Writing the Occult: A Reading of Edward Bulwer-Lytton’s "The Coming Race"
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.4454/syn.v4.902Parole chiave:
The Coming Race, Late-Victorian Occult Revival, Eliphas Lévi, Vril, Hollow-earth fictionAbstract
This article examines the rhetoric of the occult in Edward Bulwer-Lytton’s The Coming Race (1871), also known as Vril: The Power of the Coming Race, by placing the novel in the context of the late nineteenth-century Occult Revival. A writer, aristocrat, politician and Secretary of State for the Colonies when Benjamin Disraeli was Prime Minister, Bulwer-Lytton was one of the most eminent occultists of the Victorian age and a firm believer in the redemptive power of magic. As such, he supported the idea that occult practices could provide access to the deepest mysteries of the universe, freeing man from the constraints of materialism and the ‘sterility’ of the positivist episteme. Interestingly, Bulwer-Lytton had privileged contact with the vast panorama of occultism thanks to his personal acquaintance with Eliphas Lévi, the leading esotericist of the day. By observing Lévi’s work, Bulwer-Lytton had the opportunity to expand his knowledge of the occult and refine an imaginary permeated by it. From a literary point of view, this would find significant reverberations in The Coming Race, one of the author’s most enduring works and perhaps his spiritual testament, a novel which is imbued with an occult imagery that will be carefully deciphered in the course of this analysis.
Riferimenti bibliografici
Bulwer-Lytton, Edward, The Coming Race, Peterborough, Broadview Press, (1871) 2002.
Butler, Alison, “Magical Beginnings: The Intellectual Origins of the Victorian Occult Revival”, Limina, 9, 2003, pp. 79-95.
—, Victorian Occultism and the Making of Modern Magic: Invoking Tradition, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2011.
Calanchi, Alessandra, “Una frontiera sotterranea? La Hollow Earth Hypothesis negli USA”, in Jan Marten e Ivo Klaver (a cura di), Il (sotto)suolo e l’immaginario, Fano, Aras Edizioni, 2015, pp. 121-58.
Choné, Aurélie, “La force Vril entre science, fiction et occultisme: les enjeux de la réception ésotérique du roman d’Edward Bulwer-Lytton, The Coming Race (1871)”, in Françoise Willmann (ed.), La Science-Fiction entre Cassandre et Prométhée, Nancy, Presses universitaires de Nancy, 2011, pp. 103-29.
Dobson, Eleanor, “Gods and Ghost-Light: Ancient Egypt, Electricity, and X-Rays”, Victorian Literature and Culture, 45 (1), 2017, pp. 119-35.
—, and Nichola Tonks, “Introduction: Ancient Egypt in Nineteenth-Century Contexts”, Nineteenth-Century Contexts, 40 (4), 2018, pp. 311-15.
Eliade, Mircea, Occultism, Witchcraft, and Cultural Fashions: Essays in Comparative Religions, Chicago and London, The University of Chicago Press, 1976.
Faivre, Antoine, Access to Western Esotericism, New York, State University of New York Press, 1994.
Franklin, J. Jeffrey, “The Evolution of Occult Spirituality in Victorian England and the Representative Case of Edward Bulwer-Lytton”, in Id., Spirit Matters: Occult Beliefs, Alternative Religions, and the Crisis of Faith in Victorian Britain, Ithaca, Cornell U.P., 2018, pp. 27-44.
Galli, Giorgio, Hitler e il nazismo magico. Le componenti esoteriche del Reich millenario, Milano, Rizzoli, (1989) 2005.
Gange, David, Dialogues with the Dead: Egyptology in British Culture and Religion, 1822-1922, Oxford, OUP, 2013.
Gatto Trocchi, Cecilia, La magia, Roma, Newton Compton, 1994.
Green, Nile, “The Global Occult: An Introduction”, History of Religions, 54 (4), 2015, pp. 383-93.
Griffin, Duane A., “Hollow and Habitable Within: Symmes’ Theory of Earth’s Internal Structure and Polar Geography”, Physical Geography, 25 (5), 2004, pp. 382-97.
Harvey, David A., “Elite Magic in the Nineteenth Century”, in D. Collins (ed.), The Cambridge History of Magic and Witchcraft in the West: From Antiquity to the Present, Cambridge, CUP, 2015, pp. 547-75.
Hope Chang, Elizabeth, “Hollow Earth Fiction and Environmental Form in the Late Nineteenth Century”, Contexts, 38 (5), 2016, pp. 387-93.
Kipnis, Naum, “Luigi Galvani and the Debate on Animal Electricity, 1791-1800”, Annals of Science, 44 (2), 1987, pp. 107-42.
Lehrich, Christopher I., The Occult Mind: Magic in Theory and Practice, Ithaca, Cornell U.P., 2009.
Lévi, Eliphas, Dogme et rituel de la Haute Magie, Engl. trans. A.E. Waite, London, Rider & Company, (1856) 1896.
McIntosh, Christopher, Eliphas Lévi and the French Occult Revival, Albany, State University of New York Press, 1972.
—, The Rosy Cross Unveiled: The History, Mythology and Rituals of an Occult Order, Wellingborough, The Aquarian Press Limited, 1980.
Mitchell, Leslie, Bulwer Lytton: The Rise and Fall of a Victorian Man of Letters, London and New York, Hambledon & London, 2003.
Mulvey-Roberts, Marie, Gothic Immortals: The Fiction of the Brotherhood of the Rosy Cross, London and New York, Routledge, 1990.
Owen, Alex, The Place of Enchantment: British Occultism and the Culture of the Modern, Chicago and London, The University of Chicago Press, 2004.
Symmes, John Cleves, Symzonia: A Voyage of Discovery, New York, J. Seymour, 1820.
Wolf, Robert Lee, Strange Stories and Other Explorations in Victorian Fiction, Boston, Gambit, 1971.
Pubblicato
Fascicolo
Sezione
Licenza
Copyrights are transferred for five years starting publication date from the author(s) to the Publisher. After this period, the content is released under a Creative Commons licence (Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International).
