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2. William Beckford (1786), Vathek
Sunday, 15 March 2020 16:21This is one of two books I read in preparation for this Dracula Society trip to Bath in mid-May, the relevance being that the author lived there in later life and there is a museum about him there in a tower which he commissioned. Though the trip hasn't been officially cancelled yet, it's pretty obvious that it will be, which is a pity. Nonetheless, reading good Gothic literature is never a waste, and maybe we'll be able to reschedule the trip for 2021?
It's an Orientalising novel whose title character is loosely based on a real ninth-century caliph named al-Wathiq who had a palace at Samarra (spelt Samarah in the novel), but I would say the relationship between character and namesake is similar to that for Dracula. That is, a name and general setting have been borrowed, but otherwise the character and the story are entirely fantastical. Obviously an 18th-century westerner writing Orientalising literature is indulging in a form of Othering, but it's only fair to acknowledge that there is a spectrum of these things, and that while this certainly isn't the ideal response to or form of interaction with another culture, it is much benigner than some. Unfortunately I haven't read The Arabian Nights, which was the leading inspiration for this sort of literature in Beckford's day, or indeed anything much else in this vein, so I wasn't able to situate it within its wider literary context. But I enjoyed it, and certainly learnt a lot of new Arabic-based words for supernatural beings as I went along.
( Vathek, the lazy glutton )
( The main plot )
( Carathis, Vathek's mother )
( Style and humour )
( Allusions and echoes which I could identify )
Given these fantastical details and the lavish descriptions of splendid palaces and supernatural creatures throughout, I was rather surprised on checking the Wikipedia page that there is no mention there (or anywhere else I can find) of any screen adaptation of it. I guess this kind of Orientalising literature simply went out of fashion before the technical capacity to do that became available, which I would say is when it became possible to do feature-length animations in colour. However, Google tells me that there is a French-language graphic novel, which is something at least.
It's an Orientalising novel whose title character is loosely based on a real ninth-century caliph named al-Wathiq who had a palace at Samarra (spelt Samarah in the novel), but I would say the relationship between character and namesake is similar to that for Dracula. That is, a name and general setting have been borrowed, but otherwise the character and the story are entirely fantastical. Obviously an 18th-century westerner writing Orientalising literature is indulging in a form of Othering, but it's only fair to acknowledge that there is a spectrum of these things, and that while this certainly isn't the ideal response to or form of interaction with another culture, it is much benigner than some. Unfortunately I haven't read The Arabian Nights, which was the leading inspiration for this sort of literature in Beckford's day, or indeed anything much else in this vein, so I wasn't able to situate it within its wider literary context. But I enjoyed it, and certainly learnt a lot of new Arabic-based words for supernatural beings as I went along.
( Vathek, the lazy glutton )
( The main plot )
( Carathis, Vathek's mother )
( Style and humour )
( Allusions and echoes which I could identify )
Given these fantastical details and the lavish descriptions of splendid palaces and supernatural creatures throughout, I was rather surprised on checking the Wikipedia page that there is no mention there (or anywhere else I can find) of any screen adaptation of it. I guess this kind of Orientalising literature simply went out of fashion before the technical capacity to do that became available, which I would say is when it became possible to do feature-length animations in colour. However, Google tells me that there is a French-language graphic novel, which is something at least.
