Manchester University Press
10 Potocki’s Gothic Arabesque
Abstract
This chapter isolates two major points of focus in the complex and encyclopedic text of Jan Potocki's The Manuscript Found in Saragossa. They are the formal feature of narrative embedding, and the cultural theme of the monstrous, uncanny or evil other. The chapter shows how the formal feature of narrative embedding focuses the relation between the two traditions of orientalism and the English Gothic, put side-by-side in Potocki's text. Potocki's idea of otherness touches not only the thematic boundaries of morality and education, but also the formal frontiers of textual/social hierarchy. The right time, place and people seem to have collaborated to ignite Potocki's intellectual curiosity in the Gothic. Orientalist societies that Potocki frequented were celebrating William Beckford's Gothic work that analogically rewrites the structure of the Arabian Nights and which provided Potocki with both Gothic and Arabesque mises en abime influences.
Abstract
This chapter isolates two major points of focus in the complex and encyclopedic text of Jan Potocki's The Manuscript Found in Saragossa. They are the formal feature of narrative embedding, and the cultural theme of the monstrous, uncanny or evil other. The chapter shows how the formal feature of narrative embedding focuses the relation between the two traditions of orientalism and the English Gothic, put side-by-side in Potocki's text. Potocki's idea of otherness touches not only the thematic boundaries of morality and education, but also the formal frontiers of textual/social hierarchy. The right time, place and people seem to have collaborated to ignite Potocki's intellectual curiosity in the Gothic. Orientalist societies that Potocki frequented were celebrating William Beckford's Gothic work that analogically rewrites the structure of the Arabian Nights and which provided Potocki with both Gothic and Arabesque mises en abime influences.
Chapters in this book
- Front matter i
- Contents v
- List of illustrations vii
- Notes on contributors ix
- Acknowledgements xii
- Introduction 1
- 1 Translation in distress 17
- 2 European disruptions of the idealized woman 39
- 3 Diderot and Maturin 55
- 4 Verging on the Gothic 71
- 5 Europhobia 84
- 6 European Gothic and nineteenth-century Russian literature 104
- 7 The robbers and the police 128
- 8 Translating Mary Shelley’s Valperga into English 147
- 9 ‘Hallelujah to your dying screams of torture’ 161
- 10 Potocki’s Gothic Arabesque 183
- 11 The Gothic crosses the Channel 204
- 12 ‘A detour of filthiness’ 230
- Index 252
Chapters in this book
- Front matter i
- Contents v
- List of illustrations vii
- Notes on contributors ix
- Acknowledgements xii
- Introduction 1
- 1 Translation in distress 17
- 2 European disruptions of the idealized woman 39
- 3 Diderot and Maturin 55
- 4 Verging on the Gothic 71
- 5 Europhobia 84
- 6 European Gothic and nineteenth-century Russian literature 104
- 7 The robbers and the police 128
- 8 Translating Mary Shelley’s Valperga into English 147
- 9 ‘Hallelujah to your dying screams of torture’ 161
- 10 Potocki’s Gothic Arabesque 183
- 11 The Gothic crosses the Channel 204
- 12 ‘A detour of filthiness’ 230
- Index 252
