Dante's 9 Circles of Hell (in a more square-like format)

August 31, 2017 12:22 AM

The Norton Critical Edition's Periodic Table of Literary Villains
posted by invisible ink (22 comments total)

Needs to be an easily obtainable, reasonably priced poster (FOR MY WALL!)...
posted by Samizdata at 2:04 AM on August 31, 2017 [5 favorites]

Needs more simony.
posted by Bromius at 3:21 AM on August 31, 2017 [2 favorites]

Dracula isn't motivated by Violence; he's Lust and Contagion.

I also liked the note at the bottom that Morlocks had appeared in an Alan Moore comic. I wouldn't bet folding money against anyone on this table having avoided Moore's magpie gaze.
posted by GenjiandProust at 3:24 AM on August 31, 2017 [5 favorites]

This is quite good, especially given its promotional character, though one or two of the entries is/are questionable. North and South? Really? (Hell, why does that have a Critical Edition?) And while to modern eyes he's a monstrous character, Petruchio's not really used as a "villain" in The Taming of the Shrew. Including the Red Queen from Alice seems more inspired by Burton's movies than by the book, where she's antagonistic, but really just part of the madness of Wonderland in general.

Its'a shame Norton doesn't have a critical edition of The Woman in White, or we'd have gotten Count Fosco, surely one of the great literary villains of all time.

Why lump Fagin in with Sikes, or include him at all given the nasty anti-Semitism of that character? If you're going with Dickens, surely the likes of Dolge Orlick or Mr. Gradgrind would be stronger choices.
posted by kewb at 3:50 AM on August 31, 2017 [6 favorites]

Needs more 20th Century. But then the Snopes would fill up the fraud section all by themselves.
posted by tommyD at 3:59 AM on August 31, 2017 [1 favorite]

No Aaron from Titus Andronicus? Not even with the "nothing grieves me heartily indeed" speech right before he is executed?
posted by King Bee at 4:34 AM on August 31, 2017 [3 favorites]

I have to pity the poor deity that would try to hold Lady Bracknell in Limbo and expose her to comment from the truly damned. Lady Bracknell certainly didn't think only of herself, the whole of society was her concern. A villain? Pish-posh, she's the heroine of the piece. She's the catalyst for Jack becoming truly Ernest and brings all the young lovers together through her unmatched knowledge of correct behavior. If there is a villain in the piece it certainly would have to be the rather careless and more than usual revoltingly sentimental Miss Prism who did not evince having any notion of proper care for either perambulators or handbags. A most unfortunate woman.
posted by gusottertrout at 5:32 AM on August 31, 2017 [6 favorites]

North and South? Really? (Hell, why does that have a Critical Edition?)

From a purely stylistic point of view, I'm sympathetic to this argument. And I'd rather read "Middlemarch" than "Cranford" pretty much any day of the week. But Elizabeth Gaskell is pretty regularly anthologized. She was a pretty well-regarded social realist (I'm pretty sure I first encountered her in a class I took on the History of the Industrial Revolution) and was a woman of letters writing novels about the poor and the working class at a time when there weren't many well-regarded women of letters doing so (at least writing in English, and on that side of the Atlantic).

"North and South" doesn't offer much in the way of nuance, but it's not a bad story. And certainly that Richard Armitage-starring BBC adaptation a few years back has not hurt its popularity, especially for fans of handsome brooding industrialists with Northern accents who are willing to admit they are wrong about the working conditions of the poor to impress a lady.

On a completely different note, I get the "greed" thing, but I struggle with Kate Croy and Jason Compson in the same category of anything. And, Angelo from "Measure for Measure?" He was the worst.
posted by thivaia at 6:11 AM on August 31, 2017 [2 favorites]

Our present Victorian canon reflects the history of Victorianism, among the most Marxist of literary disciplines (credit Raymond Williams, E.P. Thompson, Terry Eagleton, and to a lesser extent Fredric Jameson). As such there has been a longstanding interest in shifting modes of production during the period. However, there are only a handful of Victorian novels by major authors in which industrialism and the changing working class are more than secondary concerns. The eminence of North and South has in part to do with this scarcity. I mean, shit, people often read Sybil for the same reason, and that book is actually dreadful whereas North and South is merely less than delightful.
posted by vathek at 6:36 AM on August 31, 2017 [4 favorites]

For some reason I was thinking of the inane John Jakes trilogy about the American Civil War, also called North and South. No idea why I didn't remember Gaskell's work of the same title, which certainly merits a Critical Edition on historical importance.
posted by kewb at 7:54 AM on August 31, 2017 [1 favorite]

Lord, Sybil is terrible. Exhibit A in "Why Politicians Should Not Write Novels."
posted by thivaia at 8:00 AM on August 31, 2017

Hmmm. I suppose Tulkinghorn does belong in "fraud," if you stick him with the false counsellors down in 8.

If the reader believes what they're told about Peter Quint, shouldn't he also be with the false counsellors?

The Queen of Hearts is more wrath than violence, though.

They have nobody from Ford Madox Ford's The Good Soldier on their chart, despite having it in NCE. Now, that's a missed opportunity.
posted by thomas j wise at 8:15 AM on August 31, 2017 [1 favorite]

The amazing thing about this is learning that Peter Quint and Miss Jessel are the most abundant villains in the Universe - everywhere you turn, they're screwing.
posted by the quidnunc kid at 9:56 AM on August 31, 2017 [2 favorites]

Also, nuclear fusion turns them into Mrs. Bertha Dorset, which seems vaguely appropriate. House of Mirth is certainly a noble gas.
posted by kewb at 10:55 AM on August 31, 2017 [2 favorites]

I want to like this, because it reminds me so fondly of college as an English major.

But. Authors. So. White. And. Male.
posted by desuetude at 11:19 AM on August 31, 2017 [1 favorite]

pedantic, i know

I enjoyed this, but I am almost always a little disappointed at "Periodic Table of...." efforts, because the Periodic Table is one of the great Graphic Displays of Information. Everything means something, and, assuming you understand its principles, it pushes a ton of information to you at a glance -- you know things about structure and properties and so on -- and a table like the Periodic Table should be predictive. What kind of Villain is coming next? This table can't tell you, so it is a pale pale shade.

*pant pant*

Then I pull myself together and remind myself that it's fun and pretty, and I let it go. But still...
posted by GenjiandProust at 11:35 AM on August 31, 2017 [5 favorites]

I'm trying to get my mind around the uncritical-adoption-of-the-narrator's-POV approach required to classify Odette as a villain, rather than a woman being hassled by a dude who bought her and then couldn't bear the idea that she'd previously been for sale. Probably the creator wanted to include Albertine, but couldn't quite get past the whole semi-imprisonment-in-M's-home bit.

Also, I reject Kate Croy as villain. Her aunt, maybe.
posted by praemunire at 12:15 PM on August 31, 2017 [1 favorite]

> I'm trying to get my mind around the uncritical-adoption-of-the-narrator's-POV approach required to classify Odette as a villain, rather than a woman being hassled by a dude who bought her and then couldn't bear the idea that she'd previously been for sale. Probably the creator wanted to include Albertine, but couldn't quite get past the whole semi-imprisonment-in-M's-home bit. Also, I reject Kate Croy as villain. Her aunt, maybe.

Ha, I quibble with a lot of the villainy of these villains, but considering that my undergrad thesis paper was a defense of the character of Richard III, that's basically just a thing that I do.
posted by desuetude at 12:40 PM on August 31, 2017

Now these were fun.
Good on them for including both revenge tragedies and Gothic novels.
posted by doctornemo at 2:20 PM on August 31, 2017

Some of these titles just lend themselves to modern adaptations:

* The House of Meth
* Uncle Don's Cabin
* The Wings of the Drone
* Virtual Paradise Lost
* King Zuck
posted by billsaysthis at 8:01 PM on August 31, 2017 [1 favorite]

Hotspur is not in the same class as Satan or Richard III. Not even close. Putting him there is like putting lithium in the translanthanides.

They are going with "treachery" but that wasn't his main characteristic. Fought against his king, but was loyal to his father, after all. Maybe violence, but it was all military. Maybe just limbo.

You can might be thinking you go down to the "lowest level" of the worst sin you committed but that's not how it works. Dido committed suicide but was in the relatively benign "lust" circle.
posted by mark k at 10:35 PM on August 31, 2017

Lord, Sybil is terrible. Exhibit A in "Why Politicians Should Not Write Novels."

Wait. WHAT?

Schreiber was a journalist. Not a politician I could see.

Not disagreeing on the quality, though.
posted by Samizdata at 4:11 AM on September 1, 2017