Animal Magnetism and Modern Mystery Fiction-Exploring Moore’s God of the Woods as a Revelational Mystery | ||||
| حوليات أداب عين شمس | ||||
| Volume 53, Issue 7 - Serial Number 2, April 2025, Page 330-349 PDF (331.77 K) | ||||
| Document Type: المقالة الأصلية | ||||
| DOI: 10.21608/aafu.2025.358101.1829 | ||||
 View on SCiNiTO | ||||
| Author | ||||
Ziead Al-Khafaf 
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| Middle Technical University / Technical College of Management | ||||
| Abstract | ||||
| Moore’s God of the Woods is a modern-day magnum opus in the genre of mystery fiction. Told from more than six different points-of-view and spanning five different time periods, the novel is an arduous attempt by Moore to pose a mysterious and intellectual challenge to the reader, all the while keeping its logical and aesthetic integrity intact. This has been no easy feat, and to achieve the aforementioned balance of logic and aesthetic, Moore seems to have incorporated the trope of animal magnetism, originally employed by eighteenth-century writers of mystery fiction and eventually shunned once the theory of animal magnetism was debunked as a hoax by the nineteenth-century scientific community. With the refutation of the theory of animal magnetism more broadly known as mesmerism, the practice of employing it as a trope in mystery novels also died out, making most modern-day mysteries primarily logical and investigative in nature. Interestingly, Moore’s recourse to this trope in God of the Woods leads to some fascinating conclusions. The study depicts how Moore uses animal magnetism not only as an aesthetic trope but also as a motif to help sustain the novel as a revelational mystery, whereby, despite cracking the code, the resolution continues to remain demystified and a moment of intrigue for the reader. | ||||
| Keywords | ||||
| animal magnetism; crime fiction; mesmerism; mystery; revelational mystery | ||||
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