Great God Pan Research Articles

Degenerative Doctoring: Coercion, Experimentation and Ethics in Arthur Machen’s Gothic Horror

In “The Inmost Light” and The Great God Pan Arthur Machen demonstrates a medicalised sexism through unethical human experimentation performed on women by doctors who experiment no matter the cost. In Machen’s stories, the sensationalism is meant to create a feeling of horror and disgust that hinges on the cruelty the public had begun to associate with experimental medical science. The narratives also engage with nineteenth-century perspectives on degeneration, women, and rape. Machen’s use of a sexualised rape metaphor dehumanises women and retains a gendered doctor-patient relationship. In light of this gendered relationship, this article considers Machen’s use of elements drawn from the Gothic in relation to the depiction of medicalised sexism and medical ethics in two pieces of his popular fiction.

Chambers of Consciousness and Houses of Life: Nietzschean Hermeneutics in Arthur Machen’s The Great God Pan

This article provides a comparative study of the underlying cognitive structures laid out in Arthur Machen’s decadent novella The Great God Pan (1894) and Friedrich Nietzsche’s “On Truth and Lying in a Non-Moral Sense” (1873). It scrutinizes the images of the “chamber of consciousness” and “the house of life”, deployed by the German philosopher and the Welsh author respectively, and explores how the use and the stylistic qualities of both images affect and determine the overall conception of reality exposed in each work. This analysis helps identify Nietzschean undertones in Machen’s novella, which, in turn, allows an interpretation of The Great God Pan through the lens of Nietzsche’s discourses on cognition and reality. The reading resulting from the analysis puts forward two conclusions. Firstly, Nietzsche’s concept of “Dionysian wisdom” brings to light and informs a specific and yet unexplored source of horror in Machen’s novella, i.e., the feeling of revulsion developed by Helen Vaughn’s victims after they experience Dionysian rapture. Secondly, the analysis of the concepts of reality implied in Nietzsche’s and Machen’s imagery contributes an argument for the idea of reality as becoming in the context of Machen’s novella.

Mind matters: Psychosurgical horror in The Great God Pan and Peter and Wendy

This article locates a connection between Arthur Machen’s The Great God Pan and J. M. Barrie’s Peter and Wendy beyond the texts’ focus on the mythic and malevolent Pagan god. Both Machen and Barrie express interest in the brain as a physiological region that can be explored, mapped and manipulated. This interest, I argue, emerges from late-nineteenth-century neurological experiments, especially the psychosurgical procedures performed by Gottfried Burckhardt in the 1880s. Although Burckhardt’s operations were widely criticized, and his results generally discredited, the practice of psychosurgery continued to be debated in medical communities. In The Great God Pan and Peter and Wendy, forms of psychosurgery unleash murderous monstrosities, thus implicating, to varying degrees, Dr Raymond and Mrs Darling, the surgeons of this horror.

Arthur Machen: Decadent and Occult Works. Ed. by Dennis DenisoffArthur Machen: The Great God Pan and Other Horror Stories. Ed. by Aaron WorthMachin, James. Weird Fiction in Britain 1880–1939

Arthur Machen: Decadent and Occult Works. Ed. by Dennis DenisoffArthur Machen: The Great God Pan and Other Horror Stories. Ed. by Aaron WorthMachin, James. Weird Fiction in Britain 1880–1939

Katherine Mansfield and Periodical Culture by Chris Mourant

MLR, .,   carefully curated experience. Denisoff’s book is driven by the contention that while ‘[Machen’s] pieces circulated in the gyre of British Decadent culture’, his was an ‘innovative form of Decadence’ rooted in Machen’s fascination with pagan spirituality (dating back to his childhood in rural Wales) and unique exposure to occult literature (p. ). e plentiful annotations painstakingly guide the reader through the range of Machen’s (literary) reference, showing how the idiosyncrasies of his experience find expression in the Decadent aesthetics of his writing. is apparatus is usefully reinforced by a ‘Decadent Chronology of Machen’s Life’, selections from the non-fiction, and a critical contexts section—materials which illuminate Denisoff’s claims and make the volume a valuable teaching edition. Among the fiction, the volume contains tales (such as ‘e Lost Club’) which reveal the influence of Wilde and Stevenson, and at its core are the two novellas—e Great God Pan () and the Hill of Dreams ()—both produced, as Denisoff explains, ‘during his most Decadent period of writing’ (p. ). Interestingly, though, Denisoff accommodates both the  story ‘e Bowmen’ (a work of fabulation based around the battle of Mons) and ‘Ritual’ (a  tale about a tribal ritual enacted in a contemporary London suburb) within the remit of his volume. In doing so, Denisoff sensitively describes an engagement with Decadence which (through a series of disavowals and abiding preoccupations) survives beyond its high cultural moment in the s. It is this inclination to open up the parameters of Decadence, along with its success in adding considerable depth to our understanding of a popularly neglected fin-de-siècle writer, that locates Decadent and Occult Works squarely within Kaye’s definition of the ‘third wave’. T U J F Katherine Mansfield and Periodical Culture. By C M. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. . x+ pp. £. ISBN ––––. Katherine Mansfield spent her entire career, first and foremost, as a writer for periodicals. Book publications came second, and were, almost without exception, comprised of previously published periodical material. It is fitting, therefore, that she be considered as a ‘magazine modernist’ (p. ), and surprising that Chris Mourant’s Katherine Mansfield and Periodical Culture is the first to take up her development as a writer with a detailed focus on how she navigated the networks of production and exploited the particularities of the periodical medium. Within this context, Mourant is also concerned with issues of gender and national identity. e monograph therefore provides a complex consideration of Mansfield. We see her not simply as a magazine writer, but as a colonial woman magazine writer in a male-dominated literary field in the metropolitan heart of empire. e book is structured chronologically, with each chapter covering a specific periodical . e Introduction usefully and thoroughly situates the monograph within the relevant scholarly contexts, while also providing an overview of Mansfield’s New Zealand juvenilia. Chapter , focused on e New Age, offers productive reassessments of Mansfield’s feminist politics and aesthetics within broader national and  Reviews cultural contexts. Mourant undertakes a substantial consideration of Beatrice Hastings ’s writings for the journal as a comparative frame through which to consider what he identifies as Mansfield’s ‘renegade feminism’ (p. ), a radical individualist form that sat in opposition to the suffrage-inflected feminism. In the second chapter Mourant shows how Mansfield used the periodical space and networks of Rhythm magazine as a means to explore cultural difference through contributions that critique nationalist, colonial, and gendered perspectives. Chapter  covers Mansfield’s much-overlooked body of critical writings that defined the core of her work for the Athenaeum. Mourant argues that Mansfield used book reviewing to contribute to a broader ‘new word/new world’ discourse that was informing emerging theories of literary modernism. In a particularly rich section of this chapter, Mourant explores the affinities between Mansfield and Woolf and the dialogic nature of the development of their aesthetic ideas. A final short chapter considers her posthumous publications in the Adelphi, which served as a means for J. M. Murry to fashion an idealized image of her, one which smoothed over her...

The Fin-de-Siècle 'Femme Fatale' and the God Pan

This study offers a reading of the widespread character type of the ‘Femme Fatale’ which focuses on the developments of this figure as a trope of Decadent literature in British works of the 1890s. In particular, the paper finds an element of comparison between the Decadent orientation towards an instrumental depiction of the Orient and the portrayal, in theater and fiction, of mysterious and seductive women corresponding to the trope. The texts used to illustrate the functional role of these female characters are Oscar Wilde’s play Salome and Arthur Machen’s novella The Great God Pan, both of which employ aestheticizing strategies that are meant to elevate the object of desire by making it inaccessible. These strategies are ultimately defined as a process of identification between Wilde’s and Machen’s female protagonists and the features, or remnants, of a remote, pagan past.

“Her life is mine, to use as I see fit”: The Terror of Consent in Arthur Machen’s The Great God Pan

“Her life is mine, to use as I see fit”: The Terror of Consent in Arthur Machen’s The Great God Pan

Pan i Londons gader. Hvorfor genopstod en græsk naturgud for en kort periode i Storbritannien?

This topological study aims to discover how the Greek god Pan came to emerge from the metaphorical graveyard of forgotten fantasies and into late Victorian fiction depicting contemporary scenes, and the reasons for his presence. The motif of ‘Pan versus humanity’ takes center stage and is followed through a series of representational texts from Arthur Machen’s The Great God Pan from 1894, over E. F. Bensons “The Man Who Went Too Far” from 1904 and Algernon Blackwood’s “The Touch of Pan” from 1917 to one of its final depictions in Stephen McKenna’s novel The Oldest God from 1926. It is shown that as Pan came to represent the repressed as both biological and historical past, the specific meaning ascribed to the meeting with the god changed in relation to cultural and historical developments. With the appearance and disappearance of Pan the rise and fall of shared modern fantasies are revealed. From a bigger perspective, the analysis is an example of the usefulness of the topological method in illuminating cultural history through the rising and waning popularity of literary configurations.

Entre humanos e bestas: o insólito ficcional em The Great God Pan e Shame

http://dx.doi.org/10.5007/2175-8026.2017v70n1p91O objetivo deste trabalho é analisar duas obras ficcionais, a novela The Great God Pan, de Arthur Machen, e o romance Shame, de Salman Rushdie, que contêm situações e eventos insólitos, examinando-as de modo a discutir como os elementos fantásticos presentes em ambos os textos relacionam-se ao contexto de produção das obras, ou seja, respectivamente, o século XIX e a segunda metade do século XX. Machen promoveu uma ruptura em relação à tradição das histórias de horror, então em voga, e Rushdie introduziu na literatura pós-colonial indiana características do Realismo Mágico. Temporalmente distantes, as duas obras recorrem a um mesmo artifício, típico da ficção fantástica, a metamorfose de personagens, e, por meio dela, os autores constroem uma crítica subliminar ao sistema político e social dominante em seu tempo.

Dreaming in fire and working in clay: the problem of translating ideas into words in Arthur Machen's The Great God Pan

Dreaming in fire and working in clay: the problem of translating ideas into words in Arthur Machen's The Great God Pan

Journeys into Darkness: Critical Essays on Gothic HorrorJamesGoho. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2014.

Journeys into Darkness: Critical Essays on Gothic Horror James Goho. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2014.This collection of essays examines what author calls dread... primal fear and an ontological unease in world (3). Containing ten chapters, six of which are revisions of previously published essays, Goho explores four themes found in Gothic literature. These four include urban landscape, wilderness, manifestation of economic, social, and political anxieties and conflicts, and a voice which is given to those who suffer or experience evil (3, 4). Essays consider five American and two British authors, including Charles Brockden Brown, Edgar Allan Poe, Ambrose Bierce, Algernon Blackwood, Arthur Machen, H. P. Lo veer aft, and Fritz Leiber.According to author, all four of themes mentioned above can be found in fiction of Charles Brockden Brown. Goho states that Brown created not just American Urban Gothic, but American Gothic as a whole. Flis novels depict family disintegration and individual disintegration through collisions with uncanny (7). Goho discusses three of Brown's novels in this chapter with Wieland being an example of how isolation of wilderness can turn a family man into a killer; Arthur Mervyn being an example of how disease can turn civilized people into savages; and, Edgar Huntly being an example of how civilized man turns into a savage in wilderness, when confronted with savages who are already there (American Indians.Likewise, these four themes can be found in a variety of works that trace their beginning to Salem trials. Witchcraft, an Old World phenomenon, found fertile ground in New World among the dark, brooding side of Puritanism (163), fear of Indians and vast, potentially hostile wilderness. Attempting to escape economic, political, social, and religious injustice, colonists merely recreated New World in image of Old. He examines a number of witch narratives, such as those by Nathaniel Hawthorne, Edgar Allan Poe, Edith Wharton, Fritz Leiber, and John Updike. Anyone who reads contemporary horror fiction or watches films in genre knows that is not dead. Rather she is a continuing archetype because... [she] speaks to a primal fear. It is not fear of a witch; rather is fear of relentless and violent persecution (176) that induces us to read or watch these instantiations of Gothic.Goho analyzes four short works by prolific British writer Arthur Machen that reflect third theme of Gothic. These are Great God Pan, Inmost Light, Shining Pyramid, and White People. These stories were written in late Victorian era; all concern science and ask question, Do ends justify means? The male scientists in stories certainly believe answer is yes, and each story illustrates what they are willing to do for knowledge's sake. In each story, women are victims of horrific experiments, and, in all, these women die violent deaths. In end, says author, it is all about sacrifice of women to appease desires of men for knowledge and control (73).Algernon Blackwood's Canadian stories, according to Goho, propose that nature is wondrous but perilous (93). Stories such as Wendigo and Haunted Island reveal wilderness landscape as sublime, intensely beautiful, and awe-inspiring, but terrifying in its vastness. It harkens back to our early ancestors and their fear of dark and all that dark contained. And, speaks to fear of loneliness as well. Confronted with wilderness' majesty, one feels how truly small and alone one is. Goho believes that Blackwood's short stories yield a forest beautifully described and ... more alive and sentient than human characters (92).Whereas Blackwood presents wilderness as a backdrop upon which to expose humankind's loneliness, Fritz Leiber sets against urban landscape. …

Reading Plays to Enhance Professional Development

ABSTRACTWriting in a narrative style, the authors describe the continuing education model of the Red Well Theater Group. The model combines a study group format with a play reading performance module to enhance the professional development of the Group’s members and their audiences of colleagues. The educational goals are to: 1) didactically study the principles and practice of group therapy; 2) theatrically illuminate concepts, relational themes, and small group dynamics relevant to group therapy; 3) experientially deepen therapist empathy for the challenge of being in a group; and 4) provide a vitalizing experience in support of therapist well-being. As an example of this model in action, the authors elaborate their experience preparing The Great God Pan, by Amy Herzog, for presentation at the 2014 American Group Psychotherapy Association (AGPA) Annual Meeting.

The Great God Pan

This essay starts from the premise that ghost stories of the late 19th and 20th centuries often engaged the same issues as older ‘gnostic’ treatises did (taking a particular line from Emanuel Swedenborg), but had the advantage of being able to describe encounters between humans and higher entities far more vividly than the treatises, and the corollary advantage of suggesting new ramifications of such encounters. It focuses on how such stories explore the possibility that, through encounters with higher entities who emerge as negative, protagonists discover that the divine world is either corrupt and ill-intended or (worse) completely meaningless. The first case, Arthur Machen’s The Great God Pan (1890), is contextualized not only within contemporary reactions to Darwin’s theories of evolution (developing Adrian Eckersley’s study) but also contemporary conceptualizations of the debt that modern civilization owed to ancient Greece and Rome. The second examines how H.P. Lovecraft developed Machen’s ideas in ‘The Dunwich Horror’ (1929), where mastery of ancient languages unleashes horror. The third case, Peter Straub’s Ghost Story (1979)—an homage to Lovecraft and Machen—delivers an even darker ‘gnostic’ message: entities whom we assume to have purposes (even if dark purposes) have none at all; only the well-skilled narrative can bring them into order and save himself from perdition.

Du divin, du sacré et de la religion selon Lacan

Les dieux, révélation dans le réel, sont le déchaînement des signifiants, nécessité par une essence qu’ils dissimulent. Mais leur champ a disparu (« le Grand Pan est mort »), remplacé par l’image de la Crucifixion qui incarne la mort de Dieu, vérité du Nom-du-Père. C’est donc derrière cette image que nous devons chercher l’essence cachée, l’espace de l’entre-deux-morts dévoilé dans les tragédies grecques, espace du sacré, du désir indestructible, dont la voie se paye de la livre de chair. La seconde mort qui régit cet espace est figurée dans l’image chrétienne, et interprétée chrétiennement à partir de l’ ex nihilo , création signifiante d’où surgissent la Chose et la pulsion de mort. L’opération religieuse est proprement la récupération de la livre de chair. Mais, dans un retour au fondement de la religion du Nom, Lacan voit dans la montée d’Abraham la coupure du désir d’avec la jouissance, coupure où s’opère le meurtre du père mythique, et qui se paie d’une perte. Ce fondement est transmis bien que ou parce que masqué dans le cadre de l’ Ekklesia où l’opération religieuse vise à en compenser l’effet. Cette part hors religion dans la religion fait en partie de cette dernière une sublimation où le vide de la Chose est respecté.

‘A slight lesion in the grey matter’: The gothic brain in Arthur Machen’s The Great God Pan

Abstract In Arthur’s Machen’s The Great God Pan (1894), a neurological experiment produces a demonic woman who brings about the mental, physical and social deterioration of almost all with whom she comes into contact. In this text, as in much of his other fiction, Machen characterizes the brain as an interstitial site between mind and body as well as a portal to supernatural forces, demonstrating an engagement with philosophical issues raised by nineteenth-century mental physiology and neurology. Through its portrayal of neurological theories and experimental practices, The Great God Pan demonstrates anxiety over the biological reductionism and materialism of late Victorian mental science, especially the threat to self-governance and the potential erosion of social stability occasioned by a lack of will or spiritual force guiding human thought and action.

From Experiment to Epidemic: Embodiment in the Decadent Modernism of Arthur Machen’s “The Great God Pan” and “The Inmost Light”

In Arthur Machen’s Decadent horrors “The Great God Pan” and “The Inmost Light,” contagion becomes a modern form of transformation that upends Cartesian dualism. Drawing on theories of embodied cognition, late-nineteenth-century neuroscience, and Decadent aesthetics, this essay examines Machen’s depictions of the mind-body in tumult.

The Great God Pan/Brown

Abstract Examining the origins of the phrase “the Great God Pan,” and similarities between Eugene O'Neill's play The Great God Brown (1925) and Arthur Machen's Victorian horror novel The Great God Pan (1894), reveals that these works share more than similar titles. Correspondences in tone, theme, and other details suggest that Machen's novel might have influenced O'Neill, opening new possibilities for interpreting the ideas and stylistic affinities of O'Neill's elusive play. The possibility of connection is strengthened by the authors' overlapping social spheres during the 1920s, with Carl Van Vechten as the linking figure. As such, a groundbreaking Victorian horror story, which O'Neill might have heard as a boy, could have helped shape O'Neill's sort of modernism.

The Great God Pan/Brown

Abstract Examining the origins of the phrase “the Great God Pan,” and similarities between Eugene O'Neill's play The Great God Brown (1925) and Arthur Machen's Victorian horror novel The Great God Pan (1894), reveals that these works share more than similar titles. Correspondences in tone, theme, and other details suggest that Machen's novel might have influenced O'Neill, opening new possibilities for interpreting the ideas and stylistic affinities of O'Neill's elusive play. The possibility of connection is strengthened by the authors' overlapping social spheres during the 1920s, with Carl Van Vechten as the linking figure. As such, a groundbreaking Victorian horror story, which O'Neill might have heard as a boy, could have helped shape O'Neill's sort of modernism.

"The great God Pan is alive again": Thomas Love Peacock and Percy Shelley in Marlow

This essay examines the influence of Thomas Love Peacock’s distinctly pagan understanding of classical literature and mythology on Percy Shelley and, through him, the rest of the Marlow circle in 1817 and 1818. The title, taken from an January 1818 Leigh Hunt letter, suggests the importance of the “pagan” (as opposed to merely “classical”) imagery that recurs throughout the entire circle’s works in this period, deliberate symbols of celebration and opposition (at once political, religious, and social) for this coterie of self-styled “Athenians.” Reading Peacock’s Calidore and Rhododaphne; or, the Thessalian Spell alongside Shelley’s contemporaneous works, I argue for the transformative power of the pagan imagery that “Greeky Peaky” Peacock introduced to the younger romantics and suggest some ways in which this romantic paganism contributes to our understanding of Shelley’s notorious “passion for reforming the world.”

The Transmutations of Arthur Machen: Alchemy in 'The Great God Pan' and The Three Impostors

The Transmutations of Arthur Machen: Alchemy in 'The Great God Pan' and The Three Impostors