Gloriana

Moorcock's writing oscillates between excellence and bullshit so dramatically and with such frequency that it's dizzying. Nowhere is this better exemplified then with this book, which was promised as courtly intrigue that takes place in Spencer's Fairy Queene. There are few things that could mar such an outstanding premise. One of those things is a persistent misogyny built into the very foundation of the plot.
Moorcock is a well poisoner. No one can ever write an erotic romp through a Shakespearean fantasy setting ever again. The ur-text of such a tantalizing genre is inescapably rape apologia.

A book that shows that Moorcock can really write and think.

This Gothic Elizabethan fantasy shows an alternate world (in which Moorcock specialises) which clearly, consciously or not in his successors' cases, is part of the same fantasy complexes of Philip Pullman, Neil Gaiman and the American Tim Powers. This is not steam-punk perhaps but sail-punk.

Hidden within the folds of the story (and Moorcock folds his stories in time and space like the folds of a rose) are some serious ruminations on power and myth, a theme running through so many of his works. In this case, the myth is that of Albion and what it is to be British - things never stated, only entered by stealth into the readers' soul.

Alan Moore does similar things in his graphic show more work and there is a school here of occult trickster nationalism exploiting the global market in a world of paradox and mirrors. John Dee, it would seem, still lives in the darker recesses of Anglo culture.

American capital so often transforms these myths into worldwide phenomena - as we have seen with Angelina Jolie's appearance in Beowulf - but one day somebody clever will expose its quiet influence on why many Britons have come to think so little of their leaders ... and why Americans still do not really understand their closest ally. Paradox and trickery ... a great book. show less

I read this for a book club, but it's the kind of book I like anyway.

Moorcock dedicated this book to the memory of Mervyn Peake, and it is indeed very Ghormanghastly. The huge palace with its complex of interlinked buildings and roofed-in alleyways, hidden rooms and secret passages behind the walls is a perfect setting for a tale of courtly intrigue, spying and seduction. I was glad to find that it has a straight-forward narrative, unlike some of his other books such as the Jerry Cornelius novels, where you have to keep your wits about you to keep up with what is going on.
The story is set in an alternative history version of Elizabethan England. Instead of England in the throes of the Reformation, we have Albion where Christianity and show more Islam do not appear to exist and it is still the pagan feasts of Yule and May Day that are celebrated at court. There are mentions of a 'High Tongue' that presumably is something other than Latin. Gloriana's empire encompasses the Americas and much of Asia, and the American diplomats at her court include representatives of the Sioux and the Aztecs as well as of the Europeans who have settled in Virginia.

"The corruption lies in the fact that a myth was used to manufacture an imitation of reality. Could Albion fall so swiftly if the foundations were secure?" show less

I genuinely didn’t think I was going to like this. I’ve only had one encounter with Michael Moorcock before and that was in my early teens, when I found a copy of Behold the Man among my dad’s 1970s sci-fi books in the attic, and was promptly traumatised. Not that I was religious or anything like that. I was just shocked to see Jesus and the Virgin Mary depicted in such a way. What an innocent I was. Youthful shocks have an impact, though, and I’ve steered away from Moorcock ever since, thinking him far too weird for me (I have the same feeling about Alasdair Gray). But times change. I recently found myself looking at Gloriana in the library. It was an allegory, a fable, a Tudor history set in an alternate universe, an show more Elizabethan extravaganza. Why not give it a shot? So I did. And, Reader, I liked it. There was one scene I didn’t like, true, but for the most part I was utterly absorbed by this sprawling, dense jungle of a book, which wears its affection for Mervyn Peake’s Gormenghast very clearly on its sleeve. A seething stew of sex and sycophancy, full of tunnels and intrigue and secrets and bravos and debauchery and honour and twisted goodness and dreams and hope and horror… it defies description...

Nevertheless, I try. For the blog post, see here:
https://theidlewoman.net/2019/02/01/gloriana-michael-moorcock/ show less

One of Moorcock's best novels and so a classic of fantasy. A symbolic tale beautifully structured around the four seasons. The main influences are Mervyn Peake and the decadent writers of the late 19th Century, but Moorcock creates something original out of these; an alternative 'Elizabethan' London dominated by a palace of complex dimensions that rivels Gormanghast and a Queen (Gloriania) both with human emotions and symbolic of virtue.

Moorcock has posited himself as the rebel of fantasy, sapping the high walls built by Howard and Tolkien. He is a well-spoken and thoughtful critic of the complete lack of romance in either of these would-be romances, but the love in Gloriana's court is anything but courtly.

There is a delightful Quentin Crisp quote about how innovation is not 'seeing your neighbor to the left has a straight walk and your neighbor to the right a curved and thence making your own diagonal', suffice it to say that contrariness is not the mother of invention.

Moorcock's Elric was, in many ways, written to be contrary; to be the antithesis of the fantasy that came before. However, Moorcock is not being contrary in this case. In fact, he's not even being show more particularly original. In most regards, Gloriana reads like an abridged Elizabethan take on Peake's Gormenghast books (which, incidentally, are the origin of Crisp's quotation, by way of his introduction).

Gloriana is considered by highfalutin Moorcock fans to be perhaps his most remarkable and original work. It is certainly in no way genre Fantasy, and though the characters may not be easy to empathize with, you certainly won't be stuck resenting them for flimsily facaded archetypes.

Though they are not based upon those same silly cliches, they are still immediately as one-dimensional and unchanging. The book is really nothing so much as an eroticized rewrite of Peake, and Moorcock does not have the capacious wit necessary to evoke Peake. It is more of a fond imitation than a reimagining.

That being said, it takes a skilled writer to draw any comparisons to Peake, even when that's precisely what they are trying to do.

The book will also teach you the word 'seraglio'; a one which I hope to have more and more a need to use in the future, hopefully in the same sentence as 'odalisque'. show less

Elizabethan but not Elizabeth~she is unfufilled because she cannot be fufilled (no matter how hard she tries~and believe me she tries.) Starts off wonderfully, then sort of devolves~a little too degenerate but very interesting at that