Editing Neil Gaiman (section)

==Literary allusions==
Gaiman's work is known for its use of [[allusion]]s.<ref>See particularly Rodney Sharkey, James Fleming, and Zuleyha Cetiner-Oktem's articles in ''ImageTexT''<nowiki>'s</nowiki> [http://www.english.ufl.edu/imagetext/archives/v4_1/#Articles special issue] on Gaiman's work.</ref> Meredith Collins, for instance, has commented upon the degree to which his novel ''[[Stardust (Gaiman novel)|Stardust]]'' depends on allusions to Victorian fairy tales and culture.<ref>Collins, Meredith. [http://www.english.ufl.edu/imagetext/archives/v4_1/collins/ "Fairy and Faerie: Uses of the Victorian in Neil Gaiman's and Charles Vess's Stardust"] ''ImageTexT'' 4.1.</ref> In ''The Sandman'', literary figures and characters appear often; the character of Fiddler's Green is modeled on [[G. K. Chesterton]], and both [[William Shakespeare]] and [[Geoffrey Chaucer]] appear as characters, as do several characters from ''[[A Midsummer Night's Dream]]''<ref>See this  [http://www.satt.org/comic/02_10_faery_1.html detailed analysis].</ref> and ''[[The Tempest]]''. The comic also draws from numerous mythologies.{{citation needed|date=August 2024}}

Analyzing Gaiman's ''[[The Graveyard Book]]'', bibliographer and librarian [[Richard Bleiler]] detects patterns of and allusions to the Gothic novel, from [[Horace Walpole]]'s ''[[The Castle of Otranto]]'' to [[Shirley Jackson]]'s ''[[The Haunting of Hill House]]''. He concludes that Gaiman is "utilizing works, characters, themes, and settings that generations of scholars have identified and classified as Gothic... [yet] subverts them and develops the novel by focusing on the positive aspects of maturation, concentrating on the values of learning, friendship, and sacrifice."<ref>{{cite book|last1=Bleiler|first1=Richard|editor1-last=Olson|editor1-first=Danel|title=21st Century Gothic: Great Gothic Novels Since 2000|date=2011|publisher=Scarecrow Press|location=Plymouth, UK|isbn=9780810877283|pages=269–278|edition=1st|chapter=Raised by the Dead: The Maturational Gothic of Neil Gaiman's _The Graveyard Book_}}</ref> Regarding another work's assumed connection and allusions to this form, Gaiman himself quipped: "I've never been able to figure out whether ''Sandman'' is a gothic."<ref>{{cite journal|last1=Olson|first1=Danel|title=Casket Letters: The Essential Comics of Horror, Gothic, and the Weird for 2014|journal=The Weird Fiction Review|date=2014|volume=5|pages=285–291}}</ref>

Clay Smith has argued that this sort of allusiveness serves to situate Gaiman as a strong authorial presence in his own works, often to the exclusion of his collaborators.<ref>Smith, Clay. [https://imagetextjournal.com/get-gaiman-polymorpheus-perversity-in-works-by-and-about-neil-gaiman/ "Get Gaiman?: PolyMorpheus Perversity in Works by and about Neil Gaiman]" ''ImageTexT'' 4.1.</ref> However, Smith's viewpoint is in the minority: to many, if there is a problem with Gaiman's scholarship and intertextuality it is that "... his literary merit and vast popularity have propelled him into the nascent comics canon so quickly that there is not yet a basis of critical scholarship about his work."<ref>{{Cite journal |url=http://www.english.ufl.edu/imagetext/archives/v4_1/introduction.shtml |title=A Special Issue on the Works of Neil Gaiman, Introduction |volume=4 |issue=1 |journal=English.ufl.edu |access-date=26 July 2011 |year=2008 |last1=Sandifer |first1=Philip |last2=Eklund |first2=Tof |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110728061227/http://www.english.ufl.edu/imagetext/archives/v4_1/introduction.shtml |archive-date=28 July 2011 |url-status=dead }}</ref>

David Rudd takes a more generous view in his study of the novel ''[[Coraline]]'', where he argues that the work plays and riffs productively on [[Sigmund Freud]]'s concept of ''[[Unheimlich]]'' ("the Uncanny").<ref>{{cite journal |url=http://digitalcommons.bolton.ac.uk/emcs_journals/1/ |title=An Eye for an 'I': Neil Gaiman's Coraline and the Question of Identity |last=Rudd |first=David |journal=Children's Literature in Education |volume=39 |number=3 |year=2008 |pages=159–168 |doi=10.1007/s10583-008-9067-7 |s2cid=144285798 |access-date=28 September 2008 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080928032720/http://digitalcommons.bolton.ac.uk/emcs_journals/1/ |archive-date=28 September 2008 }}</ref>

Though Gaiman's work is frequently seen as exemplifying the [[monomyth]] structure laid out in [[Joseph Campbell]]'s ''[[The Hero with a Thousand Faces]]'',<ref>See Stephen Rauch, ''Neil Gaiman's The Sandman and Joseph Campbell: In Search of the Modern Myth'', Wildside Press, 2003</ref> Gaiman says that he started reading ''The Hero with a Thousand Faces'' but refused to finish it: "I think I got about halfway through ''The Hero with a Thousand Faces'' and found myself thinking if this is true – I don't want to know. I really would rather not know this stuff. I'd rather do it because it's true and because I accidentally wind up creating something that falls into this pattern than be told what the pattern is."<ref>{{cite web |last=Ogline |first=Tim E. |url=http://www.wildriverreview.com/worldvoices-neilgaiman.php |title=The Wild River Review, "Interview with the Dream King" |work=Wildriverreview.com |access-date=26 July 2011 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110718061508/http://www.wildriverreview.com/worldvoices-neilgaiman.php |archive-date=18 July 2011 |url-status=dead }}</ref>