The Erl King

Last lesson we discussed Rosie King...erm...I mean the Erl King. Darn it. I've started yet another blog post with yet another bad joke. Sorry...again. I'll get on with it now.



Yes, we read the poem 'Der Erlkonig' and spoke about the origins of the Erl-King story and myth. The fact that there is a history to the Erl-King myth is, perhaps, one of the reasons it works well within Carter's collection of stories as the idea of old tales handed down through generations, folklore and myths is key to both the gothic and fairytale genres. The fact that the old stories have been heard before in other forms adds to the mysticism and history...The Erl King seems to be a figure, like Bluebeard, that is synonymous with the gothic genre and is an inspiration for many novels, stories e.t.c...Bluebeard, for example, is referenced both in The Bloody Chamber and in the Phantom of the Opera.



I've finished reading the Phantom of the Opera now and although I'll try not to waffle on about it as it's not one of our texts, it does link quite well with the story of the Erl King. Just as in the Erl King, the open setting of the forest is made to feel claustrophobic and like a trap ('the woods enclose and enclose again', 'you are no longer in the open air; the wood swallows you up'), this is how Raoul and the Persian are tortured in Phantom...the torture chamber is hexagonal in shape with mirrors on the six walls and the image of a forest (and then a desert) are reflected onto the walls - rather than being a physical torture chamber (as the bloody chamber is), the torture is psychological (Raoul and the Persian are driven mad by the 'forest effect' as they are tricked into believing they're in a wide expanse when they're actually trapped...ok, I probably haven't explained it that well but what I'm trying to say is that the torture chamber links in with the other gothic texts we've studied...the fact torture is psychological links with all the other texts, the fact that the open-exapanse-yet-trapped feeling ties in with the Earl King and the mirrors in the torture chamber can be linked to the mirrors in the Marquis' bedroom in 'The Bloody Chamber'...which opens up a new meaning with regard to the Marquis' bedroom...another torture chamber of sorts. Also, in Dracula, Jonathan's description of the winding Transylvanian mountains (the Carpathians?) encorporates description of the landscape and mountains trapping and engulfing. The idea of being trapped psychologically as well as physically seems key to the gothic genre.

We discussed the gothic and fairytale elements of the original Erl-King poem and then analysed the narrative style of Carter's version. We spoke about the interesting switches that take place between 1st, 2nd and 3rd person narrative...with readers being drawn in through use of second person, giving a timeless and fairytale theme to the tale. An interesting point that was addressed during discussion of the poem was the fact that the child and the adult's views on the Earl King myth differed...the imaginative child believed whereas the father did not (initially)...again, as in Dracula, thi is a display of the typically gothic logic vs. mysticism argument and the 'The Erl King' adds a new dimension to this by suggested children are more inclined to accept the unexplained and the mystical than adults. This is, perhaps, why Carter's gothic/fairytale combination works so well as both genres are reliant on the reader's imaginination and suspension of disbelief - something which is addressed in Carter's The Erl King when it is said that the yound girl was 'trapped in her own illusion'...in reading and buying into gothic tales and fairytales, one could argue that the reader is 'trapping themself in their own illusion' by believing in the mystical world...the fear, again, is psychological. It's all the mind.....wooooo. I think I'll leave it there for now...I'm sorry if this blog hasn't made any sense...I've just been thinking as I go.