a gallimaufry

Framing Fantasy: Matthew Sangster & Brian Attebery

A couple of days ago I watched this fascinating discussion about fantasy between Dr Matthew Sangster and Professor Brian Attebery, chaired by Dr Dimitra Fimi under the auspices of the Glasgow University Centre for Fantasy and the Fantastic. (By the looks of it, their YouTube channel has lots of other interesting talks on it.)

I enjoyed it a lot and was particularly taken with the idea of ‘fuzzy sets’ which they talked about as part of the vexed question of how we define fantasy. ‘Fantasy literature’ is a western construct and even within that tradition there are plenty of works which are hard to categorise. Few people would argue with The Lord of the Rings being classified as fantasy, but what about The Master and Margarita, Lolly Willowes, Nights at the Circus or Orlando? (And is it even useful to divide literature like this, unless of course you are a bookshop?)

The idea of fuzzy sets builds on the idea of there not being a binary fantasy/realist divide in fiction, but something of a continuum. You look at relationships and influences of texts upon another – and then you start creating a more interesting picture to explore. An example that they gave was Mervyn Peake’s Gormenghast trilogy: an influence being Dickens’s fiction. Rather than isolating texts, you open them up.

Anyway, if you have time, then do listen… And last year I wrote about Brian Attebery’s Fantasy: How it Works for Shiny New Books if you are interested...

 

Back soon

I’m rather like the child in the picture at the moment, so it might be a week or two before I wander back here. I have a bristly great forest of work and just have to keep on through it. Soon things will be better though! In the mean time, sorry I haven’t been commenting on everyone’s blogs recently; I will be back...

(The fabulous Mervyn Peake, illustration for ‘Our Lady’s Child’, Jakob and Wilhelm Grimm, Household Tales (London: Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1946; reprinted by the British Library, 2012); found here)

Gormenghast on BBC Radio 4

It’s the centenary year of the birth of Mervyn Peake! How did I not know that? In my late teens I was obsessed with his work, starting with the Gormenghast trilogy but quickly embracing his poetry and art. I haven’t looked at any of it for ages, but particularly remember the novels and the illustrations for ‘The Ancient Mariner’ with (for me) an unusual clarity.

 
(Page of manuscript from Titus Groan showing Fuschia and Steerpike; it seems Peake sketched his characters as he wrote; taken from the Gormenghast website which is stuffed full of information about Peake)

I feel I should mark the occasion by rereading Gormenghast, but my copies are languishing in my parents’ house in England (my parents are most long-suffering and put up with boxes of books even though really I am far too old for this sort of thing and should go and sort them out) (one of these days). However, help is at hand! There is a terrific six-part serialisation of Mervyn Peake’s Gormenghast novels on BBC Radio 4 at the moment: The History of Titus Groan. I think it works much better on radio than as a television series, and the cast is wonderful (it includes Paul Rhys, Miranda Richardson, James Fleet, Tamsin Greig and Mark Benton).

('Swelter with Kitchen Urchin', pen-and-ink drawing, also from the Gormenghast website; Swelter is practically engulfing the child)

There’s also a programme about Peake from his children’s perspective: 'A Hundred Years of Mervyn Peake', and an exhibition at the British Library, The Worlds of Mervyn Peake; I am most disappointed that I won't be able to see it.