Gothic Fantasy

Peake’s Gormenghst Trilogy follows many conventions of the Gothic novel. I thought it might be helpful to discuss some of the tropes common to this type of story.

M.H. Abrams’ A Glossary of Literary Terms is quite useful in this regard:

The locale was often a gloomy castle furnished with dungeons, subterranean passages, and sliding panels; the typical story focused on the sufferings imposed on an innocent heroine by a cruel and lustful villain, and made bountiful use of ghosts, mysterious disappearances, and other sensational and supernatural occurrences (which in a number of novels turned out to have natural explanations). The principal aim of such novels was to evoke chilling terror by exploiting mystery and a variety of horrors.

The term “Gothic” has also been extended to a type of fiction which lack the exotic setting of the earlier romances, but develops a brooding atmosphere of gloom and terror, represents events that are uncanny or macabre or melodramatically violent, and often deals with aberrant psychological states.

Gloomy castle? Check.

Cruel villain? Steerpike, check.

Macabre or melodramatic violence? The burning of the library, Swelter’s obsession with his cleaver and attempted murder of Mr.Flay. Check and check.

All these things help develop the brooding atmosphere and sense of terror afoot at Castle Groan. But maybe the most effective technique for evoking horror is the unique and grotesque characterization of the inhabitants of the castle. That is for another post!

A Family that Groans Together: “Titus Groan” Review

Strange, somber, and unconventional, Peake’s first novel Titus Groan  delights the senses with prose that challenges even the most cerebral reader and so begins the tragic chronicle of the Groans and Castle Gormenghast.

This gothic fantasy gets off to a slow and inauspicious start, detailing a ceremony of the bright carvers, inhabitants that live in hovels outside the castle and carve statues to honor Lord Sepulchrave the 76th Earl of Groan. Taking place in the shadow of Gormenghast, the whole scene offers an excellent glimpse into the Castle’s immensity and immutability. Even if the plot meanders, the verve of Peake’s descriptions are a pleasure.

Neil Gaiman to Adapt New Gormenghast?

The gothic beauty of Mervyn Peake’s Castle Groan, one of the most vivid and detailed settings in the fantasy genre, may finally make it to the silver screen, with none other than fantasy heavyweight Neil Gaiman at the helm.

Gaiman made the announcement on his Twitter feed.

The Gormenghast Trilogy has long been a favorite of many authors, including C.S. Lewis, Michael Moorcock, and Anthony Burgess (A Clockwork Orange). Titus Groan, the first novel in the series, was published in 1950, the same year as Lewis’ The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, and four years before The Lord of the Rings.

Devil-grass, Revolvers, and the Dark Tower: “The Gunslinger” by Stephen King: Review

A mix of fantasy and western motifs, The Gunslinger is set in Mid-World, a future dystopia which vaguely resembles the Old American West, except that technology has largely been forgotten. A rusted gas pump bearing the name Amoco is worshipped as a totem of a thunder-god. Highways and train tracks lay in disuse, obscured by devil-grass, sand, and the ruin of time. Guns are rare weapons.

The story begins with the last gunslinger Roland of Gilead following the Man in Black into the Mohaine Desert. It is just the first of many lush passages which make this book such an enjoyable read.

Stare Down the Barrel: “The Gunslinger” by Stephen King: Preview

The Gunslinger is a remarkable story for many reasons. Not only is it one of King’s earliest works, begun in 1970 when he was a 19 year-old sophomore at University of Maine, it is one of only two that he would revise later in his career — The Stand is the other.

Originally serialized as five short stories in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction from 1978 to 1981, The Gunslinger was finally published as a book in 1982, the first of seven in the Dark Tower cycle. Twenty-one years later, King substantially revised it, adding about 35 pages, an introduction and foreword.

Feeling that it suffered from an overuse of adverbs and was a difficult start for new readers, King worked to improve the storytelling and resolve continuity errors introduced in later books. “The Gunslinger had been written by a very young man,” King remarks in the foreword, “and had all the problems of a very young man’s book.” You can find a list of the revisions here.