In his essay “Arthur Machen and the Horrors of Deep History,” Aaron Worth makes the following claims: 1) that Machen’s fictional stories (for example, about a single feminine figure of ‘monstrous evil’) represent, to a certain degree, the dread-inducing trope derived from the 19th century invention of deep time; 2) that the figure of the animal (or a savage) in the story signifies the projection of appropriately historical and cultural forms into the 19th century’s emergent deep past; 3) that the story is a profound signification of combined histories, the cultural and the biological being intermingled; and 4) that Machen’s story consummates a significant act of integration between the collectively suppressed animalistic past of humanity and
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This also acts as a barrier, a protective shield against literary narratives that attempt to recklessly link the biological and the cultural man. Sacred chronologies thus are reconstituted into secular ones, delineating modern man from his “historyless” ancestors. Machen’s fascination with the predatory horrors of the prehistoric past is, in essence, a genuine encounter between the three great developments of this period: Darwinian evolution, paleo-anthropology, and geology (Worth 217). His core stories signify the emergence of the protection of mythos, rising from the grave, recuperating from centuries-old deep sleep (or hibernation, disengagement from …show more content…
When prehistory is intermingled with modern (or written) history, the effect is phenomenal. The reader suddenly realizes that anything is possible and that history itself is a vessel of probabilities. If cave men do find their way to the cities, and if in fact they can wreck havoc to “our way of life,” then chances are humanity’s future is at stake. Such an assertion is typically Machen’s way of manipulating the emergent conceptual categories linked with historiography’s untimely encounter with the emerging sciences of the day. In this respect, Worth is able to demonstrate that Machen’s fascination with deep history is built from these categories. With respect to his second claim, Aaron Worth notes that the figure of the animal or savage represents modern man’s primeval fear of the unknown past (and naturally, its unknown origins). In Machen’s Black Seal, for example, the so-called “little people” of Britain are demonstrably part of a fanciful, recursive dark side of folk lore. The emergence of the “little people” is undoubtedly an unexpected phenomenon, a terrorizing agent in sustaining Machen’s fascination with mythical survivability (Worth 223). From the reader’s point of view, such a terrorizing element poses a chilling effect on the human body; images of getting torn apart, eaten,
This also acts as a barrier, a protective shield against literary narratives that attempt to recklessly link the biological and the cultural man. Sacred chronologies thus are reconstituted into secular ones, delineating modern man from his “historyless” ancestors. Machen’s fascination with the predatory horrors of the prehistoric past is, in essence, a genuine encounter between the three great developments of this period: Darwinian evolution, paleo-anthropology, and geology (Worth 217). His core stories signify the emergence of the protection of mythos, rising from the grave, recuperating from centuries-old deep sleep (or hibernation, disengagement from …show more content…
When prehistory is intermingled with modern (or written) history, the effect is phenomenal. The reader suddenly realizes that anything is possible and that history itself is a vessel of probabilities. If cave men do find their way to the cities, and if in fact they can wreck havoc to “our way of life,” then chances are humanity’s future is at stake. Such an assertion is typically Machen’s way of manipulating the emergent conceptual categories linked with historiography’s untimely encounter with the emerging sciences of the day. In this respect, Worth is able to demonstrate that Machen’s fascination with deep history is built from these categories. With respect to his second claim, Aaron Worth notes that the figure of the animal or savage represents modern man’s primeval fear of the unknown past (and naturally, its unknown origins). In Machen’s Black Seal, for example, the so-called “little people” of Britain are demonstrably part of a fanciful, recursive dark side of folk lore. The emergence of the “little people” is undoubtedly an unexpected phenomenon, a terrorizing agent in sustaining Machen’s fascination with mythical survivability (Worth 223). From the reader’s point of view, such a terrorizing element poses a chilling effect on the human body; images of getting torn apart, eaten,