JSMN responds to our modern reception of two literary traditions: fantasy adventures and courtship novels. I cannot help but note a similarity between Strange and Norrell's flawed project to "revive English magic" and the creation of "a mythology for England" associated with J. R. R. Tolkien's mythopoeia. The England of JSMN cannot search in its past to discover its untainted origins, because it has so long been an invaded nation of mixed racial identities.[5] Stephen Black's last words announce an end to fantasy nostalgia by stopping the Gentleman's tradition of commemorating historical events with bloody reenactments—such as torturing and killing innocent victims as stand-ins for the Gentleman's old enemies. "This house," Stephen tells his fairy subjects, "is disordered and dirty. Its inhabitants have idled away their days in pointless pleasures and in celebrations of past cruelties—things that ought not to be remembered, let alone celebrated. . . . All these faults, I shall in time set right." The "house" Stephen points to could be interpreted as that body of fantasy literature that unthinkingly valorizes "past cruelties" without critical reflection. If speculative fiction can construct a world in which space and time are scarcely barriers, then it should have the velocity to escape servitude to old power structures.
— The Fantasy of Talking Back: Susanna Clarke's Historical Present in Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell
Вообще, хорошая статья.

Ну и чтоб, так сказать, два раза не вставать: в этом посте все гифки золотые, но эта прям особенно в точку.