Abstract

Marie Corelli’s Popular Science Fiction and SF Criticism
David Charbonneau
The impetus for this research paper originates in an interest in the significance of the recent critical identification of Corelli with generic hybridity, specifically as it relates to conceptions of science fiction (SF) as a historical genre. I will argue that Marie Corelli wrote SF and will aim to show that this argumentative position is useful for understanding the history of SF as a concept, and for understanding the generic and discursive heterogeneity of Marie Corelli’s writing.
Pursuing the line of argument that Corelli wrote SF demands analysis of her idiosyncratic writings in relation to different conceptions of the genre and helps reveal SF as a historically contested generic concept. An examination of this proposition in the context of Corelli’s reception history will allow me to explore the construction of the generic category of SF, and the definition of its canon.
Secondly, the close readings of what I will identify as Corelli’s SF novels within the context of debates about SF as a genre allows me to highlight the distinctive formal qualities of Corelli’s SF as an unlikely combination of populist Victorian ideology, proto-feminism, heterodox Christianity, and scientific enthusiasm. In my analysis of three of Corelli’s novels—A Romance of Two Worlds, The Young Diana, and The Secret Power—I will demonstrate how Corelli’s unorthodox Christian worldview works to complicate normative conceptions and identifications of SF as a form.