Synopses & Reviews
Synopsis
Abbreviations Foreword by Peter Nichols Acknowledgements Introduction: The 'Ludicrous' Text of Peter Ackroyd 'A Tiny Light/Seen in the Mind's Eye as a Phoneme': The Poetry 'A Bit of a Game': The Styles of Peter Ackroyd I: The Great Fire of London, The Last Testament of Oscar Wilde, Hawksmoor 'A Bit of a Game': The Styles of Peter Ackroyd II: Chatterton, English Music, First Light, Milton in America 'Endless Variety': Writing the City in the Biographies, The House of Doctor Dee, and Dan Leno and the Limehouse Golem Three Interviews with Peter Ackroyd: 26th August, 1989, 4th January, 1995 and 21st December, 1997 Works Cited Index
Synopsis
Peter Ackroyd: The Ludic and Labyrinthine Text offers the reader the first major critical study in English of one of Britain's most inventive, playful and significant writers of the twentieth century. This study playfully, yet rigorously engages with these aspects of literary stylistics and personal and national identity so important in Ackroyd's work. Rejecting the postmodern label previously attached to the author, Gibson and Wolfreys provide a consideration of all Ackroyd's writing to date, from his poetry and critical thought, to his novels and biographies, offering an indispensable account to anyone interested in Ackroyd and the condition of the novel at the end of the twentieth century.