Levels of Simulacra: Brian Moore’s The Great Victorian Collection

Abstract

The rise of the second phase of capitalism after World War II is contemporaneous with the increase in information production and the ubiquity of mass media. The incessant play of signs and images in the groundless cyberspace fuels the erosion of referentiality and reality in our mediagoverned era. The consequent absence of reality, as Baudrillard argues, is masked through the simulation of natural reality and generation of cultural hyperreality. The present paper aims at examining various levels of hyperreality in Brian Moore’ s novel, The Great Victorian Collection (1975), in the light of Jean Baudrillard’s comments. The mutation of the real into hyperreal and its subsequent reproduction in this novel threatens the authenticity of the notions of art and history. A central concern here is to show how the protagonist of the novel becomes the creation of his own creation by surrendering his subjectivity and agency to the hyperreality of films and photos.

Key words: Jean Baudrillard; Brian Moore; The Great Victorian Collection; Hyperrelity; Reproduction; Mass media; Originality