The following is an excerpt from:
Delany, Samuel R. "Critical Methods/Speculative Fiction". The Jewel-Hinged Jaw: Notes on the Language of Science Fiction. Wesleyan University Press, 2009, 17-28.
Available to you via the Libraries in print or as an ebook.
Let us look at the development of one of the narrative techniques that practically alone supports science fiction: expertise—that method by which an author, deploying a handful of esoteric facts, creates the impression that he, or more often a character in his story, is an expert in some given field. It was formulated as an outgrowth of French Naturalism by a writer who began as a younger disciple of Zola, Joris Karl Huysmans. He brought the technique to pitch in his novel A Rebours, published in 1884, a year after Treasure Island, a year before She. But where the Naturalists employed exhaustive research to give density to their endless chronicles of common people at common professions, Huysmans used comparatively superficial research to give an impression of thorough familiarity with a whole series of bizarre and exotic subjects, including Late Latin literature, horticulture, and perfumery, to list only a few.
In addition to origins in the Naturalist approach, Delany also traces Huysmans's acquisition of this technique to Edgar Allan Poe, whose works— in the translations of Charles Baudelaire— had an immense impact on French writers of Huysmans's generation. Particularly, Delany points to The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym, "a work which Poe dots with much nautical expertise to make his sailor narrator convincing, on a thoroughly unreal voyage" (Delany, p.18)— and which, "In A Rebours, […] is several times mentioned by name" (ibid).
The following is an excerpt from:
Huysmans, Joris-Karl. The Cathedral. Translated by Clara Bell, 1898. Inside the Castle, 2024.
This title is available via the Libraries in the original 1898 print edition, or via Project Gutenberg as an ebook.
They went down the ancient paths and reached the orchard on the slope; and as soon as Madame Bavoil caught sight of them she grounded arms, so to speak, setting her foot in gardener fashion on the spade she had stuck into the soil.
She proudly pointed to her rows of cabbages and carrots, onions and peas, announced that she intended to make an attempt on the gourd tribe, expatiated on cucumbers and pumpkins, and to conclude, declared that at the bottom of the kitchen garden she meant to have a flower-bed.
Then they sat down on a mound that formed a sort of seat.
The Abbé Plomb, in a mood for teasing, gave his spectacles a push, settling the arch above his nose, and rubbing his hands, remarked, very seriously,—
"Madame Bavoil, flowers and vegetables are but of trivial importance from the decorative and culinary point of view; the only rule that should guide you in your selection is the symbolical meaning, the virtues and vices ascribed to plants. Now, I am sorry to observe that your favourites are for the most part of evil augury."
"I do not understand you, Monsieur l'Abbé."
"Why, you have only to consider that these vegetables which you take such care of mean many evil things. Lentils, for instance—you grow lentils?"
"Yes."
"Well, the seeds of the lentils are very cunning and mysterious. Artemidorus, in his 'Interpretation of Dreams,' tells us that if we dream of them it is a sign of mourning; it is the same with lettuce and onion: they forecast misfortune. Peas are less ill-famed; but, above all, beware of coriander, with its leaves smelling like bugs, for it gives rise to all manner of evils.
"Thyme, on the contrary, according to Macer Floridus, cures snake-bites, fennel is a stimulant wholesome for women, and garlic taken fasting is a preservative against the ills we may contract from drinking strange waters, or changing from place to place. So plant whole fields of garlic, Madame Bavoil."
"The Father does not like it!"
"And then," the Abbé Plomb added, very seriously, "you must fill your mind from the books of Albertus Magnus, the Master of Saint Thomas Aquinas, who in the treatises ascribed to him on the Virtues of Herbs, the Wonders of the World, and the Secrets of Women, puts forth certain ideas, which, as I may hope, will not have been written in vain.
"He tells us that the plantain-root is a cure for headache and for ulcers; that mistletoe grown on an oak opens all locks; that celandine laid on a sick man's head sings if he will die; that the juice of the house-leek will enable you to hold a hot iron without being burnt; that leaves of myrtle twisted into a ring will reduce an abscess; that lily powdered and eaten by a young maiden is an effectual test of her virginity, for if she should not be innocent it takes instantaneous effect as a diuretic!"
"I did not know of that property in the lily," said Durtal, laughing, "but I knew that Albertus Magnus assigned the same peculiarity to the mallow; only the patient need not swallow the plant; she has only to stoop over it."
"What nonsense!" exclaimed the old priest.
His housekeeper, quite scared, stood looking at the ground.