Description
Book SynopsisMervyn Peake has been acclaimed as an author of fantasy and as an illustrator, but as yet has received little attention from literary critics. This book is the first to analyse all of Peake’s works of fiction, including his two picture story books and novella as well as the Gormenghast series and Mr Pye. Alice Mills pinpoints the fictional quirks that render Mervyn Peake such a memorable fantasy writer, examining his literary works from Jungian, Freudian, Kristevan and post-Jungian perspectives. Stuckness in the Fiction of Mervyn Peake will be of interest to fantasy lovers and students of fantasy as a genre, as well as those exploring the psychoanalysis of literary texts.
Table of ContentsAcknowledgements Prefatory Note Introduction 1 Psychoanalytic Perspectives 2 Aspects of Stuckness in “Mr Slaughterboard” and Captain Slaughterboard Drops Anchor 3 Stuckness, Adherence and Slippage in the Gormenghast Novels 4 Nonsense, Stuckness and the Abject in Titus Groan 5 Surviving Stuckness in Titus Groan and Gormenghast 6 Compulsive Repetition as a Form of Stuckness in Letters from a Lost Uncle 7 Stuckness, Inflation and Literalized Metaphor in Mr Pye 8 Topographies of Love and Stuckness in Titus Alone 9 The Coherence of Titus Alone 10 Stuck Boy in Darkness 11 Titus Alone and the Production of Moral Sludge Conclusion Bibliography Index
