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Edit Gálla, The Flight from the Self: Archetypes in Evelyn Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited
Evelyn Waugh’s first Catholic novel, Brideshead Revisited, is widely considered a turning point in his literary career due to the significant shift in theme, style and tone. Many critics deplore the novel’s perceived nostalgia, sentimentality and romanticism as well as its treatment of Catholicism. However, it is important to consider that the novel is presented as the memoir of its narrator-protagonist, Charles Ryder, and that his viewpoint is pagan, not religious. Deploying Jungian literary criticism, this paper argues that Ryder can be seen as an archetypal figure, the trickster, whose main characteristic is his unconsciousness. Although his relationship with the Catholic Flyte family provides him with opportunities to leave behind his primitive stage of consciousness, he fails to achieve psychic wholeness. While Sebastian, who stands for the child archetype, presents him with the chance to realise himself through recognising his future potential as an artist, Julia, who embodies his anima, offers him the opportunity to re-establish connection with his feminine side, and learn to be compassionate. However, Ryder, due to his obtuse, envious and duplicitous nature, which makes him similar to the trickster, forfeits these chances by betraying the trust and affection of the Flytes. On the other hand, he receives punishment for his spiteful behavior. This paper concludes that what Waugh really succeeded in portraying in the novel is not so much the Catholic outlook on life as the essentially primitive mentality of the outwardly civilized modern man.
Anne-Lise Marin-Lamellet, Filming the Margins British Cinema versus the Demonisation of Poverty (1989-2023)
In the 1980s, Margaret Thatcher’s successive governments undertook a complete overhaul of the British class system. Based on the theories of Charles Murray, a controversial American scholar, the official discourse tried to divide the working class into deserving workers and undeserving non-workers, a group of social outcasts gathered under the label of ‘underclass.’ That rhetoric was taken up by the mass media at the time but some British directors quickly endeavoured to demonstrate the vacuity of such a view and, in a more or less explicit way, questioned this concept, which is a way to criminalise poverty. British films focusing on the underprivileged show that the increasing number of destitute people is not due to their wish to alienate themselves from mainstream society. It is the consequence of degraded socioeconomic conditions. By focusing on how the mass media and the state watch the poor, these films also invite viewers to rethink their own conceptions of the norm and marginality.
Reviews
Schwanebeck, Wieland. 2022. Comedy on Stage and Screen: An Introduction. Tübingen: Narr Studienbücher.
by Frédérique Brisset