With its extensive international distribution and lengthy publishing history, some scholars consider Ernst Haeckel’s Natürliche Schöpfungsgeschichte (1868) to have had a greater impact on the public’s reception of the theory of evolution than Charles Darwin’s Origin of Species (1859) (Oppenheimer, Jane M. 2016. Haeckel’s variations on Darwin. In Biological metaphor and cladistic classification , 123–136. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press; Richards, Robert J. 2008. The tragic sense of life: Ernst Haeckel and the struggle over evolutionary thought . Chicago: The University of Chicago Press: 223–224). The book was as provocative in its anti-clerical stance as it was in its scientific scope, claiming that evolution made “development” the “magical word” for solving all the riddles of our natural environment (Haeckel, Ernst. 1868a. Natürliche Schöpfungsgeschichte [Natural history of creation], 1st edn. Berlin: Georg Reimer: iv). This paper examines how Haeckel’s narrative strategies contributed to the book’s scandalous appeal and lasting reception. Its structural parallels to the biblical Genesis and its English translation – which omitted the fact that there was talk of a natural history of creation – suggest a deliberate blurring of theological and scientific registers, unsettling and attracting readers alike. On the one hand, the book garnered a wide following, especially among lay audiences and progressive cultural critics. On the other, it contributed to Haeckel’s marginalization in certain theological and scientific circles. Thus, analyzing Haeckel’s narrative reveals the careful balance required to deliberately “scandalize” narrative styles in order to make one’s case, whether in broader society or among specific readerships.
In this study, we analyze two instances of highly mediatized relations between producers of popular culture and their fans. We argue that in such relations, there is a narrative push and pull between creator and audience around rules of engagement: explicitly or implicitly stated agreements about what audiences may expect and creators are expected to deliver. Breaking these rules can be experienced as deeply shocking. Our first case is Bill Drummond, one half of the KLF, a British rave duo from the early 1990s infamous for exiting the music industry in 1992 by shooting blanks at the audience of the BRIT Awards and burning 1 pound million. Since then, Drummond has written two memoirs in which he describes, often with relish, how he is a disappointment to his fans. Our second case is HBO's Game of Thrones, which - like many big-budget television series - developed and capitalized on a massive fanbase, resulting in a strong aesthetic and value-driven investment among fans. These fans emphatically turned on the showrunners during the series' final season, furiously disappointed by what they saw as the show's failed storytelling, especially its finale. In the first case, fans are intentionally scandalized; in the second, certainly not.
Kate Elizabeth Russell's controversial novel My Dark Vanessa (2020) explores grooming, consent, and the delayed recognition of abuse through its protagonist's first-person narration. Through close reading, the study traces how Vanessa Wye's internal voice reframes coercion as love, rendering the abuse emotionally and cognitively inaccessible for much of her life. The central focus lies in analyzing how My Dark Vanessa uses normalization, romanticization, and the reversal of power dynamics to blur the protagonist's years-long experiences with her teacher, delaying and complicating the slow and painful recognition of abuse. Combining scandal theory with theories of unreliable narration, this article argues that Vanessa's unreliability stems not from deception but from the depth of her internalized grooming. Her narration - shaped by denial, affective bias, and distorted memory - functions to draw the reader into the same confusion that prolongs her silence. The novel's temporal shifts between 2000 and 2017 thereby mirror a changing cultural landscape shaped by the #MeToo movement, ultimately addressing ideas of agency, complicity, and power.
Epistolary fiction is commonly defined as a particular form of literary narrative that imitates letters or digital correspondence, for instance e-mail or communication via social media. Narratological studies of epistolarity have been preoccupied with identifying structural features that define this form of narrative and consequently distinguish epistolary fiction as a certain novelistic genre. This article argues that it can be problematic to approach epistolarity within a structuralist, narratological framework. The traditional view of epistolary fiction as a genre, assumed to be defined by specific formal constituents, is concerned with classification and this article demonstrates that generic labels often obscure how epistolarity functions in specific literary works, as exemplified in readings of Sam Lipsyte's Home Land (2004. Home land. New York: Picador) and George Saunders's "Ghoul" (2022. Liberation day. London: Bloomsbury Publishing). To examine the various ways in which contemporary authors utilize epistolary conventions and traditions, the article suggests that epistolarity should instead be approached as a rhetorical resource in literary fiction.
With its extensive international distribution and lengthy publishing history, some scholars consider Ernst Haeckel's Nat & uuml;rliche Sch & ouml;pfungsgeschichte (1868) to have had a greater impact on the public's reception of the theory of evolution than Charles Darwin's Origin of Species (1859) (Oppenheimer, Jane M. 2016. Haeckel's variations on Darwin. In Biological metaphor and cladistic classification, 123-136. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press; Richards, Robert J. 2008. The tragic sense of life: Ernst Haeckel and the struggle over evolutionary thought. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press: 223-224). The book was as provocative in its anti-clerical stance as it was in its scientific scope, claiming that evolution made "development" the "magical word" for solving all the riddles of our natural environment (Haeckel, Ernst. 1868a. Nat & uuml;rliche Sch & ouml;pfungsgeschichte [Natural history of creation], 1st edn. Berlin: Georg Reimer: iv). This paper examines how Haeckel's narrative strategies contributed to the book's scandalous appeal and lasting reception. Its structural parallels to the biblical Genesis and its English translation - which omitted the fact that there was talk of a natural history of creation - suggest a deliberate blurring of theological and scientific registers, unsettling and attracting readers alike. On the one hand, the book garnered a wide following, especially among lay audiences and progressive cultural critics. On the other, it contributed to Haeckel's marginalization in certain theological and scientific circles. Thus, analyzing Haeckel's narrative reveals the careful balance required to deliberately "scandalize" narrative styles in order to make one's case, whether in broader society or among specific readerships.
