Post by Silverback on Feb 16, 2005 11:35:22 GMT
by Jess Nevins
(with thanks to Jean-Marc Lofficier and Rick Lai)
Most modern consumers of popular culture are familiar with the concept of the crossover--that is, when characters or concepts from two or more discrete texts or series of texts meet. Today crossovers are, if not common, not so uncommon enough as to baffle readers or viewers. Most people understand the idea of Professor Moriarty appearing on a Star Trek holodeck, or Superman and Batman teaming up to stop the Joker and Lex Luthor, or Shaft appearing to help the Jack of Spades. But the concept of the crossover is much older than many people realize, and in fact goes back centuries.
The first real crossover is difficult to place. In a liberal definition we could start with the Greek myth of Jason and the Argonauts. The myth, which dates to the ninth or tenth century B.C.E., is about the hero Jason, who sails to Colchis in search of the Golden Fleece. Jason is accompanied by a band of fifty notable heroes on his ship, the Argo. The 50 heroes are the "noblest" of Greece and many, such as Castor, Polydeuces, and Hercules, are the subjects of myths of their own. While the origin of the myth of the Argonauts is unclear, there is some evidence that the myth’s author brought together the heroes of various disparate myths and performed what may be popular culture's first "team up."
This sort of crossover, where characters from folklore and legend meet in new stories, would be repeated over the centuries, with Lancelot du Lac being taken from the myths of Brittany and dragooned into Arthurian legend, and the legendary folk hero Judge Bao appearing in any number of Chinese myths from crime stories to flying swordsman epics. However, this syncretism of myth is clearly not the same as the modern popular culture crossover but is rather a precursor to it as were Virgil's Aeneid, where the ghosts of characters from Homer's Iliad speak with Aeneas, Lucian of Samosata's True History, where space travelers fly past Aristophanes' Cloudcuckooland, and Walter Savage Landor's Imaginary Conversations (1824), in which various historical and fictional characters converse.
The next significant kind of crossover began in 1834, when Honoré de Balzac finally articulated to himself the idea of making his individual novels part of a coherent whole, an individual fictional universe. Before that year his books had possessed an internal consistency, but it was in 1834 when he systematically began making use of recurring characters, with 23 of them appearing in the first edition of Le Père Goriot (1835). By the end of his La Comédie humaine cycle of novels, almost 600 recurring characters appeared in around 90 novels, creating an unmatched fictional universe.
Balzac was the first 19th century author to do this in an organized and ambitious way, but he was far from the last. Alexandre Dumas père linked together several of his novels into series as well as into an overarching universe, so that from 1844 onward his historical novels are often tied together by recurring characters. Beginning in 1859 Emile Gaboriau, who created the detective novel, crafted an entire universe of characters in his novels, often involving his series character "Monsieur Lecoq.” Paul Féval, greatest of the French pulp novelists, linked eight separate novels into the Les Habits Noir cycle, running from 1863-1875. Emile Zola did this as well, in twenty novels about the Second Empire and the Rougon and Macquart families, beginning in 1868.
The most notable example of this use of linked, reappearing characters was Jules Verne. Many non-French readers are unaware of the links between his books, thanks in large part to the many bad translations of his work and to a general ignorance of his less famous work, but Verne, like Balzac, Zola and Gaboriau before him, set many of his works, famous and less so, in the same universe:
The Adventures of Captain Hatteras (1864) refers to Journey to the Center of the Earth (1864); Journey to the Center of the Earth (1864) refers to both Captain Hatteras and to Five Weeks in a Balloon (1863); 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea (1869) refers to Hector Servadac and Journey to the Center of the Earth; The Mysterious Island (1870), the sequel to 20000 Leagues Under the Sea, refers to Captain Grant's Children (1867), _Five Weeks In A Balloon, Captain Hatteras, and Around the Moon (1870); The Far Country (1873) refers to Captain Hatteras; Hector Servadac (1877) and Black Indies (1877) refer to each other; The Clipper of the Clouds (1886) refers to The Begum's Fortune (1879) and to 20000 Leagues Under The Sea; Topsy Turvy (1889), a sequel to From The Earth To the Moon (1865), refers to The Robinsons' School (1882), Captain Hatteras, and Hector Servadac; and The Ice Sphinx (1897), Verne's sequel to Edgar Allen Poe's The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym, refers to 20000 Leagues Under the Sea.
Crossovers of this variety, in which one author had two of his series characters meet, grew more common during the heyday of dime novels, with Albert Aiken writing about Joe Phenix's pursuit of thingy Talbot, in Beadle’s New York Dime Library #419, in 1886, and Luis Senarens having Frank Reade, Jr. race Jack Wright for $10,000 in The Boys’ Star Library #375, in 1896. This continued during the years of the pulps, most notably with Edwy Searles Brooks, whose Norman Conquest, Dixon Hawke, Nelson Lee, Marko the Miracle Man, and Waldo the Wonder Man met (and often clashed) in a dizzying variety of crossovers.
The first truly modern crossover--that is, one in which characters from different creators are brought together in a story or novel by another creator--took place in 1872, when "Theopholis M'Crib" published Kennaquhair. A Narrative of Utopian Travel. Kennaquhair (a Scots word meaning an imaginary place) is a city in which various characters from fiction live, dying only when they are forgotten by the outside world. The narrator is escorted through Kennaquhair by Yorick and meets several fictional characters, including a number of thingyensians.
The next example, and one of the most stereotypical of its kind, appeared in 1897, when John Kendrick Bangs wrote the The Pursuit of the Houseboat, the sequel to his 1895 book A Houseboat On The River Styx. Houseboat was the book that spawned the phrase "Bangsian fantasy," or a fantasy of the afterlife in which the ghosts of various famous men and women come together and have various, usually genial, adventures. However, Houseboat featured the ghosts of real people, from Dr. Johnson to Shakespeare to Homer to Napoleon. Pursuit took this idea a step further and showed the ghosts of fictional characters, including Sherlock Holmes, Shylock, Lecoq, Hawkshaw, and Old Sleuth, interacting, trying to solve the mystery of the missing houseboat, and competing with each other.
Continued . . .
(with thanks to Jean-Marc Lofficier and Rick Lai)
Most modern consumers of popular culture are familiar with the concept of the crossover--that is, when characters or concepts from two or more discrete texts or series of texts meet. Today crossovers are, if not common, not so uncommon enough as to baffle readers or viewers. Most people understand the idea of Professor Moriarty appearing on a Star Trek holodeck, or Superman and Batman teaming up to stop the Joker and Lex Luthor, or Shaft appearing to help the Jack of Spades. But the concept of the crossover is much older than many people realize, and in fact goes back centuries.
The first real crossover is difficult to place. In a liberal definition we could start with the Greek myth of Jason and the Argonauts. The myth, which dates to the ninth or tenth century B.C.E., is about the hero Jason, who sails to Colchis in search of the Golden Fleece. Jason is accompanied by a band of fifty notable heroes on his ship, the Argo. The 50 heroes are the "noblest" of Greece and many, such as Castor, Polydeuces, and Hercules, are the subjects of myths of their own. While the origin of the myth of the Argonauts is unclear, there is some evidence that the myth’s author brought together the heroes of various disparate myths and performed what may be popular culture's first "team up."
This sort of crossover, where characters from folklore and legend meet in new stories, would be repeated over the centuries, with Lancelot du Lac being taken from the myths of Brittany and dragooned into Arthurian legend, and the legendary folk hero Judge Bao appearing in any number of Chinese myths from crime stories to flying swordsman epics. However, this syncretism of myth is clearly not the same as the modern popular culture crossover but is rather a precursor to it as were Virgil's Aeneid, where the ghosts of characters from Homer's Iliad speak with Aeneas, Lucian of Samosata's True History, where space travelers fly past Aristophanes' Cloudcuckooland, and Walter Savage Landor's Imaginary Conversations (1824), in which various historical and fictional characters converse.
The next significant kind of crossover began in 1834, when Honoré de Balzac finally articulated to himself the idea of making his individual novels part of a coherent whole, an individual fictional universe. Before that year his books had possessed an internal consistency, but it was in 1834 when he systematically began making use of recurring characters, with 23 of them appearing in the first edition of Le Père Goriot (1835). By the end of his La Comédie humaine cycle of novels, almost 600 recurring characters appeared in around 90 novels, creating an unmatched fictional universe.
Balzac was the first 19th century author to do this in an organized and ambitious way, but he was far from the last. Alexandre Dumas père linked together several of his novels into series as well as into an overarching universe, so that from 1844 onward his historical novels are often tied together by recurring characters. Beginning in 1859 Emile Gaboriau, who created the detective novel, crafted an entire universe of characters in his novels, often involving his series character "Monsieur Lecoq.” Paul Féval, greatest of the French pulp novelists, linked eight separate novels into the Les Habits Noir cycle, running from 1863-1875. Emile Zola did this as well, in twenty novels about the Second Empire and the Rougon and Macquart families, beginning in 1868.
The most notable example of this use of linked, reappearing characters was Jules Verne. Many non-French readers are unaware of the links between his books, thanks in large part to the many bad translations of his work and to a general ignorance of his less famous work, but Verne, like Balzac, Zola and Gaboriau before him, set many of his works, famous and less so, in the same universe:
The Adventures of Captain Hatteras (1864) refers to Journey to the Center of the Earth (1864); Journey to the Center of the Earth (1864) refers to both Captain Hatteras and to Five Weeks in a Balloon (1863); 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea (1869) refers to Hector Servadac and Journey to the Center of the Earth; The Mysterious Island (1870), the sequel to 20000 Leagues Under the Sea, refers to Captain Grant's Children (1867), _Five Weeks In A Balloon, Captain Hatteras, and Around the Moon (1870); The Far Country (1873) refers to Captain Hatteras; Hector Servadac (1877) and Black Indies (1877) refer to each other; The Clipper of the Clouds (1886) refers to The Begum's Fortune (1879) and to 20000 Leagues Under The Sea; Topsy Turvy (1889), a sequel to From The Earth To the Moon (1865), refers to The Robinsons' School (1882), Captain Hatteras, and Hector Servadac; and The Ice Sphinx (1897), Verne's sequel to Edgar Allen Poe's The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym, refers to 20000 Leagues Under the Sea.
Crossovers of this variety, in which one author had two of his series characters meet, grew more common during the heyday of dime novels, with Albert Aiken writing about Joe Phenix's pursuit of thingy Talbot, in Beadle’s New York Dime Library #419, in 1886, and Luis Senarens having Frank Reade, Jr. race Jack Wright for $10,000 in The Boys’ Star Library #375, in 1896. This continued during the years of the pulps, most notably with Edwy Searles Brooks, whose Norman Conquest, Dixon Hawke, Nelson Lee, Marko the Miracle Man, and Waldo the Wonder Man met (and often clashed) in a dizzying variety of crossovers.
The first truly modern crossover--that is, one in which characters from different creators are brought together in a story or novel by another creator--took place in 1872, when "Theopholis M'Crib" published Kennaquhair. A Narrative of Utopian Travel. Kennaquhair (a Scots word meaning an imaginary place) is a city in which various characters from fiction live, dying only when they are forgotten by the outside world. The narrator is escorted through Kennaquhair by Yorick and meets several fictional characters, including a number of thingyensians.
The next example, and one of the most stereotypical of its kind, appeared in 1897, when John Kendrick Bangs wrote the The Pursuit of the Houseboat, the sequel to his 1895 book A Houseboat On The River Styx. Houseboat was the book that spawned the phrase "Bangsian fantasy," or a fantasy of the afterlife in which the ghosts of various famous men and women come together and have various, usually genial, adventures. However, Houseboat featured the ghosts of real people, from Dr. Johnson to Shakespeare to Homer to Napoleon. Pursuit took this idea a step further and showed the ghosts of fictional characters, including Sherlock Holmes, Shylock, Lecoq, Hawkshaw, and Old Sleuth, interacting, trying to solve the mystery of the missing houseboat, and competing with each other.
Continued . . .