Brocken Spectre

[bulb]

Mitchell, Susan. "Dark Interpreter: Literary Uses of the Brocken Spectre
from Coleridge to Pynchon." Dalhousie Review Vol. 87.2, Summer 2007,
167-187.

Essay including explaining Brocken Spectre.
Here's an excerpt: "The essay's central strand is an account of four
significant engagements with the apparition: three from the Romantic period,
and one from the Modern. These are Samuel Taylor Coleridge's enigmatic lyric
"Constancy to an Ideal Object,"  James Hogg's Scottish gothic romance The
Private Memoirs and Confessions of a justified Sinner, Thomas de Quincey's
late autobiographical fragment "Suspiria de Profundis" and Thomas Pynchon's
postmodern Menippean satire, Gravity's Rainbow. I argue that the Spectre in
these works does not just provide a striking example for the purposes of
momentary illumination, but operates metonymically within them, that is, the
apparition exemplifies these works' forms and central themes"

Available from The Dalhouse Review site:
https://dalspace.library.dal.ca/handle/10222/61674

Michel.