Here's to the villains! Without them, heroes – so-called – would be nothing but a bunch of fussy busy-bodies.The UK paper The Telegraph features a list of "50 Greatest Villains in Literature."
Some of the seem a bit esoteric, but that may be a cultural divide in what people consider classic lit. For example, Pap Finn of Twain's Huckleberry Finn, the iconic Southern brute who, to this day, serves as the specter of the great unwashed masses south of the Mason Dixon for American intellectuals, didn't make the list; but Surtur, the malevolent anti-God of David Lindsay's Voyage to Arcturus, makes it all the way to the 37th slot. Go fig.
3 comments:
I'm quite happy with the list - four baddies from great classic Gothics, three from my favorite fantasies and one from the mystery genre. Good stuff!
Absinthe,
It's a pretty good list. Though, I was wondering why Drac made it and Frankenstein's monster did not. Is it because the nameless monster considered more wronged against than evil?
crwm - Yeah I would think that the real villain in Frankenstein is the doctor not the monster. I always viewed him as more of a victim but then I'm the one that's always sad when they kill the rampaging monster in the old monster movies. They weren't a really bad monster, more of in the wrong place at the wrong time.
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