Peter Ackroyd

“William Shakespeare is popularly supposed to have been born on 23 April 1564, or on St. George’s Day. The date may in fact have been 21 April or 22 April, but the coincidence of the national festival is at least appropriate” (Ackroyd 2005: 3). Peter Ackroyd’s Shakespeare: The Biography (2005) combines research melted into a fictitious narrative. Ackroyd's novel does not aspire to be a serious literary biography, but neither does it read as just a pretty story. The problem of non-fictional fiction and fictional non-fiction is also one pertaining to Stephen Greenblatt's Will in the World, formally, a more or less traditional biography, yet one which reads quite often like speculative fiction. Stephen Greenblatt’s Will in the World: How Shakespeare became Shakespeare (2004) is a literary biography that aims at revealing a Shakespeare who hides himself behind the verses of his plays and who throughout his life acts as a master of disguise. Both biographers are at the same time historians, who investigate historical data and “fictionalise” facts in order to create a (new) story about Shakespeare’s life. Greenblatt-biographer sticks to historical evidence and aims at presenting Shakespeare as a historical figure. Ackroyd-novelist seems to have more freedom in interpreting history and treats Shakespeare as a fictitious character. Thus, it is interesting to compare the two biographies and discuss the freedom of the “biographers” to exploit the white spots in Shakespeare's life.


References:
Ackroyd, Peter. 2005. Shakespeare: The Biography. London: Vintage Books.
Greenblatt, Stephen. 2004. Will in the World. How Shakespeare became Shakespeare. London: Jonathan Cape.
Franssen, Paul J. C. M. 2007. “The Life and Opinions of William Shakespeare, Gentleman. Biography between Fact and Fiction”, in: Literature as History/History as Literature: Fact and Fiction in Medieval to Eighteenth-Century British Literature, ed. Sonja Fielitz, p. 63-77. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang.

In her essay Critically Queer Judith Butler argues that drag performances cannot be regarded as a legit expression of one's subjective gender identity. On the contrary, she claims that the conscious choice of gender and acts involved in their creation represents an exposure and a mockery of the failures and contradictions of heterosexual regimes.

Obviously not all cross-dressed impersonations constitute a comment on society; however, Judith Butler’s consideration is particularly interesting in the case of the highly codified social order typical of the Victorian period, in which the fame of both male and female impersonators reached its peak. The popularity of this particular class of actors was strictly linked to the emergence of the music halls, one of the most widespread phenomena of the time and a symbol of Englishness.

Cross-dressed performers and actresses in particular extended their power over the masses far beyond the enclosed space of the theatre and were perceived as a strong disruptive force that could shatter the ideal of respectability fostered by the contemporaries.

This sense of apprehension and danger experienced by the Victorians finds its personification in Elizabeth Cree, the protagonist of Peter Ackroyd’s novel Dan Leno and the Limehouse Golem. The actress, with her impersonation of The Older Brother, is able to bring depth to her performance, overcome gender boundaries at will and, just like any other exceptional actress, exercise her influence over a ‘bigger stage’, namely the streets of London.

Elizabeth constitutes the perfect mockery of the Victorian social customs but provides also the opportunity to see Judith Butler’s theory concerning the meaning of crossed-dressed performances under a different light, since her shift from one gender to the other seems to be everything but conscious.

The unconscious element of Elizabeth’s personality makes everything so intricate that the reader is often left wondering what her gender was to begin with, or whether her cross-dressed alter ego is just a manifestation of her hidden nature.

Eventually, it could be argued that Elizabeth’s shifts from one gender to the other do not lead to a gender located somewhere between ‘male’ and ‘female’ along the gender spectrum. On the contrary, the end result might as well be something completely different, something that is neither male nor female and, perhaps, something close to a divinity.

Peter Ackroyd's 'Hawksmoor' (1985) tells two stories in alternating chapters: one set in London between 1711 and 1715, the other in present-day London. In the first story, a murderous architect beholden to occult beliefs relates his exploits and situates them within his project of subverting the Enlightenment agenda of his superiors; in the second story, told by an apparently objective third-person narrator, the detective Nicholas Hawksmoor is baffled by a series of bizarre murders. The text’s two loci in time mark, respectively, the early days of modernity, in which science and rationality appeared to herald a brighter future, and late modernity, in which this optimism has come under question. The detective, who embodies the rationalist ethos and the tenet of scientific progress, emerges as a figure whose failure casts doubt upon the validity of the core beliefs of Western culture. Peter Ackroyd’s text is an original example of the sub-genre known as the ‘anti-detective narrative.’

Thomas Chatterton (1752-1770) Bristol'de do mu bir ngiliz airdir. ngiliz romantik airleri Wordsworth, Coleridge, Shelley, Byron ve Keats için Chatterton önemli bir model ve semboldür. Kendisi do madan 3 ay önce ölen babası evlerinin hemen biti i inde olan St Mary Radcliffe Kilisesinin koro efidir. Annesi, St Mary Redcliffe kilisesinin ar ivinde buldu u bazı el yazmalarını ona verdi inde Chatterton henüz yedi ya ındadır. Bu el yazmalarını alıp tavan arasındaki minik odasında onları okurken hayal gücünü ke fetmeye ba lamı tır. Antik ça lara ve geçmi e olan merakı bu el yazmalarıyla ba lamı ve annesine bunun için hep ükran duymu tur. lk iirini yazdı ında henüz 12 ya ındadır ve 15'ine geldi inde takma isim "Thomas Rowley" adıyla yazdı ı ve Rowley Dizisi adıyla bilinen ilk eseri ortaya çıkmı tır. Thomas Chatterton okuya okuya çok iyi ö rendi i 15. yüzyıl ngilizcesini aynen kullanarak arkaik dille iirler yazmaya ba lamı tır ve kısa yoldan ün sahibi olabilmek için Thomas Rowley diye bir ortaça ke i inin geçmi te gerçekten ya adı ına ve bu iirlerin onun el yazmaları oldu una kendi ça ını inandırmı tır. Oysa o iirleri yazan henüz 15 ya ındaki Chatterton'dan ba kası de ildir. Kendi adıyla yazmı olsa, 15 ya ında bir veledin iirlerini kimsenin okumayaca ını bilmektedir. Bu sahtekarlı a ba vurarak aslında kendine ait olan iirleri, bu iirler yeni ke fedilmi eski bir air yanılsamasıyla okutup çok be enilmesini sa lamı tır. Böylelikle bir air olma yolunda büyük cesaret kazanmı tır. Chatterton kısa süre içinde Bristol'ün sıkıcı ya amından kurtulup edebi bir üne kavu mak için Londra'ya ta ınır. Henüz 17 ya ındadır. iirlerini çe itli yayıncılara götürür ama istedi i be eniyi veya ilgiyi görmez. Kısa bir süre akrabalarının yanında kaldıktan sonra 1770 Mayıs'ında Holborn semti, Brooke Soka ındaki minik bir çatı katı odasına yerle ir. Ancak üç ay sonra, yani 24 A ustos'ta sefaletten, ilgi görmemi olmaktan, hayal kırıklı ından ve girdi i depresyondan dolayı arsenik içerek henüz 17 ya ındayken ya amına son verir. Odasının kapısı kırılarak açıldı ında etraf, üstünde kendi el yazmaları bulunan yırtılmı sayfalar ve ortalı a saçılmı ka ıt parçalarıyla doludur. Polis inceleme yapar ve sonuç olarak yazdı ı raporda Chatterton'un ölüm sebebi "felo de se" -yani intihar-olarak ilan edilir. Bilinen tek bir portresi vardır. Ama Wordsworth'ün tabiriyle "bu muhte em genç adamın" silüeti "Chatterton'un Ölümü" adını ta ıyan tabloyla Henry Wallis tarafından 1856'da çizilmi ve resimde model olarak o sırada henüz 28 ya ında olan,19.

This article explores the concept of violence in Peter Ackroyd's novel titled Dan Leno and the Limehouse Golem. The relationship between the protagonist and the city is considered to be the source of violence in the novel. As this work points out, it is the physical and psychological forces prevailing in the socioeconomic conditions of nineteenth century Victorian London which gave birth to, fed, and continually encouraged the ruthless serial killer for the next massacre. Yet the reader can decipher the true identity of this human monster only at the end of the novel. It is actually Elizabeth Cree, who has overcome all the difculties in her life, realised her childhood dreams and become a successful music hall actress, and is now performing her art of murder to be appreciated by Londoners in the city, which is depicted as a macrocosmic theatre stage. Since the murderess disregards her victims' ethnic, class, gender and age diversities, the reader hardly understands what motivates her to kill, and cannot establish a logical cause-effect relationship behind the murders. The use of postmodern narrative techniques in the novel's plot structure enables the author not only to challenge the norms of traditional detective fiction and reconstruct the genre but also to make the reader reconsider the concept of crime and criminal psychology which are based on prejudices and presumptions. Consequently, this article deals with such questions as: Did London in the Victorian Era offer its inhabitants equal socioeconomic , artistic opportunities? Or did the city act like a monster gnashing and spitting out its poor, weak, needy inhabitants, especially women? Is it possible to associate London's peculiar history and identity with those of the serial killer? And, what happens when the city, whose name is derived from a word meaning "fierce," becomes the mindscape of a lower-class character who has been brought up with pure hatred? Bu makale Peter Ackroyd'un Dan Leno and the Limehouse Golem başlıklı romanındaki şiddet olgusunu incelemektedir. Makale romandaki şiddetin kaynağı olan şehir imgesi ile baş karakter arasındaki ilişkiyi ele alır. Makaleye göre okuyucunun gerçek kimliğini ancak romanın sonunda anlayabildiği acımasız seri katili yaratan, besleyen ve bir sonraki katliam için sürekli cesaretlendirerek adeta bir canavara dönüştüren on dokuzuncu yüzyıl Viktorya Dönemi Londra'sının sosyo-ekonomik koşullarında hüküm süren fiziksel ve psikolojik güçlerdir.Yaşadığı tüm zorlukları aşarak çocukluk hayallerini gerçekleştiren ve genç yaşta başarılı bir müzikhol oyuncusu olan Elizabeth Cree kanlı sanatını makrokozmik bir tiyatro sahnesi olarak betimlenen Londra'da izleyicilerin beğenisine sunmaktadır.Katilin kurbanları arasında etnik köken, sınıf, cinsiyet ve yaş ayrımı yapmaması, okuyucunun katilin motivasyonunu anlamlandırarak mantıklı bir sebep-sonuç ilişkisi kurmasına engel olur. Postmodern anlatım teknikleri kullanılarak oluşturulan olay örgüsü yazarın hem dedektif romanı geleneğine meydan okuyarak türü yeniden kurgulamasını hem de okuyucunun önyargı ve varsayıma dayanan suç kavramı ve suçlu psikolojisi ile ilgili yerleşik algılarını yeniden sorgulamasını sağlar. Sonuç olarak makale bir Viktorya Dönemi metropolü olan Londra sakinlerine eşit sosyo-ekonomik, sanatsal fırsatlar sağlayabiliyor mu? Yoksa şehir yoksul, zayıf, yoksun sakinlerini, özellikle kadınları, bir canavar gibi çiğnemeden yutup posalarını tükürüyor mu?Londra'nın özgün tarihçesi ve kimliğini seri katilin yaşam öyküsü ve kimliği ile örtüştürmek olası mıdır? Etimoljik açıdan isminin kökeni "şiddet" kelimesine dayanan bir şehir olan Londra, alt sınıftan, nefret duyguları ile büyütülmüş bir karakterin zihinsel haritasına dönüştüğünde ne olur? gibi sorulara cevap aramaktadır.

Peter Ackroyd in his 2008 novel The Casebook of Victor Frankenstein establishes a free-play intertextual world through adopting Mary Shelley’s canonical novel Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus (1818) as his palimpsest where he reworks the tradition of the doppelganger (evil twin) whose depiction has its roots in the Gothic. In Ackroyd’s version, the doppelganger changes into the inventive incarnation of the repressed desires of his pivotal character, Victor Frankenstein, and the novelist is able to offer his “genuine” narrative of a postmodernist serial murderer gothic—this time given in the form of a casebook that psychologically disturbed Victor keeps. In The Casebook of Victor Frankenstein, Ackroyd manages to give way to a new weltanschauung satisfying the intellectual needs of the twenty-first century by problematizing the relationship between the real and the hallucinatory, and also between the author and the text to question the role of the author as the creator.

This book proposes a new interdisciplinary approach to the literary representations of London by means of correlating geocriticism, spatial literary studies and memory studies in order to investigate the interplay between reality and fiction in mapping the urban imaginary. It conducts an analysis of London in British literature published between 1975-2005, exploring the literary representations of the real urban restructurings prompted by the rebuilding projects in war and poverty-stricken districts of London, the remapping of the metropolis by immigrants, the gentrification and displacement of communities, as well as the urban dissolution caused by terrorism. The selected works of fiction written by Peter Ackroyd, Penelope Lively, Zadie Smith, Andrea Levy, J.G. Ballard, Michael Moorcock, Doris Lessing and Ian McEwan provide a record of the city in times of de/reconstruction, emphasizing the structure of London as a palimpsest, which becomes a central image. The book contributes to the development of the subject field by introducing a number of original concepts (mythopos, mnemotopos, landguage, entropic habitus, urban specularity) which connect geocriticism and memory studies. The originality of this book consists in its innovative contribution to literary studies and dynamic interdisciplinary approach which attracts a wide spectrum of interest across emerging research fields in the humanities and beyond.

The article presents an analysis of two neo-Victorian Londons: that of Peter Ackroyd in the novel Dan Leno and the Limehouse Golem and that of Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell in the graphic novel From Hell. Particular attention has been given to the representation of the city in terms of the most characteristic elements of London and its mode of portrayal in each work. The article also presents how the British capital is personified or at least treated as a driving force behind human actions, as well as the subjectification of the city and its functioning as a text. Finally, the article focuses on the
superposition of the late 19th and late 20th centuries, i.e. the times of action and writing of both works, and how relevant these texts are at the present time.

There are good reasons to call London the capital of urban fantasy. Like no other city it embodies an intertwinedness of enlightenment and modernity with notions of the occult, the mythical and the magical. The idea of an urban underworld that somehow is the dark mirror of the city is central for the depiction of a fantastic London. I will look into three examples of urban fantasy: Neil Gaiman's novel Neverwhere (1996), China Miéville's story «Reports of Certain Events in London» (2004), and Peter Ackroyd's novel Hawksmoor (1985) that portray London as a liminal space and a gothic heterotopia.

This book contributes to the development of contemporary historical fiction studies with new analyses of neo-Georgian fiction, which, unlike neo-Victorian fiction, until now has received little critical attention. The essays included in this collection study the ways in which selected twentieth-and twenty-first-century novels recreate the Georgian period in order to view its ideologies through the lens of such modern critical theories as performativity, post-colonialism, feminism or visual theories. They also demonstrate the rich repertoire of subgenres of neo-Georgian fiction, ranging from biographical fiction, epistolary novels to magical realism. The studies of the diverse novelistic conventions used to re contextualise the Georgian reality reflect the way we see its relevance and relation to the present and trace the indebtedness of the new forms of the contemporary novel to the traditional novelistic genres.

A review of B Gürenci Saglam's monograph which addresses the question of how 'knowable' is the mystical London which Ackroyd portrays in his novels. The work, which is based on Gürenci Saglam's doctoral thesis, focuses on Ackroyd's parodying of the literary genres of biography and detective fiction.

A short postscript to the draft article 'London Stone: History and Myth'. Why, quite suddenly in the early 21st century, has London Stone, previously ignored by writers of fiction, taken on an important role in a number of London-based novels belonging to the so-called 'urban fantasy' genre? 4 June 2015 (minor updates to references 15 December 2020): now incorporated in 'London Stone; History and Myth'.

The tramp, living on the city streets, is the ultimate expression of the motif of the urban walker, and embodies for Peter Ackroyd the relationship between London and its vulnerable citizens. However, the vagrant goes beyond the sufferings of the perpetual victim to embrace a mythic London where tramps are kings, and where refuge and closure are to be found.

This paper, delivered to the Literary London Society conference in 2014, considers Peter Ackroyd's representation of London as a perpetual city. It focuses on 'The House of Doctor Dee' and 'The Plato Papers', especially the depiction of subterranean London.

This paper focuses on Peter Ackroyd’s unique type of psychogeographical writing. Therefore, apart from an overall elaboration on his works about London, it addresses his historiographic metafictional novels Hawksmoor (1985) and The House of Doctor Dee (1993). These esoteric novels provide insight into Ackroyd’s writing about the city in different time periods and make it possible to delve deeper into what this paper argues is his distinctive manner of implementing the notions of psychogeography. At the same time, it draws parallels from classical and contemporary psychogeography where appropriate and highlights his utilisation of it. The main aim of this paper is to reveal the ways in which Peter Ackroyd uses walking in the city to reflect its manipulative power over his characters which results in the transformation of their identities.

У статті висвітлюються особливості художнього зображення протагоніста у творах, що належать до історіографічної метапрози. У якості матеріалу дослідження обрано образ англійського ренесансного вченого й окультиста Джона Ді (1527-1608) в романах Ґ. Майрінка «Янгол західного вікна» (1927) та П. Акройда «Будинок доктора Ді» (1993). Ця розвідка висвітлює ключові теоретичні аспекти історіографічної металітератури. Порівняльний аналіз біографічної та фікційної постатей доктора Джона Ді дозволив з’ясувати специфічні риси модерністського (Ґ. Майрінк) та постмодерністського (П. Акройд) прочитання цього образу. У романі «Янгол західного вікна» доктор Ді фігурує здебільшого як окультист і містик, маніпулятор людськими душами й макабрична персона, що цілком відповідає умонастроям тогочасся (сплеск інтересу до психоаналізу та до окультних практик на кшталт спіритизму). У творі «Будинок доктора Ді» протагоніст має значно більше спільних рис зі своїм історичним прототипом; найбільш характерні з них загострені для того, щоб увиразнити трагедію вченого, якого П. Акройд репрезентує у якості своєрідної проекції вічного образу Фауста. The paper deals with the peculiarities of fictitious representation of the protagonist in the texts related to historiographic metafiction. The image of John Dee (1527-1608), an English Renaissance scientist and occultist, in the novels “The Angel of the West Window” by G. Meyrink and “The House of Doctor Dee” by P. Ackroyd, has been analysed. The paper considers basic theoretical backgrounds of historiographic metafiction. Comparative analysis of the biographical and fictitious figures of John Dee enabled the author to outline specific features of the modern (G. Meyrink) and postmodern (P. Ackroyd) view of this character. The novel “The Angel of the West Window” represents Doctor Dee as a mystic, occultist, and macabre person, who manipulates human souls. This fairly corresponds to the main intellectual dispositions of the time (interest to psychoanalysis and practical occultism, i.e. spiritualism). On the contrary, the protagonist of “The House of Doctor Dee” has much more in common with his historic prototype; his most characteristic features are purposefully emphasized in order to demonstrate the tragedy of a scientist whom P. Ackroyd represents as a modern projection of Faust.

This paper, delivered to the Literary London Society conference in 2011, is a reflection on the importance of immediacy, and particularly walking, for Peter Ackroyd's portrayal of London. It was reworked as 'The Trope of the Tramp' for the Literary London Society's Journal (see separate upload).

Peter Ackroyd’s anti-detective novel Hawksmoor gives life to an innovative and disquieting villain capable of stirring up sentiments of both profound disgust and undeniable fascination. Although Nicolas Dyer lived in the 17th century he possesses characteristics pertaining to villains that are typical of preceding and following centuries. He therefore can be considered a “pastiche” villain, in that he combines worshipping of primaeval and mediaeval demoniac practices, a typically Renaissance Machiavellian use of architectural and intellectual skills for his dark purposes and the criminal’s apparent normality and elusiveness from the law that contemporary readers suspect and fear. His tragic past, fragile sanity and passionate devotion towards his mission, along with his cynical but clear-cut opinions on his time and its protagonists, often make him a sympathetic villain, even though he is admittedly guilty of many gruesome murders. Such insight into his life leads us to believe that there is a little villainy in each of us, making its presence a threat that is as invisible and everlasting as the hidden demoniac symbols located in the churches he planned. Dyer represents the darkness that perpetually lurks in the shadows of knowledge and enlightenment, and his mystic influence is such that centuries later his solitary but honest Doppelgänger detective Hawksmoor is deeply bound to him through the recurring homicides that take place in the 1980s and perfectly mirror Dyer’s. Moreover, as is often the case with postmodern detective novels, Dyer is never officially discovered or brought to justice, so anything even remotely resembling a realization can only occur through an irrational solution, such as the epiphany that Hawksmoor experiences at the novel’s closure.

This paper constitutes a part of one of the subchapters of my doctoral thesis the aim of which is to examine the different attitudes to esotericism in Dan Brown's and Peter Ackroyd's selected six novels. The general chapter under which this subsection falls is an attempt to frame Peter Ackroyd's and Dan Brown's esoteric narratives. Having introduced the authors' literary activities at this point, it investigates the narratological differences between them. Nevertheless, this paper exclusively focuses on one of such differences, namely, the presence of the abstract author in Peter Ackroyd's "The House of Doctor Dee" (1994). Here, using the theory of Wolf Schmid, it argues that Peter Ackroyd's text deviates from Barthes' concept of "the death of the author" and conveys the presence of the real author stylistically along with several semantic-linguistic techniques by locating Ackroyd himself within the text as an abstract author.

This paper, delivered to the Literary London Society conference in 2012, juxtaposes ceremonial moments described by Peter Ackroyd and Nigel Williams. It considers how the ceremonies illustrate each author's  presentation of cultural affiliation.

Reseña, en español, de la biografía de William Shakespeare escrita por Peter Ackroyd (SHAKESPEARE: THE BIOGRAPHY; Londres, Chatto & Windus, 2005). __________________________________________________________________ A review, in Spanish, of Peter Ackroyd's biography of William Shakespeare (SHAKESPEARE: THE BIOGRAPHY; London: Chatto & Windus, 2005).

The aim of this study is to describe the role of historical characters in postmodern novels, with specific attention to the new genre of neo-victorian novel. Through an extensive analysis of Christopher Priest's "The Prestige" and Peter Ackroyd's "Dan Leno and the Limehouse Golem", it is possible to state that historical characters no longer have a merely supporting function, as described by Gyorgy Lukacs. Both Priest and Ackroyd 'speak in the voices' of famous historical personages, as true ventriloquists, thus creating a syncretism between past and present tensions, in order to re-write a postmodern identity.

In The School of the Dead (1994), Hélène Cixous investigates the kinship between writing and death by recalling Montaigne's famous perspective of philosophy, which identifies philosophizing with dying. This paper suggests a reading of Peter Ackroyd's Lambs of London in the light of Cixous's approach, juxtaposed with her "friend" (φίλος) Jacques Derrida's contributions on memory, mourning and ethics as "learning to live from the ghosts". Accordingly, the novel will be explored as a literary topos of Mnemosyne, through which the author revives the admiration and longing for Shakespeare, by resurrecting the ghosts of William Ireland, Mary and Charles Lamb.

The book discusses the evolution of the urban chronotope in the selected novels by Peter Ackroyd, an acclaimed British author. The examined narratives illustrate the transformation from the postmodern tenets of historiographic metafiction into a unique urban mythopoetics by means of a semiotic analysis.

This paper, delivered to the Literary London Society conference in 2015, compares the portrayal of love and sex in Williams' 'Witchcraft' and Ackroyd's 'The House of Doctor Dee'. In different ways, both depict love as a redeeming force in the face of the dangers of sex.

Abstrakt: Jakub Lipski, " WIEK PRZEBRANIA " W POWIEŚCIACH HISTORYCZNYCH PETERA ACKROYDA. PORÓWNANIA 19, 2016. T. XIX. S. 99–113.  Znamienną cechą twórczości Petera Ackroyda jest wyraźne zespolenie powieściopisarstwa z popularną historiografią, czego przejawem jest niezmienne zainteresowanie autora formą powieści historycznej. Teksty, którym poświęcony jest niniejszy artykuł – Hawksmoor (1985), Chatterton (1987), The Lambs of London (2004) – podejmują próbę kreatywnej rekonstrukcji niektórych istotnych wydarzeń XVIII wieku. Powracające tematy, typy postaci oraz warstwa ideowa w wymienionych utworach wynikają z koncepcji tego stulecia jako "wieku przebrania" ("the Age of Disguise"). Metafora przebrania trafnie ilustruje specyfikę czasu, w którym delfickie zawołanie "poznaj samego siebie" nabrało nowego wymiaru. Przeprowadzona w artykule analiza, oparta na koncepcjach nowego historyzmu oraz teorii postmodernistycznej powieści historycznej, pokazuje, że Ackroydowska wizja XVIII wieku koresponduje z takim właśnie postrzeganiem tego stulecia.
Abstract: Jakub Lipski, "THE AGE OF DISGUISE' IN PETER ACKROYD'S HISTORICAL NOVELS. "PORÓWNANIA" 19, 2016. Vol. XIX. P. 99–113. Peter Ackroyd's literary output is characterised by a clear interrelationship between fiction and popular historiography. This is best manifested in his unwavering interest in the form of the historical novel. The present article is devoted to the three novels which creatively reconstruct selected events of the eighteenth century: Hawksmoor (1985), Chatterton (1987) and The Lambs of London (2004). It is argued that the recurrent themes, characters and ideas result from Ackroyd's understanding of the century as "the Age of Disguise". The metaphor of disguise accurately renders the specificity of the time when the Delphic precept "know then thyself" was taking on a new dimension. Informed by New Historicism and the theory of the postmodern historical novel, the following article demonstrates that Ackroyd's vision of the eighteenth century corresponds with this approach to the period.

For Peter Ackroyd, the dead are stakeholders in the community of the living, and he is at pains to stress the need for interaction between the two. Ackroyd’s revenants bring the living out of the dimension of time and into perpetuity, encouraging them to embrace the ongoing human continuum. This continuum is at the heart of Ackroyd's portrayal of the family, and is linked inextricably with the concept of place.

Regardless of how we read them, the popularity of neo-Victorian novels serves as an indication of a need to look back to the past. To quote John McGowan, "we express our identities through what we produce and consume”. The proliferation of novels dealing with the Victorian period as well as texts studying the phenomenon shows that neo-Victorian fiction is taking part in the construction of our understanding of society. At times, especially during the last decade, the authors of novels referring back to Victorian times seem to have acknowledged the didactic function fulfilled by their texts.

Reseña, en español, de la biografía de William Shakespeare escrita por Peter Ackroyd (SHAKESPEARE: THE BIOGRAPHY; Londres, Chatto & Windus, 2005). _________________________________________________________

A review, in Spanish, of Peter Ackroyd's biography of William Shakespeare (SHAKESPEARE: THE BIOGRAPHY; London: Chatto & Windus, 2005).

Two new “retellings” of Sir Thomas Malory’s Le Morte d’Arthur were released in November 2011 to readers eager for the promise of King Arthur’s return. Peter Ackroyd’s The Death of King Arthur is a triumph of modernized prose and edited plot. Simon Armitage’s The Death of King Arthur is a verse translation designed to restore the tale’s grandeur. The question that haunts these retold texts is within their very names: is Malory’s text an investment in the future or in the death of Arthur? In Malory’s fifteenth century, the world was caught up in ongoing confrontations between east and west and a civil war that accompanied seemingly endless religious strife. The promise of Arthur’s return is only a brief scene in Le Morte compared to the hundreds of pages devoted to the downfall of Camelot. I argue that our own position in history has foisted a futuristic attitude on a text that is about the failure of idealism.  Much like the knights of the roundtable discovering the grail, the future only brings the death of possibility. Rather than sacrificing the present to the promise of the future, queer theorists such as Lee Edelman and Leo Bersani have embraced the grave as an alternative way of existence, proposing that though history is chronically reborn, it is never solved. Malory’s text already embraced the queer grave through his medieval confrontation of the unknown. This paper will investigate if these new texts lay the false promise of futurity to rest at last.

T repression of this materiality by a complex of political and scientific strategic powers extending from the Enlightenment's Christopher Wren to the Thatcher administration of the 1980s. Peter Ackroyd's critical significance to late twentieth-century English literature seems only to have increased over time. Recent years have seen the production of many articles on his work, as well as several book-length studies. Hawksmoor won Guardian and Whitbread fiction awards, and it won Ackroyd's work significant popular and critical attention. The novel has spawned numerous articles and appears frequently in studies of postmodern historiographic metafiction and of the gothic. Roger Salomon even quotes Nicholas Dyer, the novel's eighteenth-century narrator, for the title of his recent typological study of the gothic, Mazes of the Serpent (Hawksmoor 56). Hawksmoor tells Dyer's story. He is a fictitious alternative to Nicholas Hawksmoor, the eighteenth-century architect who designed several London churches after the Great Fire. Dyer designs the six that the historical Hawksmoor designed and that one can still see in London today, as well as a seventh church, Little St. Hugh, that is entirely fictitious. Entrusted with building these churches for the good of the city, Dyer, a secret Satanist at war with Enlightenment reason emblematized in his employer, Christopher Wren, works into the design, construction, and location of his churches a secret occult code and dedicates each church with the sacrifice of a "virgin" boy. The chapters detailing Dyer's exploits alternate with chapters that take place in twentieth-century London where corpses start to appear on the grounds of Dyer's churches. A detective named Hawksmoor tries to unravel the mystery. The novel closes with no resolution to the mystery, Hawksmoor rushing to Little St. Hugh to prevent, witness-or perhaps even commit-the final murder. 1 Once there, he merges enigmatically with another, mysterious being. Hawksmoor registers an anxiety that the plurality of possible modes of existence in the London ecology is growing increasingly endangered. Indeed, many of Ackroyd's essays and lectures make L I N K • 517 1. Del Ivan Janik speculates that Hawksmoor might be the novel's twentieth-century murderer. Although he admits that it is hardly " 'solid' evidence," Janik points to what he feels is Hawksmoor's increasing sympathy with "Dyer's dark mysticism" as the source of his suspicion (173).

Die vorliegende Arbeit beschäftigt sich mit den neuesten Entwicklungen im Verhältnis von Literatur und Naturwissenschaft. Im ersten Teil findet eine kritische Auseinandersetzung mit den science wars statt. Eine besondere Rolle spielt dabei die "Rhetorik der Naturwissenschaften", da hier auch die Literaturwissenschaft zum Tragen kommen kann. Dabei werden rhetorische Elemente in der naturwissenschaftlichen Sprache nicht als Beleg für Mängel in der Erkenntnisfähigkeit kritisiert, sondern gerade auch Konzepte nutzbar gemacht, die die Erkenntnisträchtigkeit von Metaphern untersuchen. Darüber hinaus werden Aspekte aus der Gedächtnisforschung, der Rhetorik, der Kognitionsbiologie und der Evolutionstheorie dafür herangezogen, Fragen nach der Sprachentstehung und der Herkunft der anscheinend ubiquitären rhetorischen und poetischen Elemente der Sprache zu beleuchten. Die Arbeit soll damit einen Beitrag auf dem Weg zu einer produktiven Interdisziplinarität leisten.

Im zweiten Teil werden derzeit gängige literaturwissenschaftlichen Positionen zur literarischen Verarbeitung neuerer naturwissenschaftlicher Themen behandelt. Im Vordergrund steht eine Kritik an der kategorischen Ablehnung von Einflussmodellen, da diese nicht nur konzeptionelle Fehler aufweist, sondern auch dem Befund zuwiderläuft. Es folgen Untersuchungen von literarischen Texten, an denen sich nicht nur ein souveräner und kritischer Umgang mit naturwissenschaftlichen Themen zeigen lässt, sondern auch eine imaginative Bearbeitung, die jeden Verdacht auf ein hierarchisches Gefälle oder eine Abhängigkeit von wissenschaftlichen Wahrheitsansprüchen unterläuft.