The influences behind Against the Grain (À rebours)

1884

Against the Grain (À rebours)

Joris-Karl Huysmans

Decadent. France. Written in French.

Huysmans's novel (À rebours) follows Jean des Esseintes, the last of a worn-out aristocratic line, who shuts himself in a house at Fontenay and arranges his days around perfumes, jewels, Latin decadent authors, Moreau's paintings and Baudelaire's poems. Its library chapters on Petronius, Baudelaire, Poe, Flaubert and Mallarmé became a reading list for the Decadent movement.

Where it came from

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1839

The Fall of the House of Usher

Edgar Allan Poe

American Romanticism. United States. Written in English.

A tale of the hypersensitive Roderick Usher, last of his line, and the collapse of his family and his mansion.

What it handed down

To Against the Grain (À rebours) (1884)

Thematic kinship, well documented.

Poe, known in France through Baudelaire's translations, is praised in chapter 14 for his analysis of will and nervous disorder. Roderick Usher, the over-refined last heir of a decaying line shut in his house, is a direct prototype for des Esseintes.

Where it came from

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1764

The Castle of Otranto

Horace Walpole

Georgian. England. Written in English.

The first Gothic novel: a usurping prince, a doomed dynasty, a prophecy and a supernatural collapse of the castle.

What it handed down

To The Fall of the House of Usher (1839)

Thematic kinship, probable.

Walpole established the Gothic pattern of a doomed family whose house collapses at the end of its line. Poe adopts the decaying ancestral seat as the image of a family's ruin, ending with the mansion sinking into the tarn.

Where it came from

Hamlet, William Shakespeare c. 1600

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c. 1600

Hamlet

William Shakespeare

Elizabethan. England. Written in English.

Tragedy of a Danish prince urged by his father's ghost to avenge a murder by his uncle.

What it handed down

To The Castle of Otranto (1764)

Direct source, well documented.

Walpole's preface to the second edition defends mixing the comic and tragic by appeal to Shakespeare. The ghostly father demanding justice and the usurper's guilt echo Hamlet.

Where it came from

Tragic Histories (Histoires tragiques), vol. 5, François de Belleforest 1570
Aeneid, Virgil 19 BCE follow this thread
Thyestes, Seneca the Younger c. 50 CE follow this thread

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Tragic Histories (Histoires tragiques), vol. 5François de Belleforest

1570

Tragic Histories (Histoires tragiques), vol. 5

François de Belleforest

French Renaissance. France. Written in French.

A collection of moralized tales including the story of Amleth, prince of Denmark, who feigns madness to avenge his father.

What it handed down

To Hamlet (c. 1600)

Direct source, well documented.

Belleforest's tale of Amleth supplied the plot of a prince feigning madness to avenge a father killed by his uncle, who has married the widow. Shakespeare likely knew it directly or through the lost earlier Hamlet play.

Where it came from

Deeds of the Danes (Gesta Danorum), Saxo Grammaticus c. 1200

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Deeds of the DanesSaxo Grammaticus

c. 1200

Deeds of the Danes (Gesta Danorum)

Saxo Grammaticus

High Medieval. Denmark. Written in Latin.

A Latin history of the Danish kings, from legend onward, containing the Amleth story.

What it handed down

To Tragic Histories (Histoires tragiques), vol. 5 (1570)

Direct source, well documented.

Belleforest translated and moralized the Amleth story from Saxo's Latin, keeping the feigned madness, the eavesdropper killed, and the voyage to England.

Where it came from

The line stops here: draws on oral Scandinavian legend.

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Where it came from

What it handed down

To Against the Grain (À rebours) (1884)

Where it came from

What it handed down

To The Fall of the House of Usher (1839)

Where it came from

What it handed down

To The Castle of Otranto (1764)

Where it came from

What it handed down

To Hamlet (c. 1600)

Where it came from

What it handed down

To Tragic Histories (Histoires tragiques), vol. 5 (1570)

Where it came from

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