The Fantastic World of Mervyn Peake´s Gomenghast Trilogy

• Thesis title in English: The Fantastic World of Mervyn Peake´s Gomenghast Trilogy
• Academic year of topic announcement: 2014/2015
• Thesis type: diploma thesis
• Thesis language: angličtina
• Department: Department of Anglophone Literatures and Cultures (21-UALK)
• Supervisor: PhDr. Zdeněk Beran, Ph.D.
• Author: hidden - assigned and confirmed by the Study Dept.
• Date of registration: 25.03.2015
• Date of assignment: 25.03.2015
• Administrator's approval: not processed yet
• Confirmed by Study dept. on: 08.04.2015
• Date and time of defence: 09.09.2015 09:00
• Submitted/finalized: no

Guidelines

The thesis will focus on the highly imaginative and remarkably visual fantastic world of Mervyn Peake’s Gormenghast trilogy. The three texts will be analysed in order to reveal whether or not the three books, Titus Groan, Gormenghast and Titus Alone, form a consistent, unified body of text, and if not, the thesis will attempt to clarify what the linking elements of the three novels are. The trilogy, recounting the life of the 77^th Earl of Groan, is most often referred to as belonging to the genre of fantasy; therefore, in its conclusion, the thesis will try and establish to what extent each of the three books fulfils the expectations of this genre. The introduction will provide theoretical background for the subsequent analysis – it will define the genre of fantasy and suggest its place within fantastic literature on the basis of theoretical works by Tzvetan Todorov, Rosemary Jackson, Nancy H. Traill, or Farah Mendlesohn. Similarly, the introduction will present a theoretical basis for the analysis of the fantastic gothic and grotesque elements in the three texts, which seem to be central to Mervyn Peake’s novels’ visuality. The body chapters of the thesis will then closely examine how the texts convey these elements of the narrative, while each of the three main body chapters of the thesis will analyse one of the three books of the Gormenghast trilogy.

References

Batchelor, John. Mervyn Peake, a Biographical and critical exploration. London: Duckworth, 1974.

Botting, Fred. Gothic. London: Routledge, 1996.

Connelly, Frances S. Modern Art and the Grotesque. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003.

Gilmore, Maeve. A World Away: A Memoir of Mervyn Peake. London: Mandarin, 1970.

Hogle, Jerrold E. The Cambridge Companion to Gothic Fiction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002.

Jackson, Rosemary. Fantasy: The Literature of Subversion. London: Routledge, 1991.

James, Edward, Mendelsohn, Farah (eds.). The Cambridge Companion to Fantasy Literature. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012.

Kayser, Wolfgang. The Grotesque in Art and Literature. Trans. Ulrich Weisstein. New York and Toronto: McGraw-Hill, 1966.

Manlove, Colin N. Modern Fantasy: Five Studies. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975.

Manlove, Colin N. The Impulse of Fantasy Literature. London: Macmillan, 1983.

Mendlesohn, Farah. Rhetorics of Fantasy. Middletown: Wesleyan University Press, 2008.

Mills, Alice. Stuckness in the Fiction of Mervyn Peake. New York: Rodopi, 2005.

Quirk, Randolph. Words at Work: Lectures on Textual Structure. Singapore: Singapore University Press, 1986.

Todorov, Tzvetan. The Fantastic: A Structural Approach to a Literary Genre. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1975.

Traill, Nancy H. Possible Worlds of the Fantastic: The Rise of the Paranormal in Fiction. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1996.

Watney, John. Mervyn Peake. London: Michael Joseph, 1976.

Winnington, Peter G. Miracle Enough: Papers on the Works of Mervyn Peake. Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2013.

Winnington, Peter G. The Voice of the Heart: The Working of Mervyn Peake’s Imagination. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2006.