Ægypt

{{Short description|Series of four fantasy novels by John Crowley}} {{italic title}} {{about||the country sometimes spelt Ægypt or Aegypt|Egypt|the first volume of the series once titled Ægypt or Aegypt|The Solitudes (novel)}} '''''Ægypt ''''' is a [[fantasy]] [[tetralogy]] written by American author [[John Crowley (author)|John Crowley]]. The series describes the life and work of Pierce Moffett, a history professor who prepares a manuscript for publication even as it prepares him for some as-yet unknown destiny, all set amidst strange and subtle [[Hermeticism|Hermetic]] manipulations among the Faraway Hills at the border of [[New York (state)|New York]], [[New Jersey]] and [[Pennsylvania]].

==Volumes== {| class="wikitable" !Title !Year !Notes |- |''[[The Solitudes (novel)|The Solitudes]]'' |align="center"|1987 |Originally published in 1987 as ''Ægypt'', despite Crowley's objections. Revised 2007. <br/>World Fantasy Award nominee, 1988;<ref name="WWE-1988">{{cite web | url = http://www.worldswithoutend.com/books_year_index.asp?year=1988 | title = 1988 Award Winners & Nominees | work = Worlds Without End | accessdate=2009-08-24 }}</ref> Arthur C. Clarke Award nominee, 1988<ref name="WWE-1988"/> |- |''[[Love & Sleep]]'' | align="center"|1994 |World Fantasy Award nominee, 1995<ref name="WWE-1995">{{cite web | url = http://www.worldswithoutend.com/books_year_index.asp?year=1995 | title = 1995 Award Winners & Nominees | work = Worlds Without End | accessdate=2009-08-24 }}</ref> |- |''[[Dæmonomania]]'' |align="center"|2000 | |- |''Endless Things'' |align="center"|2007 |Locus Fantasy Award nominee, 2008<ref name="WWE-2008">{{cite web | url = http://www.worldswithoutend.com/books_year_index.asp?year=2008 | title = 2008 Award Winners & Nominees | work = Worlds Without End | accessdate=2009-08-24 }}</ref> |- |}

The four volumes deal with Moffett's real and dream life in the United States in 1977 (and, in an extended coda, into the early 1980s) with the narrative of the manuscript he is preparing for publication. Another manuscript, left unfinished by its author Fellowes Kraft and discovered by Moffett, is an [[historical fiction]] that follows the briefly intersecting adventures of [[Italy|Italian]] [[heresy|heretic]] [[Giordano Bruno]] and of [[British people|British]] [[occultists]] [[John Dee]] and [[Edward Kelley]].

Moffett is trained as a historian, and is under contract to write a popular history covering hermetical themes. Early in the process, he conceives of writing a novel which, it is clear, would be ''Ægypt''; his ruminations on that novel describe the structure of the novel he is in. The distinctions between Crowley's, Moffett's, and Kraft's books are continually elided and the three books are finally undifferentiated.

The novels generally have three main "strands" reflecting on three main characters, one occurring in the present day generally following Pierce or Rosie Mucho in their artistic works, and two occurring in the Renaissance following the fictionalized historical activities of [[John Dee]], [[Edward Kelley]] and [[Giordano Bruno]] as written by Fellowes Kraft. The difference is marked stylistically by [[Quotation mark, non-English usage#Quotation dash|dashes indicating dialogue]] for events that happened in the Renaissance and events in the twentieth century marked by dialogue in ordinary [[Quotation mark|English quotation marks]].

==Sources and structure==

The titles of the first three volumes in the sequence are tributes to [[Renaissance]] literary works; and in many cases the nature of these works redound on the action of these three novels themselves:

*The title and some of the plot of the first volume is related to [[Luis de Góngora]]'s ''[[Soledades|Las Soledades]]'', or ''The Solitudes''. *[[Francesco Colonna (writer)|Francesco Colonna]]'s ''[[Hypnerotomachia Poliphili]]'', or ''Poliphilo's Strife of Love in a Dream''. *The title of the second volume is shared with a poem by [[Algernon Charles Swinburne]] titled "Love and Sleep".<ref>{{cite web|last=Swinburne|first=Charles Algernon|title=Love and Sleep|url=http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/180862#poem|accessdate=22 September 2012}}</ref> *[[Jean Bodin]]'s ''[[Jean Bodin#De la d.C3.A9monomanie des sorciers .28Of the Demon-mania of the Sorcerers.29|De la démonomanie des sorciers]]'', or ''The Satanic Possession of Witches''. *The title of the fourth volume repeats a complaining phrase often spoken by the author of the manuscript that Moffett prepares for publication. It probably alludes to the title and subject matter of [[Giordano Bruno|Giordano Bruno's]] {{lang|la|De innumerabilibus, immenso et infigurabili}} ("Of innumerable things, vastness and the unrepresentable").

The sequence is organized around the twelve [[House (astrology)|astrological houses]], with each book divided into three parts, each bearing a Latin name of the corresponding house. ''The Solitudes''' parts, for example, are called "Vita", "Lucrum" and "Fratres", the Latin names for the first, second and third houses.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.cs.utk.edu/~mclennan/BA/PT/D-dod.html |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20000519202915/http://www.cs.utk.edu/~mclennan/BA/PT/D-dod.html |archive-date=2000-05-19 |title=Dodecatropos Spread}}</ref> The content of each part bears some relationship to the traditional associations of the house in question. The four volumes themselves correspond to the four [[season]]s, starting with [[Spring (season)|spring]] and ending in [[winter]].

==Reception== American literary critic [[Harold Bloom]] praised the first three books in the sequence, installing the first two in his 1993 list of the [[Western canon]]. [[Michael Dirda]], asked in 2007 what his favorite recent book was, named "the four-part sequence by John Crowley called 'Aegypt.'"<ref>{{cite news|last=Dirda|first=Michael|title=Dirda on Books|url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/discussion/2007/07/27/DI2007072701729.html|accessdate=14 October 2012|newspaper=Washington Post|date=August 1, 2007}}</ref> On reviewing the completed sequence in 2008, Dirda declared that the four novels together "confirms that he is one of our finest living writers, period."<ref>{{cite web|last=Dirda|first=Michael|title=Souls Hungering After Meaning|date=2 October 2008|url=http://theamericanscholar.org/souls-hungering-after-meaning/|publisher=The American Scholar|accessdate=14 October 2012}}</ref> In an appreciation of Crowley's ''[[Little, Big]]'' in 2000, James Hynes called the then-unfinished sequence "an astonishing accomplishment" comparing it to works by [[Robertson Davies]] and [[Thomas Mann]].<ref>{{cite serial|last=Hynes|first=James|title=Genre Trouble|url=http://bostonreview.net/fiction/james-hynes-genre-trouble|accessdate=May 12, 2015|newspaper=Boston Review|date=December 1, 2000}}</ref>

[[Terri Windling]] selected ''Love and Sleep'' as one of the best fantasy books of 1994, saying "his growing story is a masterpiece."<ref>"Summation 1994: Fantasy," ''[[The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror]]: Eighth Annual Collection'', p.xvi</ref>

==See also== {{Portal|Speculative fiction}} *[[Ron Drummond]]

==References== {{reflist}}

==External links== * [http://www.lcrw.net/crowley/index.htm Publisher's page for Endless Things] * [http://www.worldswithoutend.com/searchwwe.asp?st=The+Aegypt+Cycle&t=1&at=All&gid=0&ys=0&ye=9999 ''The Aegypt Cycle''] at Worlds Without End

{{DEFAULTSORT:Aegypt}} [[Category:Fantasy novel series]] [[Category:Novels by John Crowley]] [[Category:1980s fantasy novels]] [[Category:1990s fantasy novels]] [[Category:2000s fantasy novels]]