The author as the antiquarian: selling Victorian culture to readers of neo-Victorian novels and steampunk comics (original) (raw)

Neo-Victorian fiction is one of a multitude of products available in today's literary market. Moreover, it has some specific features which help it stand out on the shelf. Among the elements serving to differentiate it from other modern literary trends are elements of the Victorian refashioned as a style – Victoriana (cf. Joyce 2007: 71): the historical background, including all the paraphernalia: setting (which can be compared to stage decorations), costumes, props (especially objects no longer in use), more or less archaic language, etc. These elements of a previous age can be either meticulously researched and strive to be as faithful as possible to what we know of the past or serve as a basis for a more contemporary or fantastic story. The Victorian 'air', however, must remain. On the other hand, among the aspects which make neo-Victorian fiction stand apart from most of its nineteenth century counterparts are a more overt treatment of – among other things – sex and violence. Hence the cover of the first issue of Alan Moore's “The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen” features murder, rape and drugs, while at the same time imitating nineteenth-century illustrations. Similarly, the extradiegetic but insistently intrusive narrator of Michel Faber's “The Crimson Petal and the White” promises to the reader, in case s/he is bored after the first sixty of the novel's nine hundred pages, that “fucking, madness, abduction and violent death” are to come (2002: 65).