This thesis considers the use a range of writers in the early to mid-Victorian period have made of interplays between the fantastic and the mimetic modes in their texts. I respond to critical assessments of the role of fantasy writing within Victorian fiction, and develop new articulations both of this role and of the nature of fantastic-mimetic interplays. In doing so, I interrogate Stephen Prickett’s categorization of Victorian fantasy writing as an unconscious creative force and Rosemary Jackson’s detailing of ‘Victorian fantasy realism’ as an evocation of negative tensions within Victorian culture. I transpose Julia Kristeva’s theories of transformative poetic intertextuality into the context of intertextualities between pairings of a fantasy and a realist text by four different Victorian authors.
Chapter One explores how uncanny textualites in Charlotte Bronte's juvenile novella, The Spell (1834), and her mature work Jane Eyre (1847) represent the fragmented nature of aesthetic identities in nineteenth-century artistic, religious and authorial contexts, and how this representation suggests ways of negotiating resolution. Chapter Two investigates the use of polyphonic textuality (combinations of fairy tale and ghost story motifs) in Nicholas Nickleby (1838-1839) and A Christmas Carol (1843) by Charles Dickens dramatizes the emotional complications of disability in terms of a wide spectrum of social exclusion. Chapter Three examines how astronomical imagery and cognitive dissonance represent educational reform in George Eliot's The Lifted Veil (1859) and Daniel Deronda (1876). Chapter Four traces the extended interrogation and transcendence of emotional deprivation in George Macdonald's Adela Cathcart, developed by a heteroglossic voice through the fairy tales 'The Light Princess', 'The Shadows' and 'The Giant's Heart' (all first published in 1864).
I propose that these critical interrogations can best be understood through an adaptation of Damien Broderick’s theory of modern transrealism, adapted to the historical context of the Victorian period.

Transrealism as a discourse of social change in Victorian fiction

Introduction A folk narrative may be seen as a description of life and living-real or fictitious (El-Shamy, Folk Traditions 1: xiii). Social relations, especially among family members, constitute a major part of the tales. Thus, the nature of feelings among members of the social group that a narrative describes governs the development of the plot. Positive feelings lead to positive results while negative feelings lead to a negative outcome. This principle applies to expressive culture, folk as well as elite, and has been labeled by the present author the "structure of sentiments" (El-Shamy, Traditional Structure 53-74; El-Shamy, "Emotionskomponente"), sentiments being learned feelings or affect rather than "genetically" transmitted emotions (El-Shamy, Folktales of Egypt xlvi, n. 2). Siblings play a variety of social roles in narrative traditions. As a set of behavioral expectations (El-Shamy, Folkloric Behavior 64-66), a social role is never one-dimensional. For example, a brother or a sister is an entity defined as such when he or she interacts with another sibling. The same entity becomes a son or a daughter when interacting with parents, or a maternal or paternal uncle or aunt when interacting with the child of a sibling. This essay examines sibling relations as expressed in the narratives contained in a modern popular edition of the Arabic collection Alf laylah wa-laylah, commonly known in English as The Thousand and One Nights (henceforth: Nights). As postulated and demonstrated by the present writer, the "brother-sister syndrome" is of paramount importance in Arab cultures and plays dominant roles in social structure and elite as well as oral folk literatures. The core of this dyadic relationship is a stable pattern of sentiments involving the entire family It may be summed up as follows: brother-sister mutual love; sister-sister rivalry; brother-brother rivalry; child-parent(s) hostility; husband-wife hostility (or lack of love and affection); brother-sister's husband hostility; sister-brother's wife rivalry; and brother-sister's child affection, brother-brother's son hostility (El-Shamy Brother-Sister Syndrome 320). Studies based on contemporary Arab oral traditions indicate that expressions depicting the brother-sister bond are more recurrent among women than among men and among young men more than among older men. The reasons for this phenomenon seem to be that as males progress through life, they get more satisfaction (or, perhaps, less frustration) from their relations with females. Conversely, females appear to receive less satisfaction as they age. However, additional research is required before such reasons are ascertained. The present inquiry proceeds from the assumption that the edition of Alf laylah selected for analysis contains the work of adult males. Thus, in spite of the paucity of the brother-sister themes, a significant number of cases seem to conform to the general pattern generated in other fields of expressive culture. Tales Illustrating The Brother-Brother Relationship Of sibling relations, the interaction between brother and brother is the most frequently encountered in the Nights. Besides the eight tales discussed below, the brother-brother theme also appears as a secondary detail in other narratives. One such story is the tale of al-Hasan al-Basri, in which the hero acts as umpire between two brothers quarrelling over a magic rod and a magic invisibility cap. Although this scene conforms to the negative pattern of sentiments between brothers, this intrusive detail has no consequences for the brotherbrother pattern of interaction in the tale under consideration (Alf laylah 3: 302-19, 4: 2-55; Chauvin 7: 29, no. 212A). (1) Shahryâr and his Brother Shâhzamân (Alf laylah 1: 2-5, 4: 317-18; Chauvin 5: 188, no. 111). The frame story of the Nights accounts for the experiences of two brothers, Shahryâr and Shâhzamân, each a powerful king in his own independent domain. …

Hasan M. El-Shamy

Papers

Siblings in Alf laylah wa-laylah