Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

‘The Past Is Below Us’: Urban Fantasy, Urban Archaeology, and the Recovery of Suppressed History

2013; University of London; Linguagem: Inglês

10.5334/pia.426

2041-9015

Hadas Elber-Aviram,

Crime, Deviance, and Social Control

Few literary genres have been as intimately connected with the field of archaeology as the genre of urban fantasy, which correlates with urban archaeology through a shared concern with the material history of the city. The palimpsestic model of the city discovered by urban archaeologists such as Schliemann and Evans has inspired the multilayered cityscapes of many urban fantasy narratives. These narratives cast their protagonists into the symbolic role of archaeologists who descend into the urban underworld to recover the city’s forgotten past. Important work has been done on the representation of archaeology in popular culture, but scholars have yet to comprehensively discuss the thematic links between urban archaeology and urban fantasy. The following paper offers a preliminary exploration of this issue, by focusing on the ways in which urban fantasy negotiates contending histories of the city. The research centres upon two British urban fantasy novels, Neil Gaiman’s Neverwhere (1996) and Tim Lebbon’s Echo City (2010).