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Gothic London: On the Capital of Urban Fantasy in Neil Gaiman, China Miéville and Peter Ackroyd

2017; Autonomous University of Barcelona; Volume: 5; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.5565/rev/brumal.416

2014-7910

Arno Meteling,

Themes in Literature Analysis

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.