“A Melancholy Meditation on the False Millennium”

Edward Gorey’s works are commonly set within a hybrid Victorian/ Edwardian period and often elicit further confusion by containing comically anachronistic details nonsensical approach to time, all of which leads characteristic “bewildering temporality” (Shortsleeve 2018: 104). As this paper shows with examples from The Broken Spoke (1976), Object- Lesson (1958), Water Flowers Gorey employs manipulations temporal boundaries the framework nonsense, such as simultaneity, digression, repetition, suggest timelessness infinity. These devices that necessarily draw reader’s attention form, structure, pattern works, same is true his intertextual quotation rearrangement time-related motifs other texts, in case parodic transplantation Charles Dickens’ device time-traveling ghosts (The Haunted Tea-Cosy, 1997). Nevertheless, despite self-referential flaunting frequently accomplish seriocomic tone complicates any simplified reading tales exclusively humorous. This effect, has elicited descriptions work “radiat[ing] melancholy an existential unease” (Kindley 2018), some extent accomplished relatively frequent depiction apparitions, inherently point toward question indicating both past future. concludes exploring what implications bidirectional movement can have on experience when encountering mysterious spectres.