Wieland
by Charles Brockden Brown
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Description
Wieland, named by his father after a German nickname for the devil, inherits both his father's estate and religious susceptibility. His idyllic rural life is disrupted when he falls prey to the ventriloquist Carwin, who convinces Wieland that a divine voice is commanding him to slaughter his family. He is tried for the murders of his wife and children, for which he expresses no remorse. He later escapes prison in an attempt to kill his sister Clara, who narrates the story. Clara and Carwin show more have an ambiguous relationship of attraction and repulsion. Brown's work was an important precursor to such Gothic masters as Edgar Allan Poe and Mary Shelley. show lessTags
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Member Reviews
Resulta curioso que la primera novela norteamericana, se encuadre dentro del gótico americano, y además pertenezca a la corriente del Psycho Killer, la literatura de psicópatas, que ha llegado hasta nuestros días. Escrita en 1798, ‘Wieland, o la Transformación’ (Wieland; or, The Transformation), está escrita por Charles Brockden Brown, considerado el primer escritor profesional americano, y fue la precursora de una corriente que va a llevar a Nathaniel Hawthorne, Edgar Allan Poe, Henry James, y todo lo que vino después, con Stephen King, Thomas Ligotti, etc.
En ‘Wieland’, nos encontramos fanatismo religioso, la América puritana, la psique escindida, el oír voces que impulsan a matar, el germen de todo eso que show more posteriormente nos vamos a encontrar en tantas novelas y películas. Frente al gótico europeo, el gótico americano cambia de escenario: pasamos del castillo y la abadía, a las mansiones y los caserones, que marcarán a tantos escritores posteriormente. ‘Wieland’ es la raíz hacia un contexto diferente al que se había conocido hasta ese momento. Un fanatismo religioso que desemboca en crimen, en masacre; el psicópata que actúa en función de unas voces que se lo ordenan.
La historia está contada por Clara Wieland de forma epistolar y, si bien tiene un comienzo algo lento, narrando los orígenes de la familia Wieland, más adelante tienen lugar una serie de sucesos extraños y misteriosos que alterarán la vida de Clara y sus allegados de forma terrible.
El libro se cierra con un relato, ‘Memorias de Carwin, el Biloquista’, que sirve al lector para completar lo leído en ‘Wieland’.
En resumen, se trata de un gran novela, excelentemente escrita (o traducida). show less
En ‘Wieland’, nos encontramos fanatismo religioso, la América puritana, la psique escindida, el oír voces que impulsan a matar, el germen de todo eso que show more posteriormente nos vamos a encontrar en tantas novelas y películas. Frente al gótico europeo, el gótico americano cambia de escenario: pasamos del castillo y la abadía, a las mansiones y los caserones, que marcarán a tantos escritores posteriormente. ‘Wieland’ es la raíz hacia un contexto diferente al que se había conocido hasta ese momento. Un fanatismo religioso que desemboca en crimen, en masacre; el psicópata que actúa en función de unas voces que se lo ordenan.
La historia está contada por Clara Wieland de forma epistolar y, si bien tiene un comienzo algo lento, narrando los orígenes de la familia Wieland, más adelante tienen lugar una serie de sucesos extraños y misteriosos que alterarán la vida de Clara y sus allegados de forma terrible.
El libro se cierra con un relato, ‘Memorias de Carwin, el Biloquista’, que sirve al lector para completar lo leído en ‘Wieland’.
En resumen, se trata de un gran novela, excelentemente escrita (o traducida). show less
A most peculiar book, 'Wieland' (1798) has rightly been positioned as America's first Gothick novel. It emerges from within the fashionable English tradition. Indeed, what strikes one straight away is that the America of Brockden Brown's novel is just the old world on the other side of an ocean.
America is not yet the United States (the story is set in the late colonial period). Characters move freely between New England (and the South) and both England and Europe. The German references are probably a nod to the German uncanny.
The style at its best has all the dignity of Augustan classicism but at its worst is circumlocutory and posturing. One of its fascinating features is the tension between an affectation of rational discourse and show more what amounts to high emotional hysteria in the plot and its telling.
There is nothing supernatural yet a form of proto-transcendentalist religiosity drives the narrative. Madness comes from abandoning sense and classical moderation and allowing the passions and imagination to let loose horrors. The story is absurd but, it implies, no more absurd than 'enthusiasm'
These horrors are psychological and physical. Behaviours become violent and criminal because of madness and of misunderstandings that might be comical in the hands of Moliere but become tragic in the hands of Brockden Brown. A lot of very good people die including two small children.
It has been noted that Brockden Brown is interested in the effect of 'what appears to be' in the minds of people rather than of rationally assessed sense impressions so that the story can be seen as a precursor to the interest in the unconscious and in suggestion of a century later.
The story is bleak. The heroine Clara is a repressed romantic girl who can (unfairly) blame herself for lacking 'ordinary equanimity and foresight'. The blissful world of the Wieland-Pleyel household collapses from misadventure and the malignity of others.
The villains and the irresponsible seem to get away with their crimes with no judgement from God or man although they may not profit from them. If one destroys himself, another survives to live a quiet life as a farmer and another, Maxwell the seducer, kills and is not killed.
The greatest horrors (the murder of a happy family) come from an insane belief in an angelic voice but there are also examples of sociopathy unavenged ranging from intent to rape to the cowardly murder of a gentleman and on through to the seductions of the weak by the manipulative.
Yes, there is eventually a happy ending of sorts but only after a very long run of bad Job-like experiences for Clara in particular. The book is also notable for its portrayal of psychological states like religious mania, guilt and black depressive grief.
As a novel of ideas (despite the inherent implausibility of the way that the action is moved forward through a form of ventriloquism), 'Wieland' is interesting but the style certainly becomes truly leaden at times and its hysteria makes it hard to make it relevant to our century.
An important literary curiosity, it can be read as an American way station between the English Gothick and the more effective horror tale created by Edgar Allan Poe although (in the late 1790s) 'Wieland' is still far more European than it is obviously American other than in its location.
Perhaps what is truly American is the interest in emotional religion. By this time, despite popular Methodism, English culture had fully rationalised itself into Anglicanism and a gentle scepticism but 'Puritan' and 'new religious' sensibilities had escaped to the New World and still flourished.
We might also see a similarity between Lovecraft's Anglocentric ideal of American eighteenth century culture and the world of 'Wieland'. It is as if a rearguard action, both rational and unhinged, against weird religion defines some American weird fiction - for Reason in 1798 and for Science in the 1920s.
In England, over this and the subsequent decades, weird religion as source of horror was seen in terms of Catholicism and the Inquisition ('The Monk' (1796), 'Melmoth the Wanderer' (1820)) so it is interesting that contesting enthusiastic religion and superstition can be so central to the Gothick.
All in all, a book worth struggling through for those interested in the Gothick and in early American literature but probably not one for the modern general reader. It is more a case of 'if you liked Ann Radcliffe, you might like this'. show less
America is not yet the United States (the story is set in the late colonial period). Characters move freely between New England (and the South) and both England and Europe. The German references are probably a nod to the German uncanny.
The style at its best has all the dignity of Augustan classicism but at its worst is circumlocutory and posturing. One of its fascinating features is the tension between an affectation of rational discourse and show more what amounts to high emotional hysteria in the plot and its telling.
There is nothing supernatural yet a form of proto-transcendentalist religiosity drives the narrative. Madness comes from abandoning sense and classical moderation and allowing the passions and imagination to let loose horrors. The story is absurd but, it implies, no more absurd than 'enthusiasm'
These horrors are psychological and physical. Behaviours become violent and criminal because of madness and of misunderstandings that might be comical in the hands of Moliere but become tragic in the hands of Brockden Brown. A lot of very good people die including two small children.
It has been noted that Brockden Brown is interested in the effect of 'what appears to be' in the minds of people rather than of rationally assessed sense impressions so that the story can be seen as a precursor to the interest in the unconscious and in suggestion of a century later.
The story is bleak. The heroine Clara is a repressed romantic girl who can (unfairly) blame herself for lacking 'ordinary equanimity and foresight'. The blissful world of the Wieland-Pleyel household collapses from misadventure and the malignity of others.
The villains and the irresponsible seem to get away with their crimes with no judgement from God or man although they may not profit from them. If one destroys himself, another survives to live a quiet life as a farmer and another, Maxwell the seducer, kills and is not killed.
The greatest horrors (the murder of a happy family) come from an insane belief in an angelic voice but there are also examples of sociopathy unavenged ranging from intent to rape to the cowardly murder of a gentleman and on through to the seductions of the weak by the manipulative.
Yes, there is eventually a happy ending of sorts but only after a very long run of bad Job-like experiences for Clara in particular. The book is also notable for its portrayal of psychological states like religious mania, guilt and black depressive grief.
As a novel of ideas (despite the inherent implausibility of the way that the action is moved forward through a form of ventriloquism), 'Wieland' is interesting but the style certainly becomes truly leaden at times and its hysteria makes it hard to make it relevant to our century.
An important literary curiosity, it can be read as an American way station between the English Gothick and the more effective horror tale created by Edgar Allan Poe although (in the late 1790s) 'Wieland' is still far more European than it is obviously American other than in its location.
Perhaps what is truly American is the interest in emotional religion. By this time, despite popular Methodism, English culture had fully rationalised itself into Anglicanism and a gentle scepticism but 'Puritan' and 'new religious' sensibilities had escaped to the New World and still flourished.
We might also see a similarity between Lovecraft's Anglocentric ideal of American eighteenth century culture and the world of 'Wieland'. It is as if a rearguard action, both rational and unhinged, against weird religion defines some American weird fiction - for Reason in 1798 and for Science in the 1920s.
In England, over this and the subsequent decades, weird religion as source of horror was seen in terms of Catholicism and the Inquisition ('The Monk' (1796), 'Melmoth the Wanderer' (1820)) so it is interesting that contesting enthusiastic religion and superstition can be so central to the Gothick.
All in all, a book worth struggling through for those interested in the Gothick and in early American literature but probably not one for the modern general reader. It is more a case of 'if you liked Ann Radcliffe, you might like this'. show less
Our ancestors sought different pleasures in their reading than we do. Realism? That's what daily life is for. Authentic dialogue? Contrived eloquence is more pleasing. Plausibility? Thrills and towering passions are better. One should not merely "read" this book; one should "earnestly betake oneself to perusal" of it. There's one thing it has in common with modern-day thrillers: The protagonists are all superbly gifted, resourceful, and good-looking. Make that two things: The author seeks to spice up the tale with borrowings from the latest science. The book appeared in 1798, so that means the latest dope on spontaneous combustion, mania, and the obscure but powerful art of "ventrilocution."
N.B. The title character is a fictional show more cousin of a real German Romantic author (often forgotten today) named Christoph Martin Wieland. You might look him up. show less
N.B. The title character is a fictional show more cousin of a real German Romantic author (often forgotten today) named Christoph Martin Wieland. You might look him up. show less
This is very firmly a late-18th/early-19th century novel, but shouldn’t be shied away from as boring or staid. Yes, there is a perfect and pure heroine who faints away from time to time, but really the narrative is almost entirely plot-driven and a real page-turner. Setting a gothic romance among American Quakers proves to be an interesting conceit, as is allowing the swooning heroine to narrate the whole thing herself. The tale also has many elements of the mystery, and Carwin’s long soliloquy presages in many ways the final scene of a detective novel, where the investigator reveals everything and all becomes so suddenly obvious. (That explanation, in this case, may seem to us a bit silly but I understand it was much more exciting show more in 1798.) Those who follow the 50-page rule (of which I seriously disapprove) may not make it out of the initial exposition and into the real story, which would be a shame, because soon enough the plot takes a much more exciting and breathless turn.
This was not just an enjoyable and unusual execution of the gothic novel, but simply a good read, and a fascinating precursor to other American writers like Edgar Allen Poe.
(More at http://www.bibliographing.com/2008/09/15/wieland-or-the-transformation-an-americ... ) show less
This was not just an enjoyable and unusual execution of the gothic novel, but simply a good read, and a fascinating precursor to other American writers like Edgar Allen Poe.
(More at http://www.bibliographing.com/2008/09/15/wieland-or-the-transformation-an-americ... ) show less
An american gothic thriller. Quite close to giving this 4 stars but it does take quite a while to get going. It was almost exactly half-way through that things finally started to get to a the point. The story builds up quite a bit of tension despite the rather formal language.
It's a surprisingly modern tale in terms of its violence, i suppose other gothic works like [b: Castle of Otranto|12923|The Castle of Otranto|Horace Walpole|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1390597628s/12923.jpg|46432] and [b: Vathek|859694|Vathek|William Beckford|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1338907992s/859694.jpg|980687] are violent too but its done in a much more over the top and less recognizable way. This felt in parts like an episode of Criminal Minds.
The show more resolution and final reveal are much better than i was expecting however the explanation doesn't re-iterate past events with any detail, so if you weren't paying attention before it won't do you much good.
If you want a properly dark and tragic mystery this might be for you, if you can get past the vocabulary. Also the very end is a sort of epilogue and felt quite pointless and a bit of a let down after the earlier climax.
This is still pretty shocking in places for a modern audience, i can't imagine how it must have been received in 1798. show less
It's a surprisingly modern tale in terms of its violence, i suppose other gothic works like [b: Castle of Otranto|12923|The Castle of Otranto|Horace Walpole|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1390597628s/12923.jpg|46432] and [b: Vathek|859694|Vathek|William Beckford|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1338907992s/859694.jpg|980687] are violent too but its done in a much more over the top and less recognizable way. This felt in parts like an episode of Criminal Minds.
The show more resolution and final reveal are much better than i was expecting however the explanation doesn't re-iterate past events with any detail, so if you weren't paying attention before it won't do you much good.
If you want a properly dark and tragic mystery this might be for you, if you can get past the vocabulary. Also the very end is a sort of epilogue and felt quite pointless and a bit of a let down after the earlier climax.
This is still pretty shocking in places for a modern audience, i can't imagine how it must have been received in 1798. show less
This 1798 novel has been described as the first American gothic novel. The language is very dense and complicated and it took me some 5 days to read despite being only 200 pages long. The story involves the relationships between a small group of mostly related people and some bizarre incidents over disembodied voices and strange flashes that drive the group apart and lead to tragedy. I found the solution to the mystery rather unclear and unconvincing, and wasn't sure what to make of Carwin's role. The last few pages about the story of some minor characters was an odd way to end the book as well.
This book is bonkers and fantastic and gets bogged down in the middle and sincerely freaked me out a few times.
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Author Information
Charles Brockden Brown was born on January 17, 1771 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. After he completed his schooling in 1787, he began apprenticing at the law offices of Alexander Wilcocks and pursued literary interests. When he was 18, he published his first literary works: the Rhapsodist sketches, which appeared anonymously in the Columbian show more Magazine, and a poem entitled An Inscription for General Washington's Tomb Stone, which appeared in the State Gazette of North Carolina. In 1793, he abandoned the law to attempt a life of letters. Within four years, between 1789 and 1801, he published six novels: Wieland, Ormand, Arthur Mervyn, Edgar Huntly, Clara Howard and Jane Talbot. He died of tuberculosis on February 22, 1810. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
Some Editions
Awards and Honors
Series
Belongs to Publisher Series
insel taschenbuch (1686)
Work Relationships
Common Knowledge
- Canonical title
- Wieland
- Original title
- Wieland, or, The transformation; Wieland; or, the Transformation
- Original publication date
- 1798-09
- People/Characters
- Clara Wieland; Theodore Wieland; Henry Pleyel; Carwin; Catharine Pleyel Wieland
- Important places
- Mettingen; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA; Pennsylvania, USA
- Epigraph
- From Virtue's blissful paths away
The double-tongued are sure to stray;
Good is a forth-right journey still,
And mazy paths but lead to ill. - First words
- Advertisement: The following Work is delivered to the world as the first of a series of performances, which the favorable reception of this will induce the Writer to publish.
Wieland, Chapter 1:
I feel little reluctance in complying with your request.
Memoirs of Carwin:
I was the second son of a farmer, whose place of residence was a western district of Pennsylvania. - Last words
- (Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)Wieland:
If Wieland had framed juster notions of moral duty, and of the divine attributes; or if I had been gifted with ordinary equanimity or foresight, the double-tongued deceiver would have been baffled and repelled.
(Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)Memoirs of Carwin:
How Ludloe came into possession of this paper; how he was apprised of incidents, to which only the female mentioned and myself were privy; which she had too good reason to hide from all the world, and which I had taken infinite pains to bury in oblivion, I vainly endeavoured to conjecture. - Canonical DDC/MDS
- 813.2
Classifications
Statistics
- Members
- 432
- Popularity
- 70,829
- Reviews
- 10
- Rating
- (3.26)
- Languages
- English, German, Spanish
- Media
- Paper, Audiobook, Ebook
- ISBNs
- 50
- UPCs
- 1
- ASINs
- 18
