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VILLANY

                                             October 1-6, 2007


The virtue of villainy in fiction is often
remarked on -- our fiction descends from a
time when it was so tangled with puritanical
observence of the letter of virtue, that the
only spirit left in it was projected out
onto the villanous characters.

Anne Radcliff's "Mysteries of Udolpho" (1794)
could not be better crafted to undermine
virtue and celebrate villany: the main           DRIP_DRIP_DRIP
characters drip with perfection to the point
where they're perfect drips, her fine              Plus: endless very, very
sentiments and elevated sensibilities are so       bad poetry, purported
sappy that they can't help but drive one           to be written by the
elswhere...                                        main characters.

Into the arms of Montoni?                                   Thankfully,
                                                            this fades
    "Montoni had been otherwise engaged; his soul           once the plot,
    was little susceptible of light pleasures.              such as it is,
    He delighted in the energies of the passions;           picks up.
    the difficulties and tempests of life, which
    wreck the happiness of others, roused and               But unfortunately
    strengthened all the powers of his mind, and            it resumes when
    afforded him the highest enjoyments, of which           things slow again.
    his nature was capable.  Without some object
    of strong interest, life was to him little              Nothing like a
    more than a sleep; and, when pursuits of real           habit of writing
    interest failed, he substituted artificial              shallow poetry to
    ones, till habit changed their nature, and              endear a character
    they ceased to be unreal."                              to the reader.

               Chapter III, Part II






                               True villainy:

                               A view of heroism
                               that can't help
                               but discredit any
                               heroism.

                               A quest for perfection
                               that can only paralyze.

                               All action left to the
                               domain of the evil...
                                                          GORGIAS

           And I think this may be
           the answer, the fatal
           flaw in our fictions,
           the reason a people
           raised on tales of
           virtue can be so utterly
           bereft of any interest
           in it.


               It all comes back to
               the impossiblity
               of virtue to the         Ah well, we are
               True Christian....       all poor sinners.

                                        (So there's no
                                        point in trying,
                                        is there?)



                                                    BURNING_CRITICS



     "His character also, unprincipled, dauntless,
     cruel and enterprising, seemed to fit him for
     the situation.  Delighting in the tumult and
     in the struggles of life, he was equally a
     stranger to pity and to fear; his very courage
     was a sort of animal ferocity; not the noble
     impulse of a principle, such as inspirits the
     mind against the oppressor, in the cause of
     the oppressed; but a constitutional hardiness
     of nerve, that cannot feel, and that,
     therefore, cannot fear."

                      --  part III, Chapter III

        Radcliffe is *totally in love*
        with this character.

        Is it possible that she could
        have been unconscious of this?


               Maybe all those chapter head
               quotations from Milton are
               the tip-off.


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