Editing Jerry Cornelius (section)

==Overview==
The series draws plot elements from Moorcock's [[Elric]] series, as well as the ''[[Commedia dell'Arte]]''. Moorcock hints in many places that Cornelius may be an aspect of the [[Eternal Champion (character)|Eternal Champion]]. Characters from the Cornelius novels show up in much of Moorcock's other fiction: ''[[The Dancers at the End of Time]]'' series has a character called [[Jherek Carnelian]] who is the son of Lord Jagged of Canaria, and there are several hints in the series that Lord Jagged may be a guise of Jerry Cornelius; the Cornelius-series character [[Una Persson]] also appears in the "Dancers" series and the [[Oswald Bastable]] books, and may also be the character ''Oona'' in the later [[Elric]] books; [[Colonel Pyat]] has his own non-SF series of books by Moorcock, beginning with ''[[Byzantium Endures]]''.

At least five other variants of the name occur in other Moorcock works ([[The Chinese Agent|Jerry Cornell]], [[Runestaff|Jehamiah Cohnalias]], Jhary-a-Conel (Corum, Runestaff), Lord Jagged of Canaria from ''The Dancers at the End of Time'', and the anagrammatic [[Corum Jhaelen Irsei]]). A space pirate named Captain Cornelius (who like Jerry is associated with the ''commedia dell'arte'' character [[Pierrot]]) appears in Moorcock's ''[[Doctor Who]]'' novel, ''[[The Coming of the Terraphiles]]''.

=== [[The Cornelius Quartet]] ===
In these four novels Jerry undergoes transformations, dies, is reborn, spends one entire novel as a shivering wreck, and eventually discovers his true natures. Moorcock strenuously objects to his character being depicted as a 'secret agent'. There are almost no elements of the spy genre in the Cornelius stories.

* ''[[The Final Programme]]''
: Jerry battles his brother Frank who has kidnapped his beloved sister Catherine. Frank dies, but Catherine is also killed. Jerry is sucked into the plans of [[Miss Brunner]] to create the perfect being by merging the bodies of Jerry and herself together. When this is done, a radiantly charismatic hermaphroditic being emerges from the machinery. All who see the new creature fall quaking to their knees. The creature itself announces that this is "a very tasty world".
* ''[[A Cure for Cancer]]''
: Jerry is solo again, existing as negative character with black skin and white hair. He moves through a landscape of destroyed English cities and occupying American armies, a metaphor for contemporary [[Vietnam]]. He runs a clandestine "[[transmogrification]]" service for people who want to cast off their old selves, flesh and all. There is the gluttonous Bishop Beesley, and his daughter Mitzi. Eventually Jerry drives the Americans to madness, causing them to burn everything, including themselves.
* ''[[The English Assassin: A Romance of Entropy|The English Assassin]]''
: All the supporting characters, particularly Una Persson, drive this novel while Jerry is nothing more than a whimpering heap of rags washed up on a beach and carried in the back of a lorry to safety. There are episodes in settings ranging from the cockpit of a [[Dornier Do X]], the deck of an Edwardian sailing ship, the anarchic steppes of revolutionary Russia, and Victorian music-hall. Finally Jerry is able to revive as the character Pierrot, forever mourning his lost Columbine, who is Catherine.
* ''[[The Condition of Muzak]]''
: Taking its title from the [[Walter Pater]] quote "All art constantly aspires towards the condition of music", this is a series of vignettes that cast Jerry as a teenager in Notting Hill, a character in the ''commedia dell'arte'', a secret agent and a fool. Particularly notable are the Notting Hill scenes, which seem to reduce all the other parts of the canon to fantasies in the adolescent Jerry's mind. Other scenes fill in detail, if any were needed, between the novels. In the final scene Jerry's foul-mouthed mother dies, and on her deathbed she reveals the family's history as a distorted version of the canon which Jerry and his now-pregnant sister Catherine seem doomed to continue.