'Nothing of the Wild Wood'? Pan, Paganism and Spiritual Confusion in E.F. Benson's 'The Man Who Went Too Far'

Abstract

This paper examines E.F. Benson's short story, 'The Man Who Went Too Far' (1904) in the context of a renewed interest in paganism, specifically the 'cult of Pan', in fin de siecle England. It considers Benson's complex cultural position as the son of an Archbishop of Canterbury and the brother of a Papal chamberlain, and investigates the ways in which the story's inconsistent religious allegiances connect with other Edwardian 'pagan' writings in mirroring the wider spiritual anxieties of the period. The popularity of Pan in late nineteenth century literature has been of growing interest to scholars since the publication of Patricia Merivale's Pan the Goat-God (1969).1 Many researchers, however, have offered a broad analysis that groups together very disparate texts in order to demonstrate the popularity of tentative 'paganism' amongst bourgeois cultural dissidents. Such a focus succeeds in highlighting key cultural trends, but it prefers convenient homogeneity to more awkward individual questions. It is one thing to observe sentimental fondness for the countryside of Sussex and Hampshire, coded homosexuality, opposition to certain elements of 'modernity' (notably industrialisation), and dissatisfaction with contem porary Anglicanism, quite another to relate these features to specific texts. The Pan stories and poetry that appeared from the mid-Victorian period until the early 1920s share many common features, but there are important differences between the varieties of 'paganism' that they promote or deploy, as can be seen from a reading ofE.F. Benson's story, 'The Man Who Went Too Far' (1904).2 Literature & Theology Vol. 19 No. 1 © Oxford University Press 2005; all rights reserved. For Permissions, please emal: journals.permissions@oupjournals.org This content downloaded from 157.55.39.4 on Fri, 09 Sep 2016 04:31:49 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms