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Populär Culture Review
our consciousness is as pervasive as it is essential, and still accounts for many a
conflict throughout the planet.
Parallel dimensions structured through religious narrations do serve a
definite social and cultural cohesive function rather than the pleasure principle;
however, we do find a strong sense of narrative tension and semiotic violence in
all of them, if for nothing eise than because literary authority had to be
established in the first place to capture and keep the attention of the would-be
faithful: Greek as well as Christian mythologies are indeed “literary,” for they
refer to another dimension which is constructed and transmitted in a semiotically
and aesthetically convincing manner.
Beyond the metaphysical realm, the importance and influence of the
literary multiverse upon human consciousness is itself the dominant theme of
several canonical works, as different as can be, for instance Don Quixote o f the
Mancha and Madame Bovary: whereas Cervantes’ novel is the story of a gentle
madman who loses himself into the parallel dimension evoked by chivalry
novels, Flaubert’s is that of an unfortunate bourgeois housewife who reads too
many romantic novels during her youth at the convent and dooms her life by
desperately trying to live the adventures they describe. In both cases, the
narrative tension is built upon the conflict that opposes an identifiable reality to
an imaginary parallel dimension, for both Don Quixote and Emma Bovary are
defined by their will and desire to inhabit another universe, that of the
wandering knights for Don Quixote and that of the romantic and passionate
lovers for Emma. Don Quixote o f the Mancha and Madame Bovary hence
present directly the theme of the literary parallel dimension, each relying upon a
solid literary tradition, chivalry books and romantic novels respectively, and
their considerable appeal throughout the Occidental world as well as their
undeniable canonical Status—both are indeed listed by Bloom—underline the
essential nature of the concept: the story of a human consciousness getting lost
into a parallel dimension created by literature has gathered a vast and very
diverse readership beyond cultures and languages, and still does to this day:
although the second part of Don Quixote, which is usually considered artistically
superior to the first by the critics, appears to have lost most of its textual
authority in the 21st Century, the first part (which actually includes the four parts
of what was supposedly a complete novel by itself) still remains susceptible to
establish a satisfactory, pleasurable contact with a modern readership. As to
Emma Bovary, she is, unfortunately, as current as ever.
The notion of parallel dimension—offen, although not always, more or
less in conflict with reality—constitutes in itself a recurrent theme in a great
variety of narrations and in different modes,22 from Lewis Carroll’s Alice in
Wonderland to Howard Philip Lovecraft’s “The Dunwich Horror,” from the
Wachoski Brothers’ The Matrix to Martin Campbell’s The Green Lantern. It
could even be considered as one of the most characteristic narrative Staples of
the fantastic mode, as illustrated by Lovecraft’s “The Call of Cthuhlu,” Clive
Barker’s WeaveWorld and Wes Craven’s Nightmare on Elm Street. Dreams,