Popular Culture Review Vol. 24, No. 1, Winter 2013 | Page 36

32 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,