

Horror fiction
Horror fiction is, broadly, fiction in any medium intended to scare, unsettle or horrify the reader. Historically, the cause of the "horror" experience has often been the intrusion of an evil, or occasionally misunderstood, supernatural element into everyday human experience. Since the 1960s, any work of fiction with a morbid, gruesome, surreal, exceptionally suspenseful or frightening theme has come to be called "horror." Horror fiction often overlaps with science fiction and/or fantasy, all of which have sometimes been placed under the umbrella category speculative fiction. See also supernatural fiction.
Early horror fiction
Fictional characters have found themselves in horrifying situations from the earliest recorded tales. Many myths and legends feature scenarios and archetypes used by later horror writers. Tales collected by the Grimm Brothers are often quite horrific. Modern horror fiction found its roots in the gothic novels that exploded into popularity in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, typified by Ann Radcliffe's The Mysteries of Udolpho and Horace Walpole's The Castle of Otranto. A variation on the Gothic formula that remains one of the most enduring and imitated horror works is Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley's novel Frankenstein (1818, revised version 1831). Frankenstein has also been considered science fiction or a philosophical novel by some literary historians. Later gothic horror descendants included seminal late 19th century works like Bram Stoker's Dracula and Henry James's The Turn of the Screw. Early horror works used mood and subtlety to deliver an eerie and otherworldly flavor, but usually eschewed extensive explicit violence. Other early exponents of the horror form number such luminaries as H. P. Lovecraft and Edgar Allan Poe, who were considered to be masters of the art. Among the writers of classic English ghost stories, M.R. James is often cited as the finest. His stories avoid shock effects and often involve an Oxford antiquarian as their hero. Algernon Blackwood's The Willows and Oliver Onions's The Beckoning Fair One have been called the best ghost stories. Lovecraft and Sheridan le Fanu called some of their writing weird fiction or weird stories. Some stories in highbrow literature could arguably be regarded as horror fiction: examples include Franz Kafka's The Metamorphosis (Die Verwandlung) and In the Penal Colony (In der Strafkolonie).
Contemporary horror fiction
Modern practitioners of the genre have often resorted to progressively greater extremes of violence, often recalling grand guignol theatre. (See splatterpunk) This has given horror fiction a stigma as base entertainment devoid of literary merit. Other writers, such as Ramsey Campbell and Thomas Ligotti, are cited as rejecting such violence in favor of more subtle, psychological writing. Nevertheless, contemporary writers such as Clive Barker in The Books of Blood and Stephen King in his more considered works, such as Misery, are capable of bringing off the horror effect without the excessive violence that characterises much of the current mainstream of this genre. As well, in more recent years, the subgenre of erotic horror, which combines both erotic and horrific imagery and subject matter, has gained a substantial foothold. Thought to have been originated by the late Ed Wood of B movie fame during the mid 1960's, modern authors such as Alex Severin, Hertzan Chimera (aka Mike Philbin) and others continue to use this shocking combination to scare a new generation of readers. The rise of the Internet has allowed horror authors and fans to create new subsets of the genre. Numerous Web-based fanzines and podcasts have provided a market for both amateur and professional writers, which is unfettered by the tastes and judgments of the professional publishing houses.
See also

- Horror film
- List of horror fiction authors
- Ghost story
- Psychological horror
- Body horror
- Internet Speculative Fiction DataBase
External links

- [http://www.horrorreader.com Horror Reader, blog and podcast dedicated to horror fiction]
- [http://www.movie-monsters.co.uk "Monsters in film" Details of cinematic monsters]
- [http://gaslight.mtroyal.ab.ca/superhor.htm "Supernatural Horror in Literature" essay by H. P. Lovecraft on horror fiction antecendents]
- [http://www.theharrow.com The Harrow horror zine]
- [http://book.awardannals.com/genre/horror/ Most Honored Horror Books] at [http://book.awardannals.com/ Book Award Annals]
- [http://freezenerve.proboards32.com/ Carnival of Wicked Writers]
- [http://www.somethingawful.com/articles.php?a=3289 The Modern Monster or The Dismantlement of Old Monster Archetypes] Category: Speculative fiction
- Category:Literary genres ja:ホラー小説

Mutation

In biology, mutations are permanent, sometimes transmissible (if the change is to a germ cell) changes to the genetic material (usually DNA or RNA) of a cell. Mutations can be caused by copying errors in the genetic material during cell division and by exposure to radiation, chemicals, or viruses, or can occur deliberately under cellular control during the processes such as meiosis or hypermutation. In multicellular organisms, mutations can be subdivided into germline mutations, which can be passed on to progeny and somatic mutations, which (when accidental) often lead to the malfunction or death of a cell and can cause cancer. Mutations are considered the driving force of evolution, where less favorable (or deleterious) mutations are removed from the gene pool by natural selection, while more favorable (or beneficial) ones tend to accumulate. Neutral mutations do not affect the organism's chances of survival in its natural environment and can accumulate over time, which might result in what is known as punctuated equilibrium, a disputed interpretation of the fossil record. Contrary to tales of science fiction, the overwhelming majority of mutations have no significant effect. Visible effects are especially rare, since DNA repair is able to reverse most changes before they become permanent mutations.

Structural classification

Structurally, mutations can be classified as:
- Small-scale mutations affecting one or a few nucleotides, including:
- Point mutations, often caused by chemicals or malfunction of DNA replication, exchange a single nucleotide for another. Most common is the transition that exchanges a purine for a purine (A ↔ G) or a pyrimidine for a pyrimidine, (C ↔ T). A transition can be caused by nitrous acid, base mispairing, or mutagenic base analogs such as 5-bromo-2-deoxyuridine (BrdU). Less common is a transversion, which exchanges a purine for a pyrimidine or a pyrimidine for a purine (C/T ↔ A/G). A point mutation can be reversed by another point mutation, in which the nucleotide is changed back to its original state (true reversion) or by second-site reversion (a complementary mutation elsewhere that results in regained gene functionality). These changes are classified as transitions or transversions. An example of a transversion is adenine being converted into a cytosine. There are also many other examples that can be found. There are three kinds of point mutations, depending upon what the erroneous codon codes for:
- silent mutations: codes for the same amino acid, so has no effect
- missense mutations: codes for a different amino acid
- nonsense mutations: codes for a stop, which can truncate the protein (mutations that give a UAG stop codon are known as amber mutations)
- Insertions add one or more extra nucleotides into the DNA. They are usually caused by transposable elements, or errors during replication of repeating elements (e.g. AT repeats). Most insertions in a gene can either alter splicing of the mRNA, or cause a shift in the reading frame (frameshift), both of which can significantly alter the gene product. Insertions can be reverted by excision of the transposable element.
- Deletions remove one or more nucleotides from the DNA. Like insertions, these mutations can alter the reading frame of the gene. They are irreversible.
- Large-scale mutations in chromosomal structure, including:
- Amplifications (or gene duplications) leading to multiple copies of chromosomal regions, increasing the dosage of the genes located within them.
- Deletions of large chromosomal regions, leading to loss of the genes within those regions.
- Mutations whose effect is to juxtapose previously separate pieces of DNA, potentially bringing together separate genes to form functionally distinct fusion genes (e.g. bcr-abl). These include:
- Chromosomal translocations: attaching DNA from separate chromosomes.
- Interstitial deletions: removing regions of DNA from a single chromosome, thereby apposing previously distant genes (e.g. fig-ros).
- Chromosomal inversions: switching the orientation of a segment of a chromosome, thereby apposing its ends to previously distant genes.
- Loss of heterozygosity: loss of one allele, either by a deletion or recombination event, in organisms which previously had two.

Functional classification

Mutations in genes can be classified according to how they change the function or expression of the gene product. The following terms describe mutations that affect the gene product directly:
- Loss-of-function mutations are the result of the protein encoded by the gene having less or no function. When the allele has a complete loss of function (null allele) it is often called an amorphic mutation. Phenotypes associated with such mutations are most often recessive. Exceptions are when the organism is haploid, or when the reduced dosage of normal gene product is not enough for normal phenotype (this is called haploinsufficiency).
- Gain-of-function mutations change the gene product such that it gains a new and abnormal function. These mutations usually have dominant phenotypes.
- Dominant negative mutations (also called antimorphic mutations) have an altered gene product that acts antagonistically to the wild-type allele. These mutations usually result in an altered molecular function (often inactive) and are characterised by a dominant or semi-dominant phenotype.
- Lethal mutations are mutations that lead to a phenotype incapable of effective reproduction.
- Conditional mutation is a mutation that has wild-type phenotype under certain enivironmental conditions and a mutant phenotype under certain selective conditions. Conditional mutations may also be lethal under certain conditions. Some characterizations also include mutations that affect expression of a gene:
- Hypomorphic mutations are mutations that cause reduced function of the gene product, or a negative change in expression of the gene.
- Hypermorphic mutations are the opposite of hypomorphic mutations; they cause increased activity or expression of the gene product.
- Neomorphic mutations cause a novel molecular function or expression of the gene product. The following types of mutations are classified according to their phenotypic results:
- Morphological mutations usually affect the outward appearance of an individual. Mutations can change the height of a plant or change it from smooth to rough seeds.
- Biochemical mutations result in lesions stopping the enzymatic pathway. Often, morphological mutants are the direct result of a mutation due to the enzymatic pathway.

Causes of mutation

Two classes of mutations are spontaneous mutations (molecular decay) and induced mutations caused by mutagens. Spontaneous mutations on the molecular level include:
- Tautomerism - A base is changed by the repositioning of a hydrogen atom.
- Depurination - Loss of a purine base (A or G).
- Deamination - Changes a normal base to an atypical base; C → U, or A → HX (hypoxanthine).
- Transition - A purine changes to another purine, or a pyrimidine to a pyrimidine.
- Transversion - A purine becomes a pyrimidine, or vice versa. Induced mutations on the molecular level can be caused by:
- Chemicals
- Nitrosoguanidine (NTG)
- Base analogs (e.g. BrdU)
- Simple chemicals (e.g. acids)
- Alkylating agents (e.g. N-ethyl-N-nitrosourea (ENU)) These agents can mutate both replicating and non-replicating DNA. In contrast, a base analog can only mutate the DNA When the analog is incorporated in replicating the DNA. Each of these classes of chemical mutagens has certain effects that then lead to transitions, tranversions, or deletions.
- Methylating agents (e.g. ethane methyl sulfonate (EMS))
- Polycyclic hydrocarbons (e.g. benzpyrenes found in internal combustion engine exhaust)
- DNA intercalating agents (e.g. ethidium bromide)
- DNA crosslinker (e.g. platinum)
- Oxidative damage caused by oxygen radicals
- Radiation
- Ultraviolet radiation
- Ionizing radiation DNA has so-called hotspots, where mutations occur up to 100 times more frequently than the normal mutation rate. A hotspot can be at an unusual base, e.g., 5-methylcytosine. Mutation rates also vary across species. Evolutionary biologists have theorized that higher mutation rates are beneficial in some situations, because they allow organisms to evolve and therefore adapt faster to their environments.

Mutation and disease

Changes in DNA caused by mutation can cause errors in protein sequence, creating partially or completely non-functional proteins. To function correctly, each cell depends on thousands of proteins to function in the right places at the right times. When a mutation alters a protein that plays a critical role in the body, a medical condition can result. A condition caused by mutations in one or more genes is called a genetic disorder. If a mutation is present in a germ cell, this can give rise to offspring that carries the mutation in all of its cells. This is the case in hereditary diseases. On the other hand, a mutation can occur in a somatic cell of an organism. Such mutations will be present in all descendants of this cell, and certain mutations can cause the cell to become malignant, and thus cause cancer. Often, gene mutations that could cause a genetic disorder are repaired by the DNA repair system of the cell. Each cell has a number of pathways through which enzymes recognize and repair mistakes in DNA. Because DNA can be damaged or mutated in many ways, the process of DNA repair is an important way in which the body protects itself from disease.

Mutagenisis

Mutagenisis (the creation or formation of a mutation) can be used as a powerful genetic tool. By inducing mutations in specific ways and then observing the phenotype of the organism the function of genes and even individual nucleotides can be determined. See:
Transposons as a genetic tool for the use of transposable elements for analysis of gene function. Site-directed mutagenisis for the use of site specific mutation for analysis of function.

References

- Maki H. 2002. Origins of spontaneous mutations: specificity and directionality of base-substitution, frameshift, and sequence-substitution mutageneses. Annual Review of Genetics 36:279-303.

External links

- The mutations chapter of the WikiBooks General Biology textbook
- [http://www.evowiki.org/index.php/Mutation EvoWiki: Mutation]
- http://www.gate.net/~rwms/EvoMutations.html Examples of Beneficial Mutations Category:Evolutionary biology Category:Genetics
- ko:돌연변이 ja:突然変異

Rosemary's Baby

Rosemary's Baby is a 1967 horror novel by Ira Levin. The novel was a best-seller, and was adapted as a 1968 feature film directed by Roman Polanski and starring Mia Farrow as the wife, John Cassavetes as the husband, and Ruth Gordon and Sidney Blackmer as the neighbors. Gordon won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her work in the film. There is a popular rumor that Anton LaVey appears in the film as Satan, but he had no involvement with the production. This film was Robert Evans' first big hit running Paramount Pictures. He was closely involved in the production, and numerous times had to deal with Mia Farrow's precarious relationship with then-husband Frank Sinatra. Farrow and Sinatra divorced soon after the film was completed. A sequel titled Look What's Happened to Rosemary's Baby aired as a made-for-TV movie in 1976. Another sequel, called Son Of Rosemary written also by Ira Levin was published in 1997. There were rumours that they would shoot this novel too, but it never came to happen, though the book did appear to have been specifically written with the possibility of turning it into a film, in that Cassavetes, Gordon and Blackmer's characters did not appear. (All three actors were deceased by at the time of the book's publication.) Levin dedicated this book to Mia Farrow. The story follows a young woman and her husband after moving into a New York City apartment next door to enthusiastic, oversolicitous neighbors. The couple want to have a baby; one night the woman has a vision that she is being raped by some demonic presence, and later she finds out that she is pregnant. The woman begins to lose weight instead of gaining it, and comes to suspect that her neighbors are part of a Satanic cult with designs on her as-yet-unborn child, and that her husband is working with them.

ISBN numbers

- ISBN 1568490658 (library binding, 1991)
- ISBN 1568654707 (hardcover, 1997)
- ISBN 0451194004 (mass market paperback, 1997)
- ISBN 0451210514 (paperback, 2003)
- ISBN 3926048301 (hardcover)

External links

-
- Category:1967 books Category:1968 films Category:Best Supporting Actress Oscar (film) Category:Films based on novels Category:satanism Category:Controversial films Category:Films directed by Roman Polanski

The Thing

:This article is about the film. For other meanings of thing, see thing (disambiguation). The Thing is a 1982 science fiction film directed by John Carpenter. Ostensibly a remake of the 1951 Howard Hawks film The Thing From Another World, Carpenter's film is actually more faithful to the short story that serves as both films' source material, "Who Goes There?" by John W. Campbell, Jr. The musical score was by Ennio Morricone, a rare instance of Carpenter not scoring one of his own films.

Plot

The story takes place in Antarctica. An American research station (Outpost #31) receives a surprise visit from a seemingly insane pair of Norwegians, who are attempting to shoot a runaway Husky dog. The Norwegians are killed, and an investigation of the burned-out Norwegian research station reveals that they had uncovered an alien spacecraft from under hundreds of feet of ice. It is soon revealed that the runaway Husky, now in the Americans' care, is in fact an alien life form that has the ability to duplicate any creature it comes into contact with. The result is an alien predator with the ultimate camouflage; it is a perfect reproduction of its host. Gradually, paranoia sets in among the Americans, as none can be certain who has been infected. Many characters' names are taken directly from the original Campbell story, as is a scene in which Russell's character devises a test to see who may be infected, by exposing a sample of each man's blood to extreme heat. The creature itself is never named but is always referred to as The Thing.

Critical Reception and Themes

Upon its release, the film was lambasted by critics for its special make-up effects, created by Rob Bottin, which were seen as excessively bloody and repulsive. The film fared poorly at the box office, mainly due to the release of E.T. a few months earlier, with its more optimistic view of alien visitation. Yet its reputation improved in the late nineties through home video releases. It is now regarded by the majority of Carpenter's admirers as one of his finest films. A collector's edition DVD was released in 1999. This film is the first installment in Carpenter's 'Apocalypse Trilogy'. The second film 1987's Prince of Darkness concerns a group of college students trying to prevent the release of Satan's son from a church prison. The third film is 1995's In the Mouth of Madness about the strange disappearance of a horror novelist. The plots and characters of the films are not connected. Just as the 1951 film had taken advantage of the national mood to enhance its terror effect, this film did likewise. The early 1980's were a low time in American history; the nation was experiencing poor economy and high unemployment. Internationally, communism was on the move again, following the Soviet Union's invasion of Afghanistan, and American hostages were being held in Tehran, Iran. For many, the United States was appearing more and more isolated and vulnerable to outside attack, much like the crew of the Antarctic outpost in the film. Though strictly unintentional, certain elements of the film (transmission of the alien organism through bodily fluids, the inability to look at a person and determine infection, the use of a blood test to test for infection) paralleled the first reports of a new disease, AIDS. In 2004 another The Thing collector's edition DVD was released. The only differences between the two is an improved anamorphic transfer and removal of the isolated score from the 1999 release.

Sequel or not?

Due to the unclear fates of the characters portrayed by Kurt Russell and Keith David, many fans of the film have hoped for a sequel. An alternative ending was originally shot showing MacReady rescued and a blood test proving he was human but it was done as a precaution and never used even for test screening and not part of John Carpenter's original vision for the film. Some still speculate about the content of a possible sequel and have even made their own fan scripts and fan fiction of their vision of how things might have turned out. John Carpenter once stated the Dark Horse Comics envisioning is what he would base a sequel on but this never happened. He later stated he would have done a sequel but no one ever asked him to do so. On another occasion, he stated the sequel would be costly beyond his own means and that it would be about "teenagers fighting the Thing in the Bahamas". Other fans reject the idea of a sequel, stating that it would ruin the first film and state it should stand alone, as they see it to be a masterpiece. They also state if one was made now, it would be lacking and would not do the first film any justice. Others also feel the video game is enough to do for a sequel. There have been many rumors of a movie sequel spreading throughout the blogosphere. All of them are false, according to Carpenter. One very lengthy script was discovered and was thought to be an actual sequel script, due to the vast content and detail but it turned out to be yet another fan script. A false article stated that Carpenter had written a script but he shot down the rumor. The Sci-Fi Channel stated they would be doing a four hour mini-series sequel to the film in 2003. However, there have been no updates on this and if the idea ever existed, it is likely now abandoned. Also from Carpenter's reply about the false script rumor, he stated he had heard about the mini-series as well and felt like the project should proceed. But because of the lack updates and Sci-Fi's homepage removing it from their selection, it's likely to be left unmade. The current chances of a true movie sequel seem very low.

Other media

A novelisation by Alan Dean Foster was released in 1982. In 2002, a video game was released, taking the form of a sequel to the film. The game — also titled The Thing — makes use of the elements of paranoia and mistrust intrinsic to the film, and was released on multiple platforms: PC, PlayStation 2, and Xbox. The game is horror-based with action elements. The game is the official sequel to the movie. You play as a soldier with the name of Blake (named after the chief antagonist of the early Carpenter movie The Fog). Your mission is to find out what happened at the Norwegian polar base. As you play the game you will enter many locations from the movie (even finding the tape recording that MacReady hid in the original movie) and are able to recruit up to four people who will follow you if you can gain their trust. You must prove that you are not infected or else they will not follow you; additionally your teammates can turn into "the thing" at any time, though this aspect of the game is often criticized as too scripted. There are three classes of people that you can recruit to your team; Soldiers, Engineers, and Medics. The game has many similarities with the Electronic arts game Freedom Fighters. Both games use a trust parameter to recruit new people. However, Freedom Fighters is more straightforward in that your teammates are not likely to commit suicide or turn into "The Thing" at any moment. The game also features a cameo appearance by John Carpenter as the character Dr. Faraday (Carpenter provided the character's likeness and voice), and the voice of William B. Davis as Colonel Whiteley, the game's main antagonist.

External links

-
- [http://www.theofficialjohncarpenter.com/pages/themovies/th/th.html The Thing at theofficialjohncarpenter.com]
- [http://hyperstition.abstractdynamics.org/archives/003784.html The Thing: Between arrival and spontaneous emergence (The Thing and pulp-horror)]
- [http://hyperstition.abstractdynamics.org/archives/003761.html Deleuze/Guattari: Capitalism/ The Thing/ Fictional quantities]
- [http://www.outpost31.com Outpost 31 (Great Thing Fan site)]
- [http://theevilthing.freeservers.com/ TheEvilThing at freeservers.com]
- [http://www.somethingawful.com/articles.php?a=389 Review of The Thing video game at Something Awful]
- [http://www.movie-monsters.co.uk/space.html The Thing from Another World and The Thing reviewed] Thing, The Thing, The Thing, The Thing, The ja:遊星からの物体X

Shinya Tsukamoto

Shinya Tsukamoto (塚本晋也 Tsukamoto Shinya) is a Japanese film director and actor with a considerable cult following both inside and outside that country. Tsukamoto has been compared to David Lynch for his wild, sf-inflected imagination, his sense of the grotesque and absurd, and also for his striking images. Many of his movies also revolve around a common theme: two men in competition for a woman. His early films, A Phantom of Regular Size / Futsu saizu no kaijin and The Adventures of Denchu Kozo / Denchu Kozo no boken made in 1986/87, were short subject science fiction films shot on colour 8mm film. In both films he made aggressive use of jarring editing, stop-motion animation, bizarre sound effects, and grotesque or outlandish subject matter. Denchu Kozo concerned itself with an unhappy young boy with an electricity pylon growing out of his back, who is transported into the future and must do battle with cyborg vampires trying to destroy sunlight. His black & white 16mm feature Tetsuo: The Iron Man, made in 1988 and shot in the same low-budget, underground-production style as his previous films, established him internationally and created his worldwide cult. This extremely graphic but also strikingly-filmed fantasy opens with a man (called only "the man", or sometimes the "Metals Fetishist") tearing open a massive gash in his leg and shoving in a piece of scrap metal. Upon seeing maggots festering in the wound, he screams, runs out into the street, and is hit by a car. The driver of the car (cult actor Taguchi Tomoroh) tries to cover up the mess by dumping the body into a ravine, but the dead man comes back to haunt him -- by forcing his body to gradually metamorphose into a walking pile of scrap metal. In one of the film's most controversial sequences, the man discovers his penis has mutated into a gargantuan power drill, and winds up murdering his girlfriend with it. Tsukamoto's next film, Hiruko the Goblin, was a more conventional horror film, about demons being unleashed from the gates of hell. He then created a sequel to Tetsuo, named Tetsuo 2: Body Hammer, which revisited many of the same ideas as the first movie but with a bigger budget and in 35mm wide-gauge color. In Body Hammer, a salaryman's son is kidnapped by a group of skinhead thugs, who then force the man's nascent rage to make him mutate into a gigantic human weapon. The film diverges from the original in a number of ways, not the least of which being that it tries to supply coherent motives for everyone involved. Many critics cited this as a weakness, since the dreamy incoherence of the first film was one of its strongest assets. Tokyo Fist (1995) again dealt with the idea of rage as a transformative force (similar to David Cronenberg's The Brood). Here, a meek insurance salesman discovers that an old friend of his, now a semi-professional boxer, may be having an affair with his fiancée. The salesman then enters into a rigorous and self-destructive boxing training program to get even. Here, Tsukamoto showed he was not simply interested in wild, outlandish fantasy, but in blunt realism as well. Bullet Ballet (1998) drifted even further from fantasy and science fiction, and more into a sort of film noir territory. A man (Tsukamoto himself) discovers that his longtime girlfriend committed suicide with a gun, and becomes obsessed with getting a gun just like that one. His singleminded behavior causes him to run afoul of a gang of thugs, especially when he shows interest in the young girl who is one of their compatriots. Many critics complained the second half of the film lost the direction and momentum of the first half, but it was clear that Tsukamoto was trying to take more risks with his ideas than before. Gemini (1999) was a lush and disturbing adaptation of an Edogawa Rampo story, in which a country doctor with pretensions of superiority has his life torn apart when another man who appears to be his exact duplicate enters his life. Things are complicated further by the twin taking control of his wife, an amnesiac with a criminal background. Many hailed it as being Tsukamoto's best film ever and it certainly compares favorably to Tetsuo in terms of both story, visuals and execution. A Snake of June (2002) once again found Tsukamoto employing the formula of two men in competition for one woman, as a young lady is blackmailed into perverse sexual behavior against her husband's will -- until her husband finds that he enjoys the blackmail more than the blackmailer does. Tsukamoto has appeared in many other director's films as well, such as Takashi Miike's Ichi the Killer and Dead or Alive 2.

Trivia

- Shinya Tsukamoto who plays the muscle bound mastermind in Ichi the Killer (2001) supplied the semen in the opening scene, where the title is revealed. Miike gave a bucket to Tsukamoto to fill but was unable to provide enough material for the shot. He passed the bucket to three other crew members to add the remaining amount. Tsukamoto Shinya Tsukamoto Shinya ja:塚本晋也

Clive Barker

Clive Barker (born October 5, 1952, Liverpool, England) is a British author, director and visual artist. He studied English and Philosophy at Liverpool University. Barker is one of the leading authors of contemporary horror/fantasy, starting out with pure horror writing early in his career, mostly in the form of short stories (collected in Books of Blood 1 - 6), and the Faustian novel The Damnation Game. Later he moved towards epic modern-day fantasy with some horror elements. Barker's distinctive style is characterized by the notion of hidden fantastical worlds existing side by side with our own (an idea he shares with contemporary Neil Gaiman), the role of sexuality in the supernatural and the construction of coherent, complex and detailed mythologies. When the Books of Blood were first published in the United States in cheap paperback editions, the originality, intensity and overall quality of the stories led popular author Stephen King to say of Barker: "I have seen the future of horror and its name is Clive Barker." (This is a paraphrase of a famous quote said of Bruce Springsteen at the beginning of his career.) A critical analysis of Barker's work appears in S. T. Joshi's The Modern Weird Tale (2001).

Movies

Barker has a keen interest in movie production, although his movies have received varying acclaim. The most successful was 1987's Hellraiser, based on his novella "The Hellbound Heart". His early movies, the shorts The Forbidden and Salome are experimental art movies with surrealist elements, now rereleased together, to moderate critical acclaim. After his film Nightbreed, which was widely considered to be a flop, Barker returned to write and direct Lord of Illusions. He is currently working on a series of movie adaptations of his The Abarat Quartet books, under Disney's management; a script based from a real Miami, Florida [http://www.miaminewtimes.com/issues/1997-06-05/feature.html newspaper article], about the creepily-universal supernatural myths homeless children tell one another; and a film based on his Tortured Souls line of toys from McFarlane Toys. A short story titled The Forbidden from Barker's In the Flesh provided the basis for the film Candyman and its two sequels. He has also produced the film Gods and Monsters which received major critical acclaim.

Visual art

Barker is also a prolific and talented visual artist, working in a variety of media, often illustrating his own books. His paintings can be seen on the covers of the collections of his plays, Incarnations (1995) and Forms of Heaven (1996), as well as on the second printing of the original UK publications of his Books of Blood series. His artwork has been exhibited at the Bess Cutler Gallery in New York and La Luz De Jesus in Los Angeles. Many of his sketches and paintings can be found in the collection Clive Barker, Illustrator, published in 1990 by Arcane/Eclipse Books. He also worked on the creative side of a horror game, Clive Barker's Undying (developed by DreamWorks Interactive and released in 2001) to moderate success and acclaim). He provided the artwork for his young adult novel The Thief Of Always

Comic books

A longtime comics fan, Barker achieved his dream of publishing his own superhero books when Marvel Comics launched the Razorline imprint in 1993. Based on detailed premises, titles and lead characters he created specifically for this, the four interrelated titles — set outside the Marvel universe — were Ectokid (written first by James Robinson, then by future Matrix co-creator Larry Wachowski, with art by Steve Skroce), Hokum & Hex (written by Frank Lovece, art by Anthony Williams), Hyperkind (written by Fred Burke, art by Paris Cullins) and Saint Sinner (written by Elaine Lee, art by Max Douglas). A 2002 Barker telefilm titled Saint Sinner bore no relation to the comic. Barker horror adaptations and spin-offs in comics include the Marvel/Epic series Hellraiser, Nightbreed, Pinhead, The Harrowers, Book of the Damned and Jihad; Eclipse Books' series and graphic novels Tapping The Vein, Dread, Son of Celluloid, Revelations The Life of Death, Rawhead Rex and The Yattering and Jack; and Dark Horse Comics' Primal, among others. In 2005, IDW published a three-issue adaptation of Barker's children's fantasy novel The Thief of Always, written and painted by Kris Oprisko and Gabriel Hernandez.

Relationships

Barker has been openly gay since the early 1990s, first mentioning his dating life to US audiences in the pages of The Advocate magazine. He currently lives in Los Angeles, CA, with his partner, photographer David Armstrong, and Armstrong's daughter from a previous relationship, Nicole. The household also includes a great many pets (dogs, fish, even a bird named Malingo). Barker's play Frankenstein in Love will receive a rare staging in London at the end of September; see the Barons Court or www.ellupofilms.com for details.

Bibliography

Novels

- (1985) The Damnation Game
- (1986) The Hellbound Heart
- (1987) Weaveworld
- (1988) Cabal
- (1989) The Great and Secret Show (first "Book of the Art")
- (1991) Imajica
- (1992) The Yattering and Jack (also published in Books of Blood Volume 1)
- (1992) The Thief of Always
- (1994) Everville (second "Book of the Art")
- (1996) Sacrament
- (1998) Galilee
- (2001) Coldheart Canyon: A Hollywood Ghost Story
- (2001) Tortured Souls (novelette)
- (2002) Abarat (first book of the Abarat Quartet)
- (2004) Abarat: Days of Magic, Nights of War (second book of the Abarat Quartet)
- (2005) The Scarlet Gospels (As of yet unpublished, has become a long novel featuring the characters and mythology that first appeared in The Hellbound Heart centering around the character of Pinhead and also featuring Clive's character, Harry D'Amour, from The Last Illusion, The Great and Secret Show, Everville and the film Lord of Illusions)
Collections

- (1984-1985) Books of Blood (vols. 1 through 6 were released between 1984 and 1985. vols. 4 through 6 were published in the U.S. as Cabal, In the Flesh, and The Inhuman Condition.)
- (1985) Cabal (titular novella was also published as a Nightbreed mass market paperback)
- (1987) In the Flesh
- (1987) The Inhuman Condition
- (1990) Clive Barker, Illustrator
- (1992) Illustrator II: The Art of Clive Barker
- (1995) Incarnations: Three Plays
- (1996) Forms of Heaven: Three Plays
Biographies

- (2002) Clive Barker: The Dark Fantastic by Douglas E. Winter
See also

- Cenobite
- Lemarchand's box
References

- [http://www.clivebarker.com/ Clive Barker.com] - Lost Souls: Clive Barker's Official Website
- [http://www.clivebarker.dial.pipex.com/ Revelations: Clive Barker Information]
- [http://www.mobygames.com/game/sheet/p,3/gameId,3457/ Clive Barker's Undying on Mobygames.com]
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- [http://wiredforbooks.org/clivebarker/ 1987 and 1986 audio interviews of Clive Barker by Don Swaim of CBS Radio, RealAudio]
External links

- [http://www.godsandmonsters.net/ Gods and Monsters official website] Barker, Clive Barker, Clive Barker, Clive Barker, Clive Barker, Clive Barker, Clive Barker, Clive Barker, Clive Barker, Clive Barker, Clive ja:クライヴ・バーカー

Novel

A novel (from French nouvelle, "new") is an extended fictional narrative in prose. Down into the 18th century, the word referred specifically to short fictions of love and intrigue as opposed to romances—epic-length works about love and adventures. Having become one of the major literary genres over the past 200 years the novel is today the object of discussions demanding artistic merits, a specific literary style and a deeper meaning than a true story of the same content could claim to have. __TOC__

Novel/Romance: Unstable Words

One meaning of the English word novel has remained stable: novel can still signify what is new due to its "novelty". When it comes to fiction, though, the meaning of the term has changed over time:
- The period 1200-1750 saw a rise of the novel (originally a short piece of fiction) rivalling the romance (the epic-length performance): this development, which one could describe as the first rise of the novel, occurred across Europe, though only the Spanish and the English went one step further and allowed the word novel (or, in Spanish, novela) to become their regular term for fictional narratives.
- The period 1700-1800 saw the rise of a "new romance" in reaction against the potentially scandalous production of novels. The movement encountered a complex situation in the English market, where the term "new romance" could hardly be ventured, after the novel had done so much to transform taste. The new genre adopted the name novel: this new novel was a work of new epic proportions, with the effect that the English (and Spanish) finally needed a new word for the original short "novel": The term novella was finally created to fill the gap in English. "Short story" brought a further refinement. The meaning of the term romance changed within the same complex process, becoming the word for a love story whether in life or fiction. Other meanings include the musicologist's genre "Romance" of a short and amiable piece, or Romance languages for the languages derived from Latin (French, Spanish, Italian, Romanian, and so forth).

History

Traditions of Prose Fiction: The Ancient World

As Pierre Daniel Huet noted in 1670, the tradition of epic works went back as far as Virgil and Homer. The regular format was verse, suiting the purpose of tradition in a culture of oral performances. Today, we see this tradition as going back even further, to the epic of Gilgamesh. It is more difficult to speak of the influence of the shorter performances of regular storytelling on the medieval traditions which led to the development of the novel/novella. There was a third tradition of prose fictions, both in a satirical mode (with Petronius's Satyricon and the incredible stories of Lucian of Samosata), and a heroic strain (with the romances of Heliodorus and Longus). The ancient Greek romance was revived by Byzantine novelists of the 12th century. All of these traditions were then rediscovered in the 17th and 18th centuries, ultimately influencing the modern book market.

The Romance, 1100-1500

The word romance seems to have become the label of romantic fictions because of the "Romance" language in which early (11th and 12th century) works of this genre were composed. The most fashionable genres developed in southern France in the late 12th century and spread east- and northwards with translations and individual national performances. Subject matter such as Arthurian knighthood had already at that time traveled in the opposite direction, reaching southern France from Britain and French Britanny. As a consequence, it is particularly difficult to determine how much the early "romance" owed to ancient Greek models and how much to such northern folkloric verse epics as Beowulf and the Nibelungenlied. The standard plot of the early romance was a series of adventures. Following a plot framework as old as Heliodorus, and so durable as to be still alive in Hollywood movies, a hero would undergo a first set of adventures before he met his lady. A separation would follow, with a second set of adventures leading to a final reunion. Variations kept the genre alive. Unexpected and peculiar adventures surprised the audience with romances like Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. Classics of the romance developed such as the Roman de la Rose, written first in French, and famous today in English thanks to the translation by Geoffrey Chaucer. These original romances were verse works, adopting a "high language" thought suitable to heroic deeds, and to inspire the emulation of virtues; prose was considered "low", more suitable for satire). Verse allowed the culture of oral traditions to live on, yet it became the language of authors who carefully composed their texts—texts to be spread in writing, thus to preserve the careful artistic composition. The subjects were aristocratic. The textual tradition of ornamented and illustrated handwritten books afforded patronage by the aristocracy or by the monied urban class developing in the 13th and 14th centuries, for whom knight errantry most clearly was a world of fiction and fantasy. The 14th and 15th centuries saw the emergence of first prose romances, a genre rose along with a new book market. This market had developed even before the first printing facilities were introduced: prose authors could speak a new language, a language avoiding the repetition inherent in rhymes. Prose could risk a new rhythm and longer thoughts. Yet it needed the written book to preserve the coincidental formulations the author had chosen. Whilst the printing press was still to come, a commercial book production trade had developed. Legends, lives of saints and mystical visions in prose were the main object of the new market of prose productions. The urban elite, female readers in upper class households and monasteries read religious prose. Prose romances appeared as a new and expensive fashion on this market. They could only truly flourish with the invention of the printing press and with paper becoming a cheaper medium. Both of these achievements arrived in the late 15th century, when the old romance was already facing fierce competition from a number of shorter genres; most salient among these genres was the novel, a form that arose in the course of the 14th century.

The Emergence of the Novel, 1200-1500

Legend It is difficult to give a full catalog of the genres that finally culminated—with the works of Boccaccio, Geoffrey Chaucer, Niccolò Machiavelli and Miguel de Cervantes—in the "novel" as known today . The early novel was basically any story told for its spectacular or revealing incidents. The original environment—living on with the typical frame settings—was the entertaining conversation. Stories of grave incidents could just as well augment sermons. Collections of examples facilitated the work of preachers in need of such illustrations. A fable could illustrate a moral conclusion; a short historical reflection could do the same. A competition of genres developed. Tastes and social status were—if one believes the medieval collections—decisive. The working classes loved their own brand of drastic stories: stories of clever cheating, wit and ridicule levelled against hated social groups (or competitors among the story tellers). Much of the original genre is still alive with the short joke told in everyday life to make a certain humorous point in a conversation. Artistic performances included the story within a story: situations in which a series of stories was allegedly told. They rejoiced in a broad pattern of tastes and genres. The Canterbury Tales constitute a classic example, with their noble storytellers fond of "romantic" stories and their lower narrators preferring stories of everyday life. The genre did not have its own generic term. "Novel" would simply denote the novelty of the accident narrated. The inclusion of frame stories, however, brought an awareness of the fact that genres were developing in this field. The main advantage of the background story was the justification it put into the hands of the actual authors such as Chaucer and Boccaccio. Romances afforded lofty language and relied on an accepted notion of what deserved to be read as high style. Yet what if the taste in moral teachings and poetry changed? Romances quickly outdated. Stories of cheats and pranks, illicit love affairs, and clever intrigues in which certain respectable professions or the citizens of another town were made fun of were, on the other hand, neither morally nor poetically justifiable. They carried their justification outside. The story teller would offer a few words why he thought this story was worth being told. Again, Chaucer's Canterbury Tales afford the best examples: the real author could tell stories without any other justification than that this story gave a good portrait of the person who told it and of his or her taste—and that justification would remain stable throughout history. If lofty performances grew tedious—as they did in the 14th and 15th centuries with the old plots never leading to newer ones—the collections of tales or novels made it easy to criticise the lofty performances and to reduce their status: one of the group of narrators (created by the actual author) could start with the romantic story only to be interrupted by the other narrators listening within the story. They might silence him or order him to speak a language they liked, or they might ask him to speed up and to make his point. The result was a rise of the short genre. The steps of this development can be noted with the short story gaining appreciation and the value to rival romances in new versified collections at the end of the 14th century.

The First Rise of the Novel, 1500-1750

The Canterbury Tales The invention of printing subjected both novels and romances to a first wave of trivialisation and commercialisation. Printed books were expensive, yet something people would buy, just as people still buy expensive things they can barely afford. Alphabetisation, or the rise of literacy, was a slow process when it came to writing skills, but was faster as far as reading skills were concerned. The Protestant Reformation afforded readers of religious pamphlets, newspapers and broadsheets. The urban population learned to read, but did not aspire to participation in the world of letters. The market of chapbooks developing with the printing press comprised both romances and little histories, tales and fables. Woodcuts were the regular ornament and they were offered without much care. A romance in which the heroic knight had to fight more than ten duels within a few pages could get the same illustration of such a fight again and again if the printers stock of standard illustrations was small. As their stocks grew, printers repeated the same illustrations in other books with similar plots, mixing these illustrations without respect to style. You can open 18th century chapbooks and find illustrations from the early years of printing next to more modern ones. Romances were reduced to cheap and abrupt plots resembling modern comic books. Neither were the first collections of novels necessarily prestigious projects. They appeared with an enormous variety from folk tales over jests to stories told by Boccaccio and Chaucer, now venerable authors. comic book comic book comic book A more prestigious market of romances developed in the 16th century, with multi-volume works aiming at an audience which would subscribe to this production. The criticism levelled against romances by Chaucer's pilgrims grew in response both to the trivialisations and to the extended multi-volume "romances". Romances like the Amadis de Gaula led their readers into dream worlds of knighthood and fed them with ideals of a past no one could revitalise, or so the critics complained. Italian authors like Machiavelli were among those who brought the novel into a new format: while it remained a story of intrigue, ending in a surprising point, the observations were now much finer: how did the protagonists manage their intrigue? How did they keep their secrets, what did they do when others threatened to discover them? The whole question of novels and romances became critical when Cervantes added his Novelas Exemplares (1613) to the two volumes of his Don Quixote (1605/15). The famous satirical romance was levelled against the Amadis which had made Don Quixote lose his mind. Advocates of the lofty romance would, however, claim that the satirical counterpart of the old heroic romance could hardly teach anything: Don Quixote neither offered a hero to be emulated nor did it satisfy with beautiful speeches; all it could do was to make fun of lofty ideals. The Novelas Exemplares offered an alternative between the heroic and the satiric mode, yet critics were even less sure about what to make of this production. Cervantes told stories of adultery, jealousy and crime. If these stories were to give examples, they gave examples of immoral actions. The advocates of the "novel" responded that their stories taught both with good and with bad examples. The reader could still feel compassion and sympathy with the victims of crimes and intrigues, if evil examples were to be told. The alternative to dubious novels and satirical romances were better, lofty romances: a production of romances modeled after Heliodorus arrived as a possible answer with excursions into the bucolic world. Honoré d'Urfés L'Astrée (1607-27) became the most famous work of this type. The criticism that these romances had nothing to do with real life was answered through the device of the roman à clef (literally "novel with a key", one that, properly understood, alludes to characters in the real world). John Barclay's Argenis (1625-26) appeared as a political roman à clef. The romances of Madeleine de Scudéry gained greater influence with plots situated in the ancient world and content taken from life. The famous author told stories of her friends in the literary circles of Paris and developed their fates from volume to volume of her serialised production. Readers of taste bought her books, as they offered the finest observation of human motives, characters taken from life, excellent morals regarding how one should and should not behave if one wanted to succeed in public life and in the intimate circles she portrayed. The novel went its own way: Paul Scarron (himself a hero in the romances of Madeleine de Scudéry) published the first volume of his Roman Comique in 1651 (successive volumes appeared in 1657 and, by another hand, in 1663) with a plea for the development Cervantes had induced in Spain. France should (as he wrote in the famous 21st chapter of his Roman Comique [http://www.pierre-marteau.com/library/e-1700-0002.html#c21]) imitate the Spanish with little stories like those they called "novels". Scarron himself added numerous of such stories to his own work. Twenty years later Madame de La Fayette made the next decisive steps with her two novels. The first, her Zayde published in 1670 together with Pierre Daniel Huet's famous Treatise on the Origin of Romances, was a "Spanish History". Her second and more important novel appeared in 1678: La Princesse de Clèves proved that France could actually produce novels of a particularly French taste. The Spanish enjoyed stories of proud Spaniards who fought duels to avenge their reputations. The French had a more refined taste with minute observation of human motives and behaviour. The story was firmly a "novel" and not a "romance": a story of unparalleled female virtue, with a heroine who had had the chance to risk an illicit amour and not only withstood the temptation but made herself more unhappy by confessing her feelings to her husband. The gloom her story created was entirely new and sensational. The regular novel took another turn. The late 17th century saw the emergence of a European market for scandal, with French books appearing now mostly in the Netherlands (where censorship was liberal) to be re-imported clandestinely back into France. The same production reached the neighbouring markets of Germany and Britain, where it was welcomed both for its French style and its predominantly anti-French politics. The novel flourished on this market as the best genre to purport scandalous news. The authors claimed the stories they had to tell were true, told not for the sake of scandal but only for the moral lessons they gave. To prove this, they fictionalized the names of their characters and told these stories as if they were novels. (The audience played its own game in identifying who was who). Journals of little stories appeared—the Mercure Gallant became the most important. Collections of letters added to the market; these included more of these little stories and led to the development of the epistolary novel in the late 17th century. In the late 1670s the novel reached the English market. Aphra Behn and William Congreve were among the first modern English authors to adopt the term.

State of Affairs: The Market around 1700

Early 18th century novels and romances were still not considered part the world of learning, hence, not of part of literature; they were market goods. If you opened the term catalogues it was mostly situated in the—predominantly political—field of "History and Politicks" with some romances like Cervantes Don Quixote translated into verse becoming poetical. The integration of prose fiction into the market of histories appeared under the following scheme:

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		3.1 Heroical Romances: Fénelon's Telemach (1699)
1 Sold as romantic inventions, read as true histories of public affairs: Manley's New Atalantis (1709)	2 Sold as romantic inventions, read as true histories of private affairs: Menantes' Satyrischer Roman (1706)	3.2 Classics of the novel from the Arabian Nights to M. de La Fayette's Princesse de Cleves (1678)	4 Sold as true private history, risking to be read as romantic invention: Defoe's Robinson Crusoe (1719)	5 Sold as true public history, risking to be read as romantic invention: La Guerre d'Espagne (1707)
		3.3 Satirical Romances: Cervantes' Don Quixote (1605)	From Olaf Simons, Marteaus Europa (Amsterdam, 2001), p.194.

The centre of the market was held by fictions which claimed to be fictions and which were read as such. They comprised a high production of romances and, at the bottom end, an opposing production of satirical romances. In the centre, the novel had grown, with stories that were neither heroic nor predominantly satirical, yet mostly realistic, short and stimulating with their examples of human actions to be discussed. The central production had two wings: On the left hand, one had books which claimed to be romances, but which threatened to be anything but fictitious. Delarivier Manley wrote the most famous of them, her New Atalantis, full of stories the author claimed to have invented. The censors were helpless: Manley had hawked stories discrediting the ruling Whigs, yet should they ask the Whigs to prove that all these stories actually happened on British soil rather than on the fairy tale island Atalantis? This was what they had to do if they wanted to sue the author. Delarivier Manley escaped the interrogations unscathed and continued her libellous work with three more volumes of the same ilk. Private stories appeared on the same market, creating a different genre of personal love and public battles over lost reputations. On the other hand one had a market of titles which claimed to be strictly non-fictional—Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe became the most important of them. The genre-identification: "Sold as true private history, risking to be read as romantic invention" opened the preface:

IF ever the Story of any Man's Adventures in the World were worth making Publick, and were acceptable when Publish'd, the Editor of this Account thinks this will be so.
     The Wonders of this Man's Life exceed all that (he thinks) is to be found extant; the Life of one Man being scarce capable of a greater Variety.
     The Story is told with Modesty, with Seriousness, and with a religious Application of Events to the Uses to which wise Men always apply them (viz.) to the Instruction of others by this Example, and to justify and honor the Wisdom of Providence in all the Variety of Circumstances, let them happen how they will.
     The Editor believes the thing to be a just History of Fact; neither is there any Appearance of Fiction in it: And however thinks, because all such things are dispatch'd, that the Improvement of it, as well as the Diversion, as to the Instruction of the Reader, will be the same; and as such he thinks, without farther Compliment to the World, he does them a great Service in the Publication.

A production of histories of similar verisimilitude dove into the overtly political. Gatien de Courtilz de Sandras (1644-1712) became the most important author in this field with his first version of d'Artagnan's story, told again more than a century later by Alexandre Dumas the elder. Witty, and a distant precursor of Ian Fleming's fictional James Bond, is another book allegedly by his hand: La Guerre d'Espagne (1707) the story of a disillusioned French spy, who gave insight into French politics—and into his own love affairs, with little intrigues he managed wherever he had to do his jobs. Fact and fiction were mixed in all these titles, to the point that one could no longer tell where the author had invented and where he had simply betrayed secrets.

The Second Rise of the Novel or the New Romance, 1700-1800

The early 18th century had—with the novel diving into private and public scandal—reached a state of affairs where a new reform seemed desirable. The old Amadis could be said to have driven its readers into dream worlds, and the new novels, devoid of lofty speeches and incredible acts of heroism, had done much to refine taste. Yet they had created entirely new risks, with stories of love in which children cheated their parents, and with which private and public gossip were published on the open market. Jane Barker was among the 18th century voices who demanded a return to the old antiquated romance. Her "New Romance" Exilius (1715) opened with the sketch of a new tradition: the romance had, so Jane Barker claimed, developed from Geoffrey Chaucer to François Fénelon; the latter was the author who had just become famous with his epochal romance Telemachus (1699/1700). Fénelon's English publishers had carefully avoided the term "romance" and rather published a "new epic in prose"—so the prefaces. Jane Barker insisted, however, on publishing her Exilius as "New Romance [...] after the manner of Telemachus", and failed on the market. In 1719 her publisher, Edmund Curll, finally removed the old title pages and offered her works as a collection of novels. The big market success of the next decade—Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe—appeared that very year and W. Taylor, the publisher, avoided all these traps with a title page claiming neither the realm of novels nor that of romances, but that of histories, yet with a page design tasting all too much of the "new romance" with which Fénelon had just become famous. histories Defoe's Robinson Crusoe was everything but a novel, as the term was understood at the time. It was neither short, nor did it focus on an intrigue, nor was it told for the sake of a clear cut point. Nor was Crusoe an anti-hero of a satirical romance, though he spoke the first person singular and had stumbled into all kinds of miseries. He did not really invite laughter (though readers of taste would read, of course, all his proclamations about being a real man as made in good humour). The feigned author was serious: Against his will his life had brought him into this series of most romantic adventures. He had fallen into the hands of pirates and survived years on an uninhabited island. He had survived all this—a mere sailor from York—with exemplary heroism. If readers read his work as a romance, full of sheer invention, he could not blame them. He and his publisher knew that all he had to tell was strictly unbelievable, and yet they would claim it was true (and if not, still readable as good allegory)—the complex game which puts this work into the fourth column of the pattern above.

The Market of Classics and the Reform of the Novel, 1700-1800

allegory The publication of Robinson Crusoe did not lead into the mid-18th century market reform. Crusoe's books were published as a dubious histories; they played the game of the scandalous early 18th century market, with the novel fully integrated into the realm of histories. They even appeared reprinted by one of the London newspapers as a possibly true relation of facts. Philosophers like Jean-Jacques Rousseau turned Robinson Crusoe into a classic decades later, and it took another century before one could see Defoe's book as the first English "novel"—published, as Ian Watt saw it in 1957, as an answer to the market of French romances. The reform of the early 18th century market of novels came with the production of classics: 1720 saw the decisive edition of classics of the European novel published in London with titles from Machiavelli to Marie de LaFayette. Aphra Behn's novels had over the last decades appeared in collections of her works. The author of the 1680s had become a classic by now. Fénelon had become a classic years ago, as had Heliodorus. The works of Petronius and Longos appeared, equipped with prefaces which put them into the tradition of prose fiction Huet had defined. Prose fiction itself had, according to the critics, a history of ups and downs: having run into a crisis with the Amadis, it found its remedy with the novel. It now needed continuous care. Yet, all in all, it could claim to be the most elegant part of the belles lettres, the new market segment within the bigger market of literature, embracing the new classics. Huet's Traitté de l'origine des romans first published in 1670 and now circulating in a number of translations and editions won a central position among those writings which had dealt with prose fiction. The Treatise had created the first corpus of texts to be discussed and it had been the first title that demonstrated how one could "interpret" worldly fictions—just as a theologian would interpret parts of the gospel in a theological debate. The interpretation needed its aims, of course—and Huet had offered a number of questions one could ask: What did the fictional work of a foreign culture or distant period tell us about those who constructed the fiction? What were the cultural needs such stories answered? Are there fundamental anthropological premises which make us create fictional worlds? Did these fictions entertain, divert and instruct? Did they—as one could assume when reading ancient and medieval myths—just provide a substitute for better, more scientific knowledge or did they add to the luxuries of life a particular culture enjoyed? The ancient Mediterranean erotic stories could afford such an interpretation. The interpretation and analysis of classics placed readers of fictions in an entirely new and improved position: it made a vast difference whether you read a romance and got lost in a dream world or whether you read the same romance with a preface telling you more about the Greeks, Romans or Arabs who produced titles like the Aethopica or The Book of One Thousand and One Nights (first published in Europe from 1704 to 1717 in French and translated immediately from this edition into English and German).

To be Discussed: The Novel turning into Literature, 1740-1800

The Book of One Thousand and One Nights The early 18th century market for classics of prose fiction inspired living authors. Aphra Behn turned from an anonymous hack into a celebrated author after her death. Fénelon achieved the same fame during his life time. Delarivier Manley, Jane Barker and Eliza Haywood followed their famous French models who had dared to claim fame with their real names: the Madame d'Aulnoy and Anne Marguerite Petit DuNoyer. Most previous novels had been pseudonymous; now they became the productions of famous authors. The discourse necessary to appreciate such a move towards responsibility was yet underdeveloped. Journals discussing literature focussed on "learning", literature in the strict sense of the word. So far, most discussion of novels and romances had taken place within the field itself. Literary criticism, a critical—external—discourse about poetry and fiction arose in the second half of the 18th century. It opened an interaction between separate participants in which novelists would write in order to be criticised and in which the public would observe the interaction between critics and authors. The new criticism of the late 18th century offered a reform by establishing a market of works worthy to be discussed (whilst the rest of the market would thus continue but lose most of its public appeal). The result was a market division into a low field of popular fictions and a critical literary production. The latter privileged works which rivalled ancient verse epics to be discussed as art, which played with the traditions of prose fiction (they opened an internal discourse about the history of literature), and which were of a clearly defined fictional status—they alone could be discussed as works created by an artist who wanted this and no other story to be discussed by the audience. The old design of title pages changed: New novels no longer pretended to sell fictions whilst threatening to betray real secrets. Nor did they appear as false "true histories". The new title pages pronounced their works to be fictions, and indicated how the public might discuss them. Samuel Richardson’s Pamela or Virtue Rewarded (1740) was one of the titles which brought the old novel-title with its "[...] or [...]" formula offering an example into the new format: "Pamela or Virtue Rewarded – Now first published in order to cultivate the Principles of Virtue and Religion in the Minds of the Youth of Both Sexes, A Narrative which has the Foundation in Truth and Nature; and at the same time that it agreeably entertains…" So the title page read, and made it clear that the work was crafted by an artist aiming at a certain effect—yet to be discussed by the critical audience. A decade later novels, needed no other status than that of being novels, fiction. Present-day editions of novels simply state "Fiction" on the cover. It had become prestigious to be sold under the label, asking for discussion and thought. Scandal as the DuNoyer or Delarivier Manley had published it vanished from the market of prose fiction—whether high or low. It could not attract serious critics and it was lost if it remained undiscussed. It ultimately needed its own brand of scandalous journalism—the journalism which developed with the yellow press. The low market of prose fiction went on to focus on immediate satisfaction of an audience enjoying its stay in the fictional world. The high market grew complex, with works playing new games. On the high market, one could eventually see two traditions developing: one of works playing with the art of fiction—Laurence Sterne’s Tristram Shandy is among them—the other closer to the prevailing discussions and moods of its audience. The great conflict of the 19th century was yet to come, as to whether artists should write to satisfy the public or whether to produce art for art's sake.

Sentimentalism, Psychology, and a New Individual, 1750-1850

The mid- and late 18th century novel of sentimentalism produced an entirely new individual, one with a different attitude towards privacy and the public. Had the early 18th century heroine been bold and ready to protect her reputation if necessary in a press war her mid-18th century descendant was far too modest and shy to do the same. Early 18th century heroines had their secrets, they loved effective intrigues, they tried whatever they felt necessary to get what they wanted. Mid-18th century heroines developed a feeling of modesty. They suffered if they had to keep secrets and felt an urge to confess. They searched for friends and intimacy, for situations in which they could freely open their hearts and speak of their deepest wishes. The 18th century audience saw these new heroes and heroines with amazement. When it came to their most secret wishes they dared to confide in their parents and friends—a trust which would have made them easy victims in the early 18th century world of fiction, libel, intrigue and scandal. Now, however, these weak heroines met an environment of compassion. Instead of making their affairs a public entertainment, the new heroes and heroines developed an intimacy into which the novel alone could take a careful look. Special genres flourished with these protagonists who would not wash their dirty linen in the public: Their letters or diaries were found and published only after their death. A wave of sentimentalism was the first result, leading to heroes like Henry Mackenzie's Man of Feeling (1771). A second wave followed with more radical heroes who could no longer dream of an environment understanding them. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's The Sorrows of Young Werther (1774) was at the forefront of the new movement, and yielded a wave of compassion and understanding with readers ready to follow Werther into his suicide. Critics embraced the new heroes as the best sign of a new literature which aimed at discussions. The understanding these heroes craved for afforded a secondary discussion—a discussion of the nature of the human psyche so much better observed by these new novels. The novel had, with these developments, turned advocacy of individual and societal moral reform into a genre. With the romantic movement beginning in the 1770s, the development went one step further: the novel became the medium of an avant garde, the genre where emotions found their test cases. The Bildungsroman developed in Germany—a novel focussing on the development of the individual, his or her education and its way into individuality and society. New sciences—from sociology to psychology—developed with the new individual and influenced the discussions surrounding the novel in the 19th century.

The 19th century and the Novel as the object of great Discussions

At the beginning of the 17th century the novel had been a genre of realism fighting the romance with its wild fantasies. The novel had turned to scandal, then it had been reformed over the last decades of the 18th century. Fiction eventually became the most honourable field of literature. A wave of novels of fantasy culminated this development at the turn of the 18th into the 19th century. Sensibility was heightened in these novels. Women, overwrought and prone to imagining worlds beyond their appointed one, became the heroines of the new world of "romances" and "Gothic novels" creating stories in distant times and places. Renaissance Italy was a favourite of the gothic novel. The classic Gothic novel is Ann Radcliffe’s The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794). As in other Gothic novels, the notion of the sublime is central. Eighteenth-century aesthetic theory held that the sublime and the beautiful were juxtaposed. The sublime was awful (awe-inspiring) and terrifying while the beautiful was calm and reassuring. The characters and landscapes of the Gothic rest almost entirely within the sublime, with the heroine the great exception. The "beautiful" heroine's susceptibility to supernatural elements, integral to these novels, both celebrates and problematizes what came to be seen as hyper-sensibility. At the beginning of the 19th century, the overwrought emotions of sensibility, as expressed through the Gothic sublime, had run their course. Jane Austen wrote a Gothic novel parody titled Northanger Abbey (1803), reflecting the death of the Gothic novel. Moreover, while sensibility did not disappear, it was less valued. Austen introduced a different style of writing—the comedy of manners. Her novels often are not only funny, but also scathingly critical of the restrictive, rural culture of the early 19th century. Her best known novel, Pride and Prejudice (1811), is her happiest, and has been a blueprint for much subsequent romantic fiction; her novels are still retain a wide following, despite the distance between their heroines' dilemmas and those of a 21st-century reader. The market for novels in the 19th century separated into a new "high" and "low" production. The new high production can best be viewed in terms of national traditions. The low production is rather organised by genres in a pattern deriving from the spectrum of 17th- and 18th-century genres: 1. Literature (with a capital L) promoted by critical discourse.

Spanish Literature

French Literature

German Literature

English Literature

…by language and nation

2. Popular Fiction not promoted by criticism

1
The modern roman à clef (a recent example is Primary Colors)

2
Sex, including soft "romantic" pornography for the female audience

3
Historical settings (the tradition of heroic romances), crime (the tradition of the 17th century novel)

4
Adventure, Science fiction

5
Espionage, Conspiracy

The position of authors attained its modern form with the establishment of this pattern. The modern author can aim at broad market or write with an eye to serious critical discussion. The borders between the realms have developed differently in different nations. While this modern market divide came relatively late to the English-speaking world, Germany and France had an earlier and much stronger interest in creating national literatures—France in the wake of the French Revolution, Germany during its mid-19th-century unification. Both of these nations experienced a division between high literature—discussed in schools and newspapers, and celebrated in public life—and a low production—not worthy to be mentioned in such circles— while the vast commercial market of the English-speaking world still resisted this artificial divide. Here and there new author identities developed as the novel proved to be a perfect medium for a communication both intimate (novels are read by privately whereas plays are always a public event) and public (novels are published and thus become a matter touching the public if not the nation and its vital interests), a medium of a personal point of view which can get the world into its view. New modes of interaction between authors and the public reflected these developments: authors reading in the public, authors receiving prestigious prizes, authors giving interviews in the media and acting as their nations' conscience. This concept of the novelist as public figure arose in the course of the 19th century.

The 20th Century: From Modernism to Postmodernism

Modernist literature and Postmodern literature

Individual Novels Discussed

From Western antiquity—Greece and Rome—these are the earliest, extant novels:
- Xenophon, The Education of Cyrus (Greek, 4th century BC). A largely fictional account of the education of King Cyrus the Great of Persia. This is considered a precursor to the novel.
- Petronius, Satyricon (Latin, 1st century).
- Apuleius, The Golden Ass (Latin, 2nd century).
- Chariton, The Loves of Chaereas and Callirhoe (Greek, 1st century–2nd century).
- Achilles Tatius, Leucippe and Clitophon (Greek, 2nd century).
- Longus, Daphnis and Chloe (Greek, 2nd century).
- Xenophon of Ephesus, Ephesian Tale (Greek, 2nd century–3rd century).
- Heliodorus, Ethiopian Tale (Greek, 3rd century–4th century).
- Anon, Acts of Xanthippe, Polyxena, and Rebecca (Greek, 3rd century–4th century).
- Anon, Joseph and Aseneth (Greek, 1st century–5th century).
- Anon, The Story of Apollonius, King of Tyre (Latin adaptation of lost Greek original, 5th century–6th century).

Asian works

Early important Asian novels include:
- Dandin, The Adventures of the Ten Princes (Sanskrit, 6th century–7th century).
- Banabhatta, Kadambari (Sanskrit, 7th century).
- Anon, The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter (Japanese, 10th century).
- Murasaki Shikibu, The Tale of Genji (Japanese, 11th century). Arguably the first novel, in the sense of a continued fictional narrative written by one author.
- Luo Guanzhong, Romance of the Three Kingdoms (Chinese, 14th century).
- Shi Nai'an and Luo Guanzhong, Water Margin (Chinese, 15th century).
- Wu Cheng'en, Journey to the West (Chinese, 16th century).
- Cao Xueqin, Dream of the Red Chamber (Chinese, 18th Century).

The 13th century

- Ramon Llull, Blanquerna (1283)

The 14th century

- Giovanni Boccaccio, Decameron (1353)
- Geoffrey Chaucer, Canterbury Tales (1386-1400)

The 15th century

- Antoine de la Sale, Petit Jehan de Saintré (1456)
- Thomas Malory, Le Morte d'Arthur, (English, 1485).
- Joanot Martorell, Tirant lo Blanc (Catalan, 1490), chivalric romance.

The 16th century

- Jacopo Sannazaro, La Arcadia, (Italian, 1504), pastoral novel.
- Garci Rodríguez de Montalvo, Amadis de Gaula (Spanish adaptation of lost 13th century original, 1508).
- Thomas More, Utopia (Latin, circa 1516).
- François Rabelais, Pantagruel, (French, 1532).
- Jorge de Montemayor, La Diana (Spanish, 1559), pastoral novel.
- Anon, Lazarillo de Tormes (Spanish, 1554).
- Mateo Alemán, Guzmán de Alfarache (Spanish, 1599).

The 17th century

- Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quixote de la Mancha (1605).
- Miguel de Cervantes, Novelas Exemplares (1613).
- Francisco de Quevedo, El buscón (Spanish, 1626), masterpie