Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Historicity in Peter Ackroyd S Novels
Historicity in Peter Ackroyd S Novels
FACULTY OF EDUCATION
DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE
Brno 2018
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Acknowledgements
I would like to express my admiration and gratitude to my supervisor, Mgr. Lucie
Podroužková, Ph.D., for her guidance, kind support, invaluable advice as well as her almost
superhuman patience which she provided me with during my work on this thesis.
Many thanks also go to my friend, my family, colleagues as well as my students for their
support.
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Contents
Contents ...................................................................................................................................... 4
1. Introduction ......................................................................................................................... 7
2.2. A Chronicler...................................................................................................................... 18
4. Conclusion ........................................................................................................................ 58
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Abstract
This Master thesis examines the application and effectiveness of the postmodern genre
of historiographic metafiction in writing of the British author Peter Ackroyd and it focuses on
the spacialtempotal area of London in his two early novels. This work provides an overview
of the notion of London as an intertextualised city building on the postmodern theory. The
assertion is that even though Peter Ackroyd rejects postmodern features in his fiction and he
emphasises the inherited traditional English approach, his novels demonstrate and Ackroyd´s
living material into a new shape. London especially creates the concept of both original and
distinct fictional world. The argument this work makes is that the parallel between Ackroyd´s
historical writing and the real history provides insight into the historicity of London. The
theoretical part discusses the theory of postmodernism and the concept of historiographic
metafiction based on the studies of Linda Hutcheon. It also contains a short biography of the
author focused on his interest in London. The practical part explores the ways establishing the
reflection of its inhabitants´ minds, the concept of time challenging the traditional notion of
temporal linearity, and the themes of crime and mystery. It examines these characteristics in
two novels by Peter Ackroyd, The Great Fire of London and Hawksmoor, and it attempts to
Anotace
oblast Londýna z hlediska času a prostoru. Tato práce vychází z teorie postmodernismu a
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věnuje se konceptu Londýna, jehož pojetí vychází z techniky zpracování pojmu města
svém díle odmítá používání postmoderních prvků a zdůrazňuje tradiční přístup v anglické
literatuře, jeho romány ukazují a jsou typickým příkladem dekonstrukce představy Londýna,
který autor přetváří jako živý materiál a dává městu nový tvar. Londýn vytváří dvě představy
o fikčním světě: jedná se o původní a osobitý koncept. Argument, na kterém je tato práce
založena, je, že paralela mezi Ackroydovým pojetím historie a skutečnou historií poskytuje
krátkou biografii Petra Ackroyda, zaměřenou na jeho zájem o Londýn. Praktická část se
zabývá způsoby, které představují charakteristické jevy Ackroydových prací jako je smysl pro
místo, reprezentace města jako odrazu mysli obyvatel, koncepce času, která odmítá tradiční
pojetí časové linearity, téma zločinu a záhady. Tyto prvky zkoumá ve dvou románech, Velký
historiografické metafikce.
Key Words
historiographic metafiction, The Great Fire of London, Hawksmoor, rewriting the city,
Klíčová slova
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1. Introduction
The first thing which made me interested in the novels of Peter Ackroyd was my
previous studies of History and English language and literature. I realised that these two
subjects are very close and this gave me the idea to carry out a research into the topic of
historicity and novel. My presupposition is that the area of literature and history is rather
underestimated. To narrow the wide topic of historicity in literature I have chosen one target
which is historiographic metafiction. For this purpose, I chose a contemporary British author
Peter Ackroyd since he uses the works of earlier novelists as material for his own works
which revolve around themes concerning the city of London. Peter Ackroyd started his
writing career in early eighties and London became the unifying element of his novels and
biographies. The word "London" requires cautious approach which springs from Ackroyd´s
unique and distinctive retrospective vision and the knowledge of unknown (Sinclair, "The
Necromancer´s A to Z"). In his works Peter Ackroyd often covers a wide range of individuals
whose behaviour, thoughts, or appearance reflect the actual city; London, The Biography
postmodern writer, but the concept of postmodernism and postmodern writing is a rather
broad topic and therefore I decided to concentrate only on some elements of Ackroyd´s works
The purpose of this thesis is to explore how Peter Ackroyd deals with the place of
London in the context of historicity in his historiographic metafiction. The expected outcome
is to prove that he destroys literary myths of historical truth and reinvents history to make it
different. He intentionally takes and deconstructs the image of history as a living material
More specifically, the core of this thesis is based on a detailed analysis of Ackroyd's
novels, namely The Great Fire of London and Hawksmoor, within English historiographic
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metafiction that brings into focus the importance of history and its literary interpretation. The
overall aim is to understand how literature deals with history of London in postmodern
context.
In the course of time I intended to discuss primary and secondary sources concerning
and I supposed that various sources bring various opinions on my topic. The core of the thesis
is to analyse two Ackroyd's novels which are mentioned above. Most of his novels move in
the English literary history of postmodernism. The Great Fire of London rewrites Little
Dorrit, a classic novel by Charles Dickens, and Hawksmoor is projected into the era of
Christopher Wren when London was rebuilt after the Great Fire.
Peter Ackroyd´s novels are not widely known in the Czech Republic. Only a few of
his novels have been translated into the Czech language so far and there has been little
research into his works. Therefore, my aim is to address the gap in the existing empirical
research on historicity and historiographic metafiction. The reason behind choosing these two
novels is that both of them were written in 1980s and they belong to the earlier works of the
writer, and the fact that both of them cover the topic of London´s burning in 1666.
The analysis of Ackroyd's novels is the main target. Besides I searched and critically
analysed the secondary sources. As for critical method, I intended to rely on several
postmodern theorists, mainly Nick Bentley and his Contemporary British Fiction, Linda
Hutcheon and her book A Poetics of Postmodernism: History, Theory, Fiction and her article
"Historiographic Metafiction." Other sources are the works of Susan Onega, Peter Chalupský
and Berkem G. Saglam. I also referred to Ackroyd´s own writings. The variety of articles
published by The Guardian provided me with the information about Ackroyd´s life and
reviews of his works. Beside these most valuable material, I also worked with other sources
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listed in the section "Works Cited" in the last part of the thesis. This research methodology
wass to sort literature in order to identify the essential attribute of materials. Finally their
The diploma thesis is divided into two parts: a theoretical and a practical one. The
theoretical part deals with chapters focused on the theoretical background introducing the
author and describing the theory of historiographic metafiction. The practical part is formed
by the detailed analyses of Ackroyd´s novels The Great Fire of London and Hawksmoor.
Finally, the conclusion summarises the whole research and it proves the presupposition of this
thesis.
Here might be found the 'heart of London beating warm'." London: The Biography
very rapidly announces itself as Peter Ackroyd: The Autobiography. The celebrated author
transforms himself, with a showman's pass, into a city of memory. Proceeding by a series of
recognitions, he dowses for the qualities that have defined and sustained a career of heroic
endeavour. He has set himself to know everything that is to be known about an unknowable
mass: a history that is used up, a Falstaffian past that overwhelms an anorexic present.
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2. Chapter 2 – Theoretical Background
This chapter is to introduce the vast concept of postmodern theory and literature since
Peter Ackroyd is a representative of British postmodern novelists who are term postmodernist.
First, an introduction into the postmodern British literature is made and its significant features
relevant to Ackroyd´s works are mentioned. Finally, Ackroyd´s short biography and his vision
Postmodernism is a varied movement which has developed in the late 20th century
through the branches of literature, philosophy, art, and criticism among others. The term is
("Postmodernism"). To define it properly, the modernism needs to be taken into account. This
literary style describes the aesthetic and cultural practices spanning from 1890s to 1930s.
However, the historical etymology relates this term to the period from 1450s in Britain and it
associates the high point of it with the Enlightenment concept in the seventeenth and
that modernity relates to "any science that legitimates itself with reference to a
metadiscourse [that makes] an explicit appeal to some grand narrative, such as the
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represents an ̔incredulity towards metanarratives’ of this kind, which is often understood
to mean a scepticism towards the grand narratives of rationalism, science, the Cartesian
self, and the prevailing economic theories in the eighteenth, nineteenth and twentieth
narratives has provided a fruitful area for novelists who are keen to explore the nature of
"explain many aspects of the natural or social world within a given domain of knowledge […]
postmodern indicates a mode of writing that departs from the modernist literature of the early
twentieth century and at the same time it involves a philosophical perspective that is critical of
term which periodizes literary history, it includes ideas of experimentation, scepticism and
irony, and rejection of grand narratives and universalism. Marxist literary theorist Frederic
Jameson argued that postmodernism as a phase in cultural history was associated with "the
Bentley further claims that the term postmodernism does not relate to a fixed set of
characteristics or criteria, but is a rather fluid term that takes on different aspects when used
by different critics and different social commentators. (33) The development of postmodern
This term defines an intellectual concept from 1950s which rejects structuralism and its
description of the world as an accurate way by means of structures. The function of language
in poststructuralism was to challenge the assumption of the record of realistic experience and
the authors were to attempt to construct the aspects of world anew and create it in a textual
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way (Bentley 33). Postmodern theorists argue that language is not "a mirror of nature" (qtd. in
"Postmoderninsm") but they based their claims on the linguistic theory of Ferdinand de
meaning of a word is not a static thing in the world or even an idea in the mind but rather a
range of contrasts and differences with the meaning of other words." (Postmodernism")
assumption that the aspects of the world are to be represented truthfully. A literary critic Ian
Watt focused on the individual experience which characterises the novel. He gives examples
of "the use of identifiable locations and periods of history, characters that are representative of
people you might meet in real life, a plot structure based on cause and effect, and an
assumption that language is referential and denotational." (Bentley 34) As a result of the
realism, and associate of poststructuralism. Postmodernism has been developed into one of
the most influential and controversial styles across a broad range of disciplines. David
Recent interest in the British literature over the last forty years is reflected by the
space which has been devoted to the research and studies on contemporary literature. Nick
Bentley in his work Contemporary British Fiction (2008) refers the term "contemporary" to
the period between 1975 and 2005, the first date marking the election of Margaret Thatcher as
the leader of the Conservative Party and the key moment for political, social, economic and
cultural changes in Great Britain (2). The latter is related to the year in which the latest
references to fiction appear (1). The post-war British literature reacted to pre-war modernism
and it tried to retrieve "an English realist tradition that had been diverted by modernist
experimentation" (Bentley 30). The British novelists were placed into a problematical
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situation in terms of approach to a form: realistic, modernist and experimental, and
postmodernist.
(Bentley 31). Although the term refers to the present, the prefix "post" carries the meaning of
the future. Postmodernism is perceived as an opposition to the sense of the traditional and
ordinary, and so relating to the modern. The experimental writing of 1970s and 1980s was
considered to be new and modern, but the term of "modernism" in literature was defined
earlier in the twentieth century and could not be used to denote this mode of writing. As a
result the prefix "post" was applied to "establish a link with this experimental attitude towards
writing, whilst at the same time signalling that the experiment itself had shifted due to the
changed historical situation in which writers of the late twentieth century found themselves"
(Bentley 32).
One of the trends in the contemporary British fiction is inspired by the historical novel
and rewriting narratives of the past which rises from the postmodern condition of suspicion
towards grand narratives. History is considered to be "a single monolithic account of the past"
(Bentley 128). In conformity with postmodern ideas, the concept of history has been
pluralised "to accommodate the sense in which accounts of past events are different according
to the position from where they are viewed, especially in terms of the ideological agendas that
may lie behind the presentation of what appears to be an impartial view of historic events."
(Bentley 129) A typical example is given by Salman Rushdie who provided a striking image
of historical narratives as "a set of competing stories, the most powerful of which survive at
the expense of the less powerful, remarking that 'History loves only those who dominate her'."
Bentley mentions another literary critic and theorist, Linda Hutcheon, who identifies a
number of postmodern novels and who is interested in recounting narratives that engage with
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the past. (130) Hutcheon identifies a new mode in contemporary fiction that she calls
through our relationship with the past. This kind of writing is historiographic in that it self-
consciously interrogates the way in which history is recorded." (Bentley 130) According to
Linda Hutcheon, postmodern theory challenges the separation of literature and history which
happened in the nineteenth century. She claims that postmodern writing is based on the
and art dates back to Aristotle. At that time, history was connected with the revelation of the
truth of what had happened in the past while on the other hand art spoke of what might have
happened. Since then, history writing have used the techniques of fictional representation to
create imaginative versions of the real worlds. As a result of this development, history and
fiction became two genres and the relation between them was determined by the concept of
However, Hutcheon deals with the process of both writing history and historical
narratives. She argues that "The interaction of the historiographic and the metafictional
foregrounds the rejection of the claims of both 'authentic' representation and 'inauthentic' copy
alike. [In her opinion] the very meaning of artistic originality is as forcefully challenged as is
the transparency of historical referentiality" (Poetics 110). The postmodern concept of the
multiplicity which arose from the link of the fictitious to mendacious resulted in the fact that
historiographic metafiction is based on the double awareness of fictive and factual. Moreover,
it establishes the frames of truths and then crosses them, challenging the artistic originality
and historical referentiality. As a result, the truth and falsity are not the right terms to be
applied. (Hutcheon, Poetics 108) Besides the binary opposition between fiction and history,
the protagonists of historiographic metafiction are the ex-centric, marginalized, and peripheral
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Shakespeare are given the secondary role. They are deployed not to validate the narrative but
to question its authenticity. Historiographic metafiction does not recognize either type or
cultural universality. It undermines the traditional role of history in the way that it conditioned
its identification with a postmodern ideology of plurality and the notion of difference.
Bentley suggests that Hutcheon adopts a different attitude from Fredric Jameson who
of using techniques that lower the status of history making it nothing but texts. Hutcheon
opposes this point of view when she defends historiographic metafiction as a new trend
"which actively promotes a sense of historicity, and of thinking through our relationship with
the past." (Bentley 140) She claims that it questions and critically evaluates history while
problematizing the concept of the truth. She understands postmodern fiction as strengthening
of historicity since it embodies "an endless desire and imperative to look again at the past,
reviewing and reassessing received histories, but without the striving for closure as
represented by a grand narrative of history." (Bentley 151) This concept of rewriting history
undermines the nature of historical knowledge and it confuses the notion of fact and fiction.
paradoxes of fictive / historical representation, the particular / the general, and the present /
the past. The confrontation of these sides of dichotomy is contradictory and willing to be
exploited. (Hutcheon, Poetics 106). There are various tools applied to achieve this aim. One
postmodern form since it reveals discontinuity at the heart of continuity and difference at the
heart of similarity. (Poetics 11) Postmodern parody restores history and memory. It signals a
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self-reflexive discourse which incorporates the past into its structure. It becomes a mode of
the ex-centric characters who are marginalized by the dominant ideology. (Hutcheon, Poetics
35) It is a strategy which combats the hegemony of the modernism and realism. In this sense
it puts into question the authority of any act of writing by means of locating the discourses of
both history and fiction within an ever-expanding intertextual network that mocks any notion
within historical discourse and at the same time it refuses to surrender its autonomy as fiction.
It is a mode of parody that enables the contradictory doubleness of the intertexts of history
and fiction. They take on a parallel status in the parodic reworking of the textual past of both
the history and literature. The textual incorporation of these intertextual pasts as a constitutive
literary and historical. (Hutcheon, Poetics 124) The intertextual parody offers a sense of the
presence of the past, but this past can be known only from its texts, its traces – be they literary
or historical. Hutcheon says that postmodernism tries to retain the notion of the work of art,
bit it returns the text to the historical discourse. (Poetics 125) Michel Foucault described aptly
this self-conscious postmodern art as "art within the archive," which is both historical and
Hutcheon asserts that the parody is not to destroy the past. Its purpose is to point out to
the postmodern paradox and both to enshrine it and to question it. Julia Kristeva supported
this paradox by her theory of the "irreducible plurality of texts within and behind any given
text." (Hutcheon, Poetics 126) The concept of intertextuality challenged the relationship
between the author and the text, and replaced it with the one between the reader and text. The
literary work is not considerate to be original, but the text derives its meaning and
significance form the prior discourses. The intertextuality puts the centre of textual meaning
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into the history of discourse itself. (Hutcheon, Poetics 126) Hutcheon accentuates the
the notion of parody as opening the text up, rather than closing it down, is important
one: among the many things that postmodern intertextuality challenges are both closure
and single, centralized meaning. Its willed and wilful provisionality rests largely upon
its acceptance of the inevitable textual infiltration of prior discursive practices. The
falsification of used details and historical data, which are incorporated. It plays upon the truth
and lies of the historical record. It incorporates the historical facts into the narrative, but it
does not assimilate them. As a result historiographic metafiction "acknowledges the paradox
of the reality of the past but its textualized accessibility to us today." (Hutcheon, Poetics 114)
Reader´s knowledge is derived from the knowledge of the past which is mediated by
textual version. Ackroyd´s Dickens is and is not the historical Charles Dickens. The reader
only knows the British writer by the way of texts which Ackroyd collected to create his
fiction which is characterised by the doubleness of inscribing of both historical and literary
intertexts. We know that the past existed, but we know it today only through its texts, and so it
not truth. The past arrives in the form of texts and textualized remainders. (Hutcheon, Poetics
128-129).
Historiographic metafiction confronts the literature with history employing the mode
of themes and forms. For example, Ackroyd´s three-volume biography about Charles Dickens
contains the fictionalized meeting of the author and the great writer. (Ackroyd, "Cockney
Visionaries) To rewrite the past means to open it up to the present. Such is the teaching of
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Ackroyd´s novel Hawksmoor. Other historiographic metafiction points to other implications
of the rewriting of history. Ackroyd´s The Great Fire of London is an apt example. Hutcheon
contrasts historiographic metafiction with historical novel. She states that historiographic
historical details "in order to foreground the possible mnemonic failures of recorded history
and the constant potential for both deliberate and inadvertent error (Hutcheon, "Pastime" 62-
63). Ackroyd emphasises this strategy in his fiction "particularly when it comes to
biographical facts and even the most important detail is sometimes distorted" (Saglam 8).
The novels of Peter Ackroyd, one of the most acclaimed writers of British fiction and
non-fiction today, are identified as postmodern texts, and most of his critics, including Susana
Onega, have aligned his novels with historiographic metafiction and typical postmodernist
features. However, Ackroyd himself rejects this description and he stresses the innate
traditional English approach (Onega, "Interview" 217) and the influence of poetry which
"didn´t disappear [and] just went into the fiction" (Onega, "Interview" 212). The aim of this
thesis is to prove that even though the author refuses the categorization of his works into the
system of postmodern literature, his novels demonstrate the typical features of historiographic
metafiction.
2.2. A Chronicler
the City"). Having started his career as a poet and literary editor for The Spectator magazine,
he has acquired reputation as a novelist, biographer and historian. For his books, both fictional
and nonfictional, he has looted the treasure chest of the British history, culture and literature.
He is noted for the volume of works based on the careful and extensive research; deriving his
main inspiration from the capital city of the United Kingdom. He has borrowed as many
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characters as he was able to move them in time and plant them into London. Ackroyd has
created the chronicle of the city starting it in 1399 with The Clerkenwell Tales and ending it in
the 3700s with The Plato Papers. In this time span, he observes the relationship between
London´s past and present. He claims that William Blake made the biggest impact on his
work as he was a powerful, significant thinker and philosopher. Ackroyd´s works are as a
chapter in an unfinished work which will be ended by the author´s death. He produced the
biographies of Ezra Pound, T. S. Eliot, Charles Dickens, William Blake, Thomas More,
Geoffrey Chaucer, William Shakespeare, Edgar Allan Poe, Charlie Chaplin, and a mammoth
book on London. The list of novels includes The Great Fire of London, Hawksmoor,
Peter Ackroyd was born on 5 October 1949 in East Acton, London. He never knew his
father. He was brought up only by his mother who was a devoted Catholic in a council house
and "the city became the landscape of his imagination." (O´Mahony, "London Calling") This
fact influenced Ackroyd in his mysticism. The sad and unhappy characters in his novels
spring in Ackroyd´s nature of being melancholic and likely to be hurt. His Cambridge tutor
Richard Gooder recalls that "He never made a point at anybody's expense. If someone made
one at his, he was wounded and didn't retaliate. He was not exactly self-effacing but certainly
not aggressive." (qtd. in O´Mahony, "London Calling") The sense of the past, his
identification with the character, and the belief that there are certain people "to whom or
through whom the territory – the place, the past – speaks" (O´Mahony, "London Calling")
newspaper at five and wrote a play about Guy Fawkes at nine. He attended St Benedict´s, an
independent Roman Catholic day school situated in Ealing. Ackroyd was first interested in
poetry. At Clare College, in Cambridge, he was active in poetry circles and he graduated with
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double first in English literature. He published his first book of poems called Ouch! in 1971
followed by another one called Lonodn Lickpenny two years later. He wrote his first book of
prose at Yale. It was a polemic called Notes for a New Culture where he presented his opinion
on the decline of British literature. Later he explained that he "was perplexed and dismayed
After return to London, Ackroyd became the youngest literary editor of the Spectator.
He is said to have been refreshingly straightforward. He wrote what he really thought, e.g. he
equivalent of "playing with himself" (O´Mahony, "London Calling"). According to his agent
Giles Gordon Ackroyd showed interest in paradox, word and language, and he was a great
debater.
Since 1980s he has been a full-time writer who is able to publish one book a year. He
lives in his flat in central London working on three books at the same time. In 1999 he
suffered from a heart attack, spending one week in comma which is an interesting episode in
his life since it happened a day after he submitted the manuscript of his work London: The
biography. Ackroyd believes that he was confronted with one of the oldest truth about the city
when he claims that "London can kill" ("BBC" 00:01:36). This turned out to be true.
His novels are based on the biographies and "the biographer´s concerns with the
patterns of history and careful evocations of character and period." (O´Mahony, "London
Calling") Peter Ackroyd regards many attributes of the historiographic metafiction to be a part
of English tradition. He claims that "the history of English literature can profitably be seen as
a history of thefts and plagiarisms, of formal borrowings and melodic echoes." (The
Collection 207) He follows that "the essential constituents [of postmodernism] (theatricality
and an awareness of the relativity of style) have always been an essential component of
English taste. […] Postmodernism is simply a belated academic recognition of what is a very
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old tradition." (The Collection 259) Ackroyd´s own techniques of writing – rewriting,
Almost all Ackroyd´s novels and biographies up to 2008, except for The Last
Testament of Oscar Wild, The Light, and Milton in America, are situated in London. It seems
that this city became a unifying element of is works and research. Not only does London
create the frame of his fictional narratives, it is also taken as the main subject of his non-
fictional studies London: The Biography, London Under, and Queer City. It is the infinity
which lies the ancient and modern city beside each other. The "relics of the past now exist as
part of the present. It is in the nature of the city to encompass everything." (London: The
Biography 760)
Ackroyd´s writing style is elaborated and experimental. History, time and place are
crucial elements which Ackroyd uses to structure his fiction. In the interview with Jeremy
Gibson, Ackroyd said that "[writing the novel was] an attempt to infuse the past and the
present and suggest that the past can only really exist in the present, and the present in the
past" (Gibson and Wolfreys 223). Although he talked about The Last Testament of Oscar
Wild, he sticks to this principle in all his novels. As in Hawksmoor, different time periods fold
into one another across centuries either structurally or thematically. He produces the concrete
historical moments, roots them in London, and "refracts the social and political realities of the
Ackroyd is very artful and imaginative when he creates the reality of his novels. He
uses history to justify the existence of the book. His fiction depends on the textual sources as
history itself is grasped through existing texts. He considers the historical facts to be rather
neutral and so he places them into interpretative framework to breathe new life into them. He
also invents the language for the past to evoke the emotional atmosphere (Gibson and
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Wolfreys 224). The interpretative quality of history is also emphasised by Linda Hutcheon as
The history of the city cannot be reduced to small pieces, representing London in the
19th century and then jumping into the 1980s. It is a complex structure reflecting annular
circles of history, representation, and literary and urban movements (Lehan 4). The study of
culture provided several urban visions, among them the city as a place of commerce, industry,
4-6) Lehan claims that there are forces beneath the surface of modern city which are as old as
our origins. These are disruptive forces, natural disasters and what-the-city-cast-off forces (6).
The city has been influencing the human fate for over three hundred years. Richard
Lehan defines urbanism as "the very heart of Western culture" (3) and the modern city as "an
Enlightenment construct and the literary and cultural response to that idea – the dissenting
paradigm – from the eighteenth to the present." (3) He understands the city as an evolving
construct influencing and influenced by literary styles of comic realism, romantic realism,
naturalism, modernism, and postmodernism (with its subgenres like a detective story). (3) As
the time passed, the city was moulded by various tools, e.g. after 1666 it was the plans and
portraits drawn up by Christopher Wren and in the nineteenth century Charles Dickens
reflected the change in urban life in his novels. Each new literary technique transformed the
Ackroyd follows the line of urban identity that reveals our secrets and cultural values.
He combines historical and literary approaches to conceptualize the new city. As a historian
he emphasises the origins of the city, physical laws and effects of the city on its inhabitants
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Lehan claims that "the city and its literature share textuality – that the way reading
literary texts are analogous to the ways urban historians read the city. (8) Since the city is a
complex and difficult structure, diversity becomes a key to to its beginnings and continuities.
Peter Ackroyd describes London as "a vast, complex and confusing city which has
existed now for 2,000 years." ("The Best Books") He claims that the city was built upon the
imperatives of money and power. Its growth has taken a thousand of different forms. ("The
Best Books")
Peter Ackroyd imagines London as "a human body [which] is striking and singular"
(London: The Biography 1). He uses the metaphor of "a living, breathing being which is
and historical documents which revealed the records that London has burnt many times.
Ackroyd observed that the city acted as an invitation for fire and destruction. However, it
grew stronger and mightier after each conflagration. Ackroyd claims that London was forged
in fire which is one of the principal forces in its history. ("BBC" 00:02:40) He also asserts that
London is a murderer who changes silently and invisibly like an indestructible living being.
("BBC" 00:05:59)
Historical and literary London is arguably the most ambitious project of Peter
Ackroyd. London appears in all his non-fiction and fiction works. He reconstructs the city in
his seminal work London: The Biography. In this giant project, which took twenty years to
accomplish, Ackroyd returned to the material that inspired him in his fiction writing. Sinclair
writes that "All the contrary currents of London life are on display, the grand spectacles and
sacrifices" and that "Ackroyd had maintained a gold-top literary profile by ventriloquizing the
23
Ackroyd envisions London as a place where the "past is a form of occluded memory,
in which the presence of earlier generations is felt rather than seen. It is an echoic city, filled
with shadows." (London 448) The writer invented a kind of religious sense when describing
London which he considers to be a pagan place. He believes that the place can "affect the
character and behaviour of the people" (Ackroyd, "Cockney Visionaries") who live in it.
Ackroyd suggests that past and present are in locked in mysterious embrace
everywhere. It represents millions of human lives which have come and gone. The city is a
"part of a large process, pattern which arises up through centuries" ("BBC" 00:44:13).
Ackroyd likes old maps. When looking into them, he can see how quickly London
spread and grew. ("BBC" 00:06:08) London is a city of ancient origin. As such it went
through the changing human history while accommodating itself to the changing conditions. It
mirrored and recorded the prosperity, hardship and secrets of human world.
Ackroyd´s novels draw attention to the streets of London. The oldest recorded street
called the Ironmonger Lane is from the twelfth century and it bears the signs of the
destruction caused by fire. This combustion dates back as early as the fourth century. Other
development also shows a great number of cases when the fire happened. Ackroyd perused
the records and he noticed that the alignment reveals the continuity. The underground layers
show the fire devastation ("BBC" 00:10:38). As a result Ackroyd came up with the whole
theory of redness. He dressed London into the red colour. This is confirmed by the fact that
the officials also have worn red uniforms. Generally, red is a colour of blood which is
connected to violence and that is why London has fierce and deadly spirit inherited from the
Celts. Ackroyd goes even further in his assertion when he points to Roman ruins of an
amphitheatre which London hides under the concrete layer of the modern age. In this mighty
construction, the bloody sports and games took place. Consequently, London is built on this
24
According to some ancient writers, the history of London is connected to the ancient
Troy, to the city destroyed in flames. Troy functions as an image of mythical combustion.
Brutus compares London to New Troy. For this reason, London Stone was brought from the
Old Troy to protect the city and a proverb started to be hold: "if the stone is safe the city will
flourish". ("BBC" 00:24:55) Moreover, the London mythology is ruled by death and bad
signs. There are superstitions, e.g. when the howling of dogs at night, comets and eclipses.
Ackroyd sees the city as a place of ancient spirit which has survived until the present
days. The character of London had been established in the earliest years ("BBC" 00:15:33). It
was a site abounding with merchants, workers, traders and immigrants. These people are here
still today. Neither did the fires of the 19th century devastate its mystery and attractiveness.
the attention of London inhabitants, e.g. the event of The Great Fire was recreated into a
However, the defining moment is the 1666 fire. After this event Christopher Wren
draw and built his masterpiece which withstood the bombing of the Second World War. This
hell threw London back in time. The Blitz uncovered the ruins of ancient times. London
uncovers its history after each burning and bombing. It is an evidence of continuity and a
sense of ancient. Each inferno represents a new hope, spirit of survival and reconstruction.
After the Blitz, London was rebuilt again, but in stones and glass. ("BBC" 00:40:00)
In the BBC documentary Ackroyd emphasises that every journey throughout its streets
becomes a journey into the past which starts in Roman times. The atmosphere of London
attracts and it stimulates artists and writers such as Virginia Woolf ("BBC" 00:16:01) who
was forced to leave it after her doctors had discovered that "the excitement of the city
provoked her mental turmoil and her attempt at suicide" ("BBC" 00:16:51). Ackroyd himself
25
suffered a heart attack after he had finished his masterpiece and he even refuses to leave the
Ackroyd hates talking about his work. He claims that he "can't even remember the
"London Luminaries and Cockney Visionaries" he allowed himself a short autobiography and
he also gave the most coherent outline of his London vision and the characters he has chosen
to write about. His intention was to define the continual process of London existence, its
development and violence. Ackroyd says that London luminaries and Cockney visionaries
express the true nature and spirit of London which has gone unrecognised and
unacknowledged. (342) This ignorance of the past is present, it is around us. According to
Ackroyd London´s sensibility derives its energy from variety, spectacle and display. This
sensibility is a combination of pathos, comedy, tragedy and farce. ("London Luminaries") The
they were preoccupied with light and darkness, in a city that is built in the shadows of
money and power; all of them were entranced by the scenic and the spectacular, in a city that
is continually filled with the energetic display of people and institutions. They understood the
energy of London, they understood its variety and they also understood its darkness. But they
are visionaries because they represented the symbolic dimensions of existence in what Blake
called "Infinite London" – in this vast concourse of people they understood the pity and
mystery of existence just as surely as they understood its noise and its bustle. (Ackroyd,
irrationality, genus loci, and a concept of time. Some of these notions are discussed in the next
chapter.
26
3. Chapter 2 – Rewriting the City in Ackroyd´s Novels
This chapter is grounded on the examination of individual novels and it provides the
analysis of how Ackroyd deals with the historicity and historiographic metafiction in his
novels. The aim is to determine the choices and techniques employed by the author and to
identify common features which will provide the material for the conclusion.
The Great Fire of London is the first Ackroyd´s novel published in 1982. The author
employed for the first time the technique of overlapping history in different parts of London
which later became a synonymous style with him. He portrays the city of the twentieth
century as he based the narrative on the Dickens´s novel of Little Dorrit. He establishes the
dialogue between the contemporary and historical, or 1980s and Victorian London. Lewis
claims that "Ackroyd´s novel follows closely Dickens´s template particularly with regard to
the depiction of London as a kind of a wasteland." (18) He continuous that London is bleak
when he says that: "It is a city of wailing fire-engine sirens and buzzing flies, of sleazy bars
where men in leather look for one-night stands, and of tramps loitering around tube stations.
All the characters are looking for ways to escape their sterile lives. The novel is full of images
of prison and confining relationships." (18) This is underlined by Ackroyd´s depiction of the
city as a dark, decaying place in all cases in the book. Ackroyd tries to represent Victorian
London and the authority of a prison as a decaying and repressive institution (Ackroyd, Great
Besides Ackroyd´s darkness which casts the shadow on the whole London society, the
city is depicted as a component of everyday reality. When Little Arthur looks for his window,
he can see "a familiar scene: the backs of other houses, other windows with their curtains
1
abbreviated as GFOL
27
down, the small gardens with their stunted shrubs and bushes." (Ackroyd, Great Fire of
London 5) The streets which appears in the novel such as the Borough High Street really
exists. In addition, Ackroyd´s sense of London underlines the narrative in the way that the
scenic view of the city arises from the scraps of the story and it "casts significant light on the
condition of contemporary man." (Onega 20) The novel is based on the sense of belonging to
a particular area which "[affects] the mood and behaviour of individual, both consciously and
life, we must turn to the city (qtd. in Chalupský, Horror and Beauty 165). Arthur Feather lives
in the Fun City which enables him to cope with his mental disease. London is hostile city for
Audray "and so into the dark street they went, walking across shadows, scuttling against the
wind which tried to push them back" (Ackroyd, GFOL 9) There are more instances in the
novel when the city is unfriendly towards the characters. The underside of the city is
represented by the tramps who helps Audrey to set fire in the London film sets. The city
Audrey believes that she does London a favour (GFOL 162), she destroys the bad city and
The novel´s structure consists of four narratives and according to Susan Onega it
resembles a typical Victorian multiple plot novel (27-28). The story revolves around four
central characters, namely Spencer Spender, Rowan Phillips, Little Arthur and Audrey
Skelton who are gradually introduced in the first four chapters. The following chapters are
developed into the elaborated network of relationships that tie together the lives of all
characters in the narrative "whose paths meet either because they are 'intellectually' interested
in Dickens, like Spenser and Phillips, or because they live in the area where the plot of Little
28
Dorrit was set, like Little Arthur and Audrey Skelton." (Onega 20) The chapters are
juxtaposed as the novel progresses, however, they alternate in changing the characters.
The story is introduced into the 19th century when an agent Pancks discovers that the
Dorrits inherited a great fortune (Ackroyd, GFOL 3). From the very beginning of the book,
the narrative is tinged with the apocalypse and mysterious reincarnation. This is emphasised
at the end of the first two chapters which are concluded by ominous sentences saying: "He
hardly knows what he is saying." (Ackroyd, GFOL 7) and "She had to find him before
something terrible happened." (Ackroyd, GFOL 10) The effect is to alienate the reader with
The first chapter is opened with the character of Little Arthur, the incarnated character
of Little Feather and a proprietor of Fun City. This amusement arcade is visited by a young
couple Audrey Skelton and Tim Coleman who know Arthur as a smiling and quiet man.
However, this time he gets furious and expels them from the arcade. The complexity of his
story is accomplished when he is accused of a murder of a young girl and placed into the
Chapter three starts the key narrative of the book. Spenser Spender, a film maker,
finds inspiration for his next venture when he tries to remember which book the sentence "I
never should have touched you, but I thought you were a child." (Ackroyd, GFOL 11) come
from and which persistently haunts him. When he discovers that he has a great theme of Little
Dorrit which is described as "London itself" (Ackroyd, GFOL 12), he realises that he can use
a real prison as his model, create pictures and images, and probe mystery (Ackroyd, GFOL
12). One of the key aspects of Ackroyd´s writing is using a postmodern technique of
intertextuality. Ackroyd intentionally imposes one text upon another which creates
specialtemporal disruptions. (Komsta 168) He uses the classic novel of Charles Dickens as an
intertextual invader, giving each of the characters a different perspective on this novelist.
29
Komsta argues that "Ackroyd´s novel is constructed upon conflicting attempts at defining
whose version of Little Dorrit is the real one." Seen from this perspective, Ackroyd
The whole conception of rewriting and reinventing London through the text is
underlined in The Great Fire of London by the fact that Ackroyd used Dickens´s novel "as a
means of recovering London´s history" (Onega 27). However, Spender realizes that there are
a lot of interpretations of the original text and he does not "want to be further confused: each
time a new interpretation of Little Dorrit [is] sprung upon him" (Ackroyd, GFOL 85). There
are found three interpretations of Dickens´s Little Dorrit in the novel. The first one is
provided by Sir Frederick who wants to abandon the idea of working on the film in the prison.
This fact is strictly refused by Spenser Spender who objects that "this would mean altering the
entire structure and idea of the film." (Ackroyd, GFOL 151) Another meaning of the book is
given by Job Penstone, a professor of Victorian social history whom Spenser meets in a
restaurant. It is provided in the dialogue with his students when they complain about
Dickens´s anti-feminist attitude since there are "no real women, that is, just male stereotypes."
(Ackroyd, GFOL 83) Spenser admits that this idea is constructive and he likes the idea of
"giving the film more of a documentary look." (Ackroyd, GFOL 84) But he dismisses it when
he imagines the scene where London is presented as a dark fearful city whose noise and
spectacle reduces the human figures (Ackroyd, GFOL 84). The last interpretation and the one
accepted by Spenser is put by Rowan Phillips who sees Little Dorrit "in terms of its symbolic
Ackroyd chose the prominent Victorian novelist Charles Dickens, "whom he considers
one of the most outstanding London writers." (Chalupský, "Like a Furnace" 12) His
conception of Dickens and Dickensian London is explained in the words of Spenser "Dickens
understood London. He was a great man. He knew what it was about. He knew that in a city
30
people behave in different ways like they were obsessed. He was here when it all started. He
critical study of Charles Dickens" (Ackroyd, GFOL 19). Even though he is of a Canadian origin,
Ackroyd used this character to enter the story himself. When the author claims that Rowen
writes "books in the same way that other people doodle – compulsively, with little affection,
defending himself against criticism by ignoring each work as soon as it was finished," he
which corresponds with the sexual preference of the author. Rowen arrives in London to find
out where Marshalsea prison was located. During his quest he meets the tramps who inhabit the
area of the former penal institution and Tim who becomes his secret lover.
Ackroyd, Dickens and other character. Ackroyd enters the novel as the character of Rowan to
be able to interpret Little Dorrit. He also "reincarnated" Dickens into the novel as the character
of Spenser Spender. His marriage which splits up reminds of marital problems Dickens had
when he began to write this novel. In this sense, Ackroyd creates a framework for his
Spenser´s life is connected with a prison since he grew up beside it. He considered this
brick building to be a real image of human who holds a mystery, fate and death around them.
(Ackroyd, GFOL 11) When Spenser realised that he was going to make a film of Little Dorrit,
he likened his main theme of London to the prison. Ackroyd elaborates this metaphor further
in the novel. The capital is represented as a cage. When Rowan is strolling through the
London night he senses it as being "like a cloth placed over the cage of a bird."(Ackroyd,
GFOL 71) Ackroyd used the term of cage as a synonym for prison.
31
The first part of the novel is textually locked in the Marshalsea Prison. The characters
of the narrative are eager to find its location. Ackroyd shows a genuine sense of metaphor
when he allows Rowan to describe the place as "A small open space, […] it was surrounded
by large tower-blocks, so that it resembled a small wound which had never healed" (24).
Marshalsea is used as a metaphor for London and literary representation of the city. The novel
can be read as a text which explores the theme of London based on the portrayal of the city as
a prison.
The author opens his novel with the preface entitled "the story so far" (Ackroyd,
GFOL 3) where he summarizes the story of Little Dorrit. Even though it evokes the
association between Ackroyd´s novel and Dickens´s classic, the last sentence of the chapter
claiming "Although it could not be described as a true story, certain events have certain
consequences ... ." (Ackroyd, GFOL 3) breaks the continuity between these two works. Onega
suggests that "the words can be interpreted simply as a warning that Dickens´s writing of
Little Dorrit was not a self-contained act, that, once created, the novel will condition the work
of successive generations of writers." (Ackroyd, GFOL 19) This idea promotes the main plot
of the narrative which unfolds from the intention of Spenser Spender to transform Dicken´s
classic into a film version. Onega follows that "the 'consequences' of unearthing and
intertextual indebtedness and affect the lives of the people involved in the project in very
According to Komsta Ackroyd´s vision of London reflects the city as "detached from
its cultural heritage and subsequently degenerated into a textual reprise' of Dickensian city."
(169) However, it is not the copy, but a prisoner and a prison. (Komsta 170). The fact that
most of the meetings and activities happen around and in Marshalsea Prison (Spenser´s film is
made there, Rowan meets Tim outside it, Audrey´s séance draws her attention to it), the area
32
functions as a "powerful special area" and a "microcosmic manifestation" of a wider London
(Chalupský, Horror and Beauty 151). Komsta claims that the prison influences the
"spatiotemporal mechanisms governing the presented narrative´s world, transforming the city
Another key aspect of Ackroyd´s writing is placing textual traps into his novels. One
of the typical examples is using a misnomer. The textual aspect of the city is represented by
the title of the novel. The event of the Great Fire of London is not mentioned in the novel at
all. Using the 1666 conflagration, Ackroyd places a textual trap for readers who learn that the
title is intentionally misleading and that Ackroyd´s novel has nothing to do with this historical
event. The central plot of the novel revolves around the film adaptation of Little Dorrit which
is destroyed by its own protagonists and culminates in a fire which destroys the film sets and
the surrounding parts of London. The term Great Fire of London is an eponym for an event
The narrative is constructed on Dickens´s text. Even though the introductory chapter
titled "the story so far,"(Ackroyd, GFOL 3) provides a plot summary of the first part of Little
Dorrit, the text is flawed by an error. Ackroyd implies that Arthur Clennam discovers the
details about the fortune that the Dorrits can claim and that his agent, Pancks, assisted him.
Lewis points to chapter 35 of Dickens´s novel where "Pancks astonishes Clennam with this
discovery. It is one made entirely on his own initiative and at his own expense." (18) Another
mistake occurs when Rowan Phillips and Tim Coleman are walking down Marshalsea Road
after visiting the site where a prison once stood. The Cambridge academic tells Tim of a scene
from the Dickens novel when Little Dorrit and Little Mother spent all night walking up and
down Borough High Street. Crossing London Bridge, the two women meet a crazed woman
who thinks that Amy is a child. The Person referred to here as "Little Mother" is the
simpleton Maggy. But in the Dickens novel it is actually Maggy who uses that name to refer
33
to Little Dorrit herself. Rowan, then is confused in retelling his anecdote. In these two
examples Dickens´s text is corrupted. Using the tool of the falsification either of the title or of
some parts of the text, Ackroyd underlines the credibility of the novel and he enhances the
story. He also empathises the role of the novel as a mode of presentation of historical events
which are not limited but open to fictionalization. In this sense the purpose of the narrative is
Although the novel takes place in contemporary London, its plot is determined by a
different historical period so the author uses London´s past "as a trope for the repressed
underbelly of modern life and identity" (qtd. in Chalupský, "Like a Furnace" 11) Ackroyd
adopted "historical setting and characters in order to address a wide range of present-day
concerns" and invited "a felt sense of connections with people, places, and events of the past"
(qtd. in Chalupský, "Like a Furnace" 11). To achieve this past feeling he used the concept of
reincarnation. As the story develops, Audrey Skelton, a bored girl dissatisfied in her job,
attends a séance held in the house of Miss Norman. She loses consciousness and her body is
visited by the ghost of Amy Dorrit, who introduces herself as "the child of Marshalsea" (40).
Onega suggests that "in the world of The Great Fire of London, the boundaries
between fiction and reality are one non-existent, that the difference between fictional
characters and real people; between real and fictional Great Fires, and between real and
fictional worlds simply does not hold." (31) The explanation lies in the moment when the
spirit of Little Dorrit enters the body of Audrey Skelton. The reader expects the difference
between the fictional and real worlds. However, the reincarnation of Little Dorrit into Audrey
presuppose "either the fictionality of the visionary telephone operator, or the reality of the
The novel revolves around the real and fictional worlds. As is revealed at the end of
the novel, the latter one is dominated by two sets – a prison and a spectacle. (Komsta 169)
34
The first eighteen chapters are locked in the text of Dickens´s narrative in the context of
Marshalsea Prison. The rest of the chapters is based on the spectacle when a prison house is
transformed into a film setting and finally a fire scene. (Komsta 169) As far as the time notion
understood here as the repetitive present of the performance, [it] denotes the status of
Time is essentially stripped off its past and future, enclosed as a result within the frame
of the all-encompassing now. The implied repetitiveness of the novel´s temporality will
be validated in the observation of the characters, who are forced to remain within their
roles, deprived subsequently of any development and thus – inherently static. (Komsta
169)
called "archeology of the imagination which explores "the historical layering of experience
that has accumulated in a particular place." (qtd. in "Like a Furnace" 19) Spencer is aware of
this feature when he explains Laetitia why London should play a special role in his film
saying:
There´s something strange about London […] That´s why the Romans built their ruins
here and everything. I´m sure here´s something to it, some kind of magic or something.
Did you know if you drew a line between all of Hawksmoor´s churches, they would
Ackroyd demonstrates that the ruins are the evidence of the city´s historical and mystical
heritage (Komsta 177), and its past. The element of location in his novel is fundamental for
understanding of human history. Unlike Spenser, other characters are insensible of the city.
They consider it static, buried in present, rejecting everything past and future. For them, the
35
capital is imprisoned in temporariness. (Komsta 177) As Spenser and Laetitia go out to eat
they:
walked out into the King´s Road, the old woman passed them at the corner, pushing one
pram ahead and dragging one pram behind her. She came this way often, aiming with
single-minded determination for a row wooden benches by the Royal Hospital. Her
prams were filled with scraps of old clothes and newspapers, empty tins of Horlicks and
old bottles stuffed with rags. She simply added material to the piles; the stuff at the
bottom of the prams could not have been seen, or touched, for many year. It represented
the remnants of the Chelsea street, perhaps the only history they had. (Ackroyd, GFOL
14)
Here the character of the old homeless woman symbolizes the narrative´s separation from the
past. She signifies the discarded history of the area, piled in her pram. The newspaper
represents the past rejected by all characters. (Komsta 177) This is emphasised several pages
later when Rowan is trying to find Marshalsea Prison he gets lost in the labyrinth of streets
which are full of "cigarette packets and old newspapers discarded in the already crowded
gutters; scraps of old front pages, like fragments of conversation, had been blown together.
CHINA ATOM SCARE, AMERICA ACCUSES, SOVIET THREAT." (Ackroyd, GFOL 22)
By means of using a paraphrase, Ackroyd placed history into a gutter. (Komsta 177)
The impression of historicity and the sense of entrapped past are intensified in the
moment when Spenser and Laetitia are eating out. The old Edwardian restaurant with "Old
English agricultural implements" and "a large blown-up photograph of "Derby Day 1911"
(Ackroyd, GFOL 15) becomes an emblem of historicity. Komsta suggests that "The fake past
of the diner is an indication of its intense presentness in which the moment of now is
connected with the past only through the act of imitation and repetition, aimed at producing a
36
'rising tide of false nostalgia' within the patrons of the place." (177) This affinity between
present and past provides the novel with dynamism and originality.
In the final chapters, the development of all characters approaches to the forthcoming
disaster; Audrey loses her Job, Timothy is confused about his sexual life, and Laetitia
abandons her husband. Spender meets first Job Penstone and then Rowen Phillips, and they
discuss the adaptation of Dickens´s novel into a film. After six weeks of shooting, an incident
causes a strike of the film crew. Spenser and Rowen meets in the set which was created by the
river and they discuss the problem with union demands when suddenly Audrey appears and
ignites the place. At the end of the novel, Spenser dies in the flames and Little Arthur
The Great Fire which breaks up at the end of the novel is as apocalyptic as the fire in
1666 and it reveals the connection between the present and the past since an inscription on the
wall of Marchalsea Prison says that it was destroyed "on December 14, 1885" (Ackroyd,
GFOL 25) There is a mythical cycle linking the three periods which re-enacts "the same
apocalyptic fire, signalling the transition from one historical cycle to the next, each closing a
At the start of the novel, Timothy Coleman is watching television where "there was
some sort of drama concerning fireman" (Ackroyd, GFOL 9). This scene depicts London as a
red place full of sirens and suspense. However, Timothy is interrupted by Audrey who asks
him about the location of an old prison. This section indicates author´s intention to connect
the 1666 fire with the modern fire on television. And at the same time it joins Audrey´s
intention to find out the location of the prison which was destroyed in the fire. Onega argues
an unbroken chain of successive generations of men and women whose traces are
still recognisable on the faces of the people as well as in the alleys, the squares,
37
and the buildings […] they are somehow connected to the past of the city and a
better understanding of the history of London would help them come to terms
Audrey perceives this fact when she claims that "History is interesting when you live in the
area, isn´t it?" (Ackroyd, GFOL 9) Ackroyd reduplicates London´s events in a cyclical
pattern. These echoic occurrences are controlled by the sense of place, but they are chaotic.
This randomness is caused by the human factor. People are driven by space and time in their
actions. (Chalupský, "Like a Furnace" 18) The example of this is Audrey who feels the
presence of history in the area around the Marshalsea prison and who sets the film set in fire.
Not only the title of the novel plays an important role in Ackroyd´s universe, but also
suggests that the author applies Dickensian mechanisms when naming his character. (20) The
way the characters interact creates the impression that they are echoes of the original text.
Onega points to the fact that the names of the secondary characters are conditioned by their
type: the innocent working-class youth Timothy Coleman, the left-wing teacher of Victorian
social history, Job Penstone, the flamboyant Sir Frederick Lustlambert, director of the Film
Finance Board. (20) Spenser Spender is a visionary film director who conceives the idea of
adapting the first part of Little Dorrit. His name functions as an onomastic palimpsest of
accumulated echoes. His name evokes Edmund Spenser, Herbert Spenser, Stanley Spencer,
and Stephen Spender. (Onega 21). Audrey Skelton recalls John Skelton and Sir Frederick is a
nonchalant financier with a hooked nose like Dickens´s Punch. The whole character-Dickens
book on Dickens. However, the most Dickensian figure is Little Arthur who ends up in the
prison.
38
Onega claims that when the shooting of the film starts three characters who are the
reincarnation of the Victorian protagonist (Little Arthur, Pally, Audrey) "become more
suspicious and reckless." She equalizes them with the suspicion and recklessness of the
outcast crowd which fills the prison and the street of London (27). After her fight with
Spenser, Laetitia strolls through London streets which forms a setting for her aimlessness and
unhappiness. The people she sees seem to be "creatures from some dream of the past"
(Ackroyd, GFOL 134). Onega quotes Ackroyd when she explains that Laetitia "watches them
pass by and reflects on how they have lost all traces of individuality in order to become just
types, definable through their relationship to London: 'they represented this city, they existed
in no other place. The strength and the darkness of London had compressed itself into these
the repetition of key words is demonstrated by the tramps. The old woman with the prams
first appears in the narrative when Laetitia wanders the city. She belongs to the group of
tramps who survives in the streets of London and inhabit the area by the Thames where the
exterior shots of the film are made. These beggars gather around near the Marshalsea Prison
and they "are often associated with, like the sirens of the fire brigades, an ominous warning of
the chaotic phase the city is undergoing." (Onega 28) However, it is Audrey who realizes this
association and who relates the presence of beggars to the recurrence of suffering in specific
areas of London: "There has been so much suffering and distress around here […] It can´t
really be all that different now from what it was then, can it? All those young boys begging
down by the station – wasn´t that a Victorian thing, too all that? Begging and all?" (qtd. in
Onega 28) Audrey suggests that tramps are ubiquitous features in the history of the city. They
"represent the final stage of degradation and self-alienation toward which Laetitia and the
other Londoners inexorably move" (Onega 28). Ackroyd situates the tramps in the middle of
39
the final disaster and he takes the liberty to envision them as the ones who are convinced and
believe that "the film is hopelessly misreading the real spirit of London." (Onega 28) When
Audrey decides to set the film exteriors to fire, she realizes that "their plight seemed very
similar to her own." (Ackroyd, GFOL 161) Audrey asks one of them to help her to burn down
"an old dump up the road" and they agree. The young man she tries to persuade to become her
accomplice has red hair. (Ackroyd, GFOL 161) It is the colour Ackroyd uses to describe
London. According to the author "the flames burnt for a day and a night. It seemed to Tim
that they might burn for ever, taking the whole of London with them." (165) The event which
inflicted disaster and destruction upon the city, razing offices and homes, blasting the
lives of those who worked and lived in them. It destroyed much that was false and ugly,
and much that was splendid or beautiful. Some longed for it to burn everything, but for
others a new and disquieting sense of impermanence entered their lives. Eventually,
legends were to grow around it. It was popularly believed to have been a visitation, a
As the readers contemplates the effect of the Great Fire, they are reminded of a double-pattern
that is given due consideration in the novel. This is that the beginning of life tend to be
repeated in a form of regeneration for the outcasts and working-class visionary Londoners. On
the other hand, Onega claims that the conflagration signifies a new and disquieting sense of
temporariness for socially integrated and rationally educated middle-class people. (29-30)
Ackroyd starts and finishes the novel with the statements that it is a made up story:
"Although this could not be described as a true story, certain events have certain
consequences" (Ackroyd, GFOL 3) and "This is not a true story, but certain things follow
from other things" (Ackroyd, GFOL 168). He intentionally projects the 1666 and 1885 fires
40
In The Great Fire of London, Ackroyd builds his own version of contemporary
London based on the accumulation of fragments of the styles, voices, and echoes of his strong
predecessor, Dickens and Eliot. (Chalupský, Horror and Beauty 74). He suggests an overall
London as the cultural palimpsest gathering together the wisdom of the English race at large
and suggests that the recovery of this lost wisdom is the necessary prerequisite for a true
labyrinthine intersecting of different time levels and it is essential for his understanding of the
process of London’s historical development (Chalupský, Horror and Beauty 74). His
perspective is best understood in his London: The Biography where he claims that London
history is not "a seamless, sequential account" but a "search of those heights and depths of
urban experience that know no history and are rarely susceptible to rational analysis” (qtd. in
Chalupský, Horror and Beauty 74). Chalupský suggests that Ackroyd does not reject the
complexity of the city´s past. (74) This conception of time made London a distinct city with
familiar patterns of urban existence identifiable underneath the surface. These structures has
not changed for ages and they were employed by Ackroyd in his genuine sense of place.
(Chalupský, Horror and Beauty 74) Ackroyd´s time line is not ordered year by year since he
collects urban experience and imposes it on a Londoner. Chalupský quotes David Charnick
who claims that "Ackroyd portrays London as an eternal city, one beyond the confines of
time, which maintains itself by interaction with its population and exists as an inspiration for
those receptive to its mythic qualities." (74) and he points to some of Ackroyd´s works when
41
for instance, that of a lava flow moving in many streams of varied velocity and in
different directions, which suggests that not all occurrences in time are predestined to be
reduplicated or perpetuated (Ackroyd, Collection 343). Another is that of "a house with
many rooms" in some of which the past is introduced to the present, while in others the
present is introduced to the past, only for both to eventually be introduced to the future.
(74)
Ackroyd claims that all his works aim to use a metaphor and capture "that spectral and
labyrinthine world where the past and the present cannot necessarily be distinguished"
(Collection 368). Chalupský explains that "as the present and the past imbue each other and
human experience layers and accumulates, 'every period has a different sense of time '"
(Horror and Beauty 85), depending not only on the memory and weight of the previous
happenings, but also on the current modes of evoking time and approaches to its measuring.
Therefore, the patterns of mythical time resulting in what may be termed "perpetual time"
stem from the invariability of the very essence of the human condition, and so it is legitimate
to use the past to illuminate the present just as the present can help to get hold of the past, as
In The Great Fire of London this complex model is only suggested and rather
fragmentarily outlined, yet both the defining aspects of Ackroyd’s time, the circular/spiral and
the labyrinthine, are presented in the novel. (Chalupský, Horror and Beauty 87) When
Spenser is contemplating the sinister atmosphere of the old prison, he comes to the conclusion
that the very existence of sites of confinement is a product of the city´s temporal cyclicality:
"Such places will always exist – once the Marshalsea, now here. Only a small time – an
historical moment – separated the two; and they represented the same appalling waste of
human life. Nothing had really changed in society which had such places as its monuments"
(GFOL 57). The two physically and temporarily different places are therefore connected
42
through their metaphysical affinity, as they are merely two recurrent materialisations of the
same mental conception, and as such they are not separated by any substantial historical time
distance. However, Spenser also feels himself part of a much less graspable pattern of the
city, one defined by its human dimension. (Chalupský, Horror and Beauty 90) When walking
around the crowded streets, he has the sensation that other people "also, became part of him –
as though he contained them all within himself at the same time as they directed him forward.
The pattern was one, within and without" (GFOL 37). This dimension makes the time
structure of the city even more amorphous and directionless, rooted not only in its territorial
properties, but also in its inhabitants´ imaginations and creativity, which are presented as the
only means through which human beings can possibly make their imprint on the larger space-
The most obvious characteristic of Ackroyd´s novel The Great Fire of London is the
Dickensian London, as all its main characters get involved in the film adaptation of Charles
Dickens´s story of Little Dorrit. It is set against the backdrop of an apocalyptic conflagration.
London is depicted as a living human being. The city is personified in the character of
Spenser Spender, a film director who resolved to adapt Little Dorrit for the screen. However,
his endeavour is thwarted by cumbersome bureaucracy, difficulties on the film set and his
personal problems (Letitia and Andrew) and finally his death in the fire.
the city are isolation, loneliness, obsession, mystery and darkness. Rowan Phillips considers it
a place of sexual freedom and satisfaction of his erotic fantasies. (Ackroyd, GFOL 19) He
gets involved into a relationship with Timothy, who does not return his feelings in the manner
Rowen would like him to do. It promotes a certain way of behaviour. Disappointed by Tim´s
refusal, Rowen turns to his work on Dickens, which serves as a disguise for his presence in
43
London, and he finally realises that he is lonely in the big city and longs for someone who
perceived as a chaotic and complicated system understood as a place and time, present and
past, and reality and fiction. It is a dark mechanism based on heterogeneous, but logical
forces.
3.2. Hawksmoor
Hawksmoor is the third Ackroyd´s novel published in 1985 inspired by a poem of Iain
Sinclair called Lud Heat which opened Ackroyd´s eyes to the vision of London (Ackroyd,
"Immagining" 99). The author invented a new version of historical novel when he employed a
postmodern technique and portrayed the city throughout the ages as he based the narrative on
the relationship between the present and the past. Chalupský claims that the similar technique
is used in other Ackroyd´s novels of The House of Doctor Dee and Chatterton. (Horror and
Beauty 45) This time the writer concentrates the narrative around two central characters,
Nicolas Dyer and Nicola Hawksmoor, and around two time periods which are given equal
length. The chapters are juxtaposed as the novel progresses, however, they alternate in
changing the centuries. To intensify the difference between two time spheres, Ackroyd uses
the different writing style – the prose of the eighteenth century and contemporary one; and
different narrative types – first and third person narratives. The main characters are doubled.
They become virtual mirror images and they seem to merge in identity in the end of the
narrative.
The story is introduced into the year of 1711 when a London architect Nicholas Dyer
was commissioned to build seven churches in the City of London and Westminster. Unlike
other architects, he worked only with his assistant Walter Pyne. The reincarnated version of
44
this character is introduced later in the novel when Hawksmoor´s assistant Walter Pyne enters
the narrative. From the very beginning of the book, Dyer´s narrative is tinged with the
mystery and mysticism. Dyer´s artistic style is connected to the belief that the Darkness rules
the world and life saying that it "can give the trew Forme to our Work and trew Perspective to
our Fabrick, for there is no light without Darknesse and no Substance without Shaddowe."
(Ackroyd, Hawksmoor 5) He claims that his churches are built on the imposition of coles
In the very first chapter, Ackroyd also introduces the notion of the dark city born in
the cole whose sole cannot be burnt in the fire. (Hawksmoor 9) He mixes the philosophy of
the Bible, science and mysticism to refuse the traditional writing about city as a clear, God
city.
Onega describes Ackroyd as a master of the technique of mixing genres. This time it is
a detective story and autobiographical journal which are used as a tool to break the
conventional rules to underline the metafictional effect of Hawksmoor. The first chapter is
written in the style of Dyer´s personal confession revealing the growing up in London and the
death of his parents in the plague. Throughout his journal, the reader learns about two
disastrous events which affected London and changed its architectural and mental picture: the
great plague of 1665 and the Great Fire of 1666. Nicolas Dyer was born in 1654 in "Black-
Eagle-Street in the Parish of Stepney, close Monmouth Street and adjoining Brick Lane"
(Ackoryd, Hawksmoor 11). Not only here, but also in other parts of the novel, Ackroyd
emphasises the importance of the place. His childhood is connected to the places where he is
going to build his Church in Spittle Fields and is influenced by the belief that Devil exists
which is accentuated by the fact that his first read book became Doctor Faustus (Ackroyd,
Hawksmoor 12). After the death of his parents, he lost everything, his home having been
pulled down. In all the events that happened to small Nicolas, Ackroyd uses the names of
45
London streets to stress the location. Later on, Dyer is introduced to his satanic beliefs and his
motives for the murders when he meets a magus Mirabilis who predicted the Great Fire, and
becomes the member of his secret company seated in Black Step Lane (Ackroyd, Hawksmoor
19). In this place of the book, London is depicted as the city of many religious beliefs, Dyer
refuses all of them and chose to confess the Creed of Mirabilis. This belief refuses the
thoughts coming from the Bible and it justifies the existence of the Evil. Dyer builds his
churches so that they will become eternal architecture of ancient teachings. He sets the
beginnings of London into the times of the Druids whose mysteries were passed on to the
Christians. Dyer emphasises that the two most important churches in London, St. Paul´s and
Westminster, were built on the places where the ancient temples had stood. His churches are
intended to join these places of worship, each of them having a labyrinth and built on a
sacrifice. As Dyer reveals his private thoughts and faith, it becomes clear that he has satanic
plans concerning the churches he is building. He intends to build vaults, labyrinths and crypts
beneath each of them and to sacrifice a victim there. Each time it should be a virgin boy, since
this is what the Druids who worshipped Baal Seman sacrificed (Ackroyd, Hawksmoor 21).
Consequently, the first chapter is ended by the death of a mason´s boy who falls down the
tower.
In the second chapter, which is juxtaposed after the first one, the author changes the
time period and he sets the narration into the present. He also switches into the third person
narrator. He depicts London as a hustling and bustling city. The guide who shows the tourists
round uses the quotes of famous poets who said that London "defies imagination and breaks
the hearts […] it contains something grand and everlasting" (Ackroyd, Hawksmoor 26). She
shows the tourist round the Spitalfields and the area where the great plague had started, and
she describes it as the place where the death arose. (Ackroyd, Hawksmoor 27) In this chapter
the author introduces the character of a young boy, Thomas Hill, who is the modern version
46
of young Nicolas. He wanders in the same city areas, learns similar rhymes and reads similar
books. His mother does not like the places where he idles as "the church represented all that
The third chapter moves back into the Dyer´s time. Nicolas describes how he started to
work with Christopher Wren and how he became the renowned architect. He says that London
was "the Nest of Death and Contagion" (Ackroyd, Hawksmoor 47). He says that although the
fire changed the used building material (stone began to be used instead of wood), the city
remained the "Capitol of Darkness" which is composed of the tangle of the streets, houses and
chaos. (Ackroyd, Hawksmoor 47) The biggest innovation came with plants and workmen
whose growth made London a monster of ignorance. Here the second sacrifice of his churches
appears. It is a beggar.
Chapter four again moves in time into the twentieth century and it depicts the story of
a homeless Ned, a former printer in Bristol. Ned describes his life which diverted its way after
one party where he got drunk and revealed that he stole money from the company he worked
for. He gets mad, leaves everything for London where he lives in the streets. At the end of the
chapter, Ned dies and this event moves the reader back in centuries to chapter five. The story
slowly develops. Detective Chief Superintendent Nicolas Hawksmoor enters the narrative in
the sixth chapter in the second part of the novel. By the time he is introduced, he starts to
investigate the murder of the third body who has been found at Wapping. Dyer continues with
the scarifying, now having help of Joseph. Simultanously, Hawksmoor is worried because he
cannot find out the time of murders which he considers to be the key to the successful
investigation. The next victim is a young boy called Matthew Hayes. This murder bears a
parallel with the strangling of Yorick Hayes in the seventeenth century whose skeleton is
attention is drawn by a tramp calling himself "the architect" who sends him a letter with the
47
indices which can prove that he is the murderer. Meanwhile in the seventeenth century Dyer
discusses with John Vanbrugghe the form of the building methods. Ackroyd employed the
structure of drama into this conversation and he also used it in the next chapter when
Hawksmoor interrogates a tramp. After Dyer completes his churches he reveals not only the
shape of his murderous intention but also his whole mystic view:
And thus will I complete the Figure: Spittle-Fields, Wapping and Limehouse have made
the Triangle; Bloomsbury and St Mary Woolnoth have next created the major Pentacle-
starre; and, with Greenwich, all these will form the Sextuple abode of Baal-Berith or the
Lord of the Covenant. Then, with the church of Little St Hugh, the septilateral Figure
will rise about Black Step Lane and, in this Pattern, every Straight line is enrich´d with a
point at Infinity and every Plane with a line at Infinity. Let him that has Understanding
count the Number: the seven Churches are built in conjunction with the Seven Planets in
the lower orbs of Heaven, the seven Circles of the Heavens, the seven Starres in Ursa
Minor and the seven Starres in the Pleiades. Little St Hugh was flung in the Pitte with
the seven Marks upon his Hands, Feet, Sides and Breast which thus exhibit the seven
Demons – Beydelus, Metucgayn, Adulec, Demeymes, Gadix, Uquizuz and Sol. I have
built an everlasting Order, which I may run through laughing: no one can catch me now.
(186)
Since Hawksmoor cannot see into the past and unlike the reader, he is not informed
about Dyer´s actions, he gets exhausted psychologically and he is discharged from his
investigation. Dyer also shows the signs of tiredness and weakness. They both got the the
church of St Little Hugh in Black Step Lane where the two characters merges. Dyer feels that
he "ran to the end of his time and he was at peace." (Ackroyd, Hawksmoor 209) On the other
hand, Hawksmoor sees his own image which was "a child again, begging on the threshold of
48
Ackroyd involves historical characters events as a tool to invent his own version of
history. He used the parody of detective fiction and biography as a tool of investigation. First,
Second, he underlines the doubling of his characters of Hawksmoor and Dyer. And finally, he
employs the technique of falsifying the facts and establishes the credibility of the narrative.
Saglam quotes Perez Zorgin who claims that the history is different mode from
literature since it "does not contain an invented or imaginary world. It presents itself as
consisting, to a great degree, of facts and true or probable statements about the past" (qtd. in
Saglam 9). Zorgin refuses the aesthetic view of history since it leads to its trivialisation. The
aestheticiesed history fails to "acknowledge features that both define history as a form of
thought and give it its significance" (qtd. in Saglam 9). In Hawksmoor, Ackroyd employed the
history and fiction, which is not futile. Nicolas Dyer´s fictional life is based on factual
evidence, with additional interpretation of his thoughts and life philosophy. In this way, the
author aims at Hutcheon´s theory that suggests the rethinking of history as a human construct.
She states that the past is accessible to us through texts and thus it "is entirely conditioned by
textuality." (Hutcheon, Beginning 256) Ackroyd does not deny or ignore history, his work
gives prominence to a questioning. In Hawksmoor, the reader is made to ask, what if some of
As I claimed above, Ackroyd identifies his writing about history as being a part of
authentic British tradition. He suggests that British writers have mixed historical styles to
differs in the way of the self-conscious manipulation of history and in the use of historical
data which are deliberately forged (Hutcheon, "Pastime" 63). Ackroyd deliberately falsifies
49
the biographical information of Nicolas Dyer in Hawksmoor and he questions the reliability of
Dyer´s autobiographical journal and confessional narrative. Saglam argues that the aim of
Ackroyd´s novel is to underline this unreliability and "the reader´s choice for gaining insight
into Dyer´s character is to believe his own version of life. That this version might not be fully
reliable is obvious from what we learn about Dyer´s character" (Saglam 131).
Detective Hawksmoor reads in the encyclopaedia entry that Nicolas Dyer was born in
1654 and he died in 1715 (Ackroyd, Hawksmoor 12). An English architectural historian Kerry
Downes sets the probable date of Dyer´s birth into the year of 1661 and his death into the year
of 1736 (Hawksmoor 12). Another significant deviation from the fact is that Ackroyd´s
architect was born in London, even though the real character on which Ackroyd based his
Dyer was not a Londoner, but he was born in Nottinghamshire (Saglam 131). Ackroyd
dismisses the idea of acknowledging this fact and he transports the main character from the
original birthplace into London. He intends the reader to see him as a Londoner and so he
rebuilds London and introduces it as the birthplace of the famous architect. This is underlined
when Dyer states that he knows "these Streets as well as a strowling Beggar: [he] was born in
In addition, Ackroyd rewrote artists and their texts as productions of London (Saglam
3). The city is known through the textual form. The text is "highly subjective and open to
interpretation for the protagonists" (Saglam 1). The past which is in Acroyd´s works known
from the text, is not reliable and it is present in the present (Saglam 1). In Hawksmoor,
Ackroyd takes two time frames under investigation. There are two different periods – one
historical and one contemporary which form two separate but linear narratives in order to be
merged with each other at the end. (Saglam 1). The time shifts are tied to each other by two
tools – the technique of the detective plot and the technique of parodied biography. Detective
Hawksmoor, who is set into the contemporary time frame, struggles to determine what has
50
happened in the past and what is happening at the time. Saglam maintains that "it is evident
from the very beginning that in spite of his appearance as a classical detective much in the
manner of Sherlock Holmes, he is a parody." (137) The reader knows more than the detective
as they have the chance to follow the historical narrative which shows that what the detective
finds out is not true. (Saglam 2) Ackroyd introduces a new version of detectives termed by
Mervile and Sweeney "metaphysical detectives" (Saglam 2). They are a form of parody of the
traditional detectives created by e.g. Poe. By means of employing the technique of corruption
of the linearity of narrative, Hawksmoor gets lost in the narrative and subsequently he is
historiography thematically and structurally. Hutcheon claims that "through the several
different accounts of Nicolas Dyer´s life that are presented in different chapters, Ackroyd
emphasizes the interpretative quality of history." (Politics 46) Ackroyd´s novel underlines the
theory of Hutcheon´s historiographic metafiction and answers the question of "how we can
come to know the past today" (Hutcheon, Politics 47). The past existed and the texts provide
us with the material to know it. The historian F. R. Ankersmit asserts that the postmodernism
accepts scientific historiography, but it "does not point towards the past but to other
interpretations of the past" (142). Dyer´s journal is not the representation of facts but
context (Hutcheon, Politics 87). This problematization of texts is dealt in Hawksmoor when
the character of Nicolas Dyer narrates his life story which illuminates "facts" about his life
and historical events. He is a historical narrator of the story and his narrative is bound to the
contemporary characters of the novel. Saglam quotes Rana Tekcan who claims that a
biography is a reflection of historical facts which bind it to history (2). However, his journal is
distorted. The seeming authenticity of this biographical journal assumes that it is real.
51
Ackroyd employed one of the techniques of historiographic metafiction and he evoked the
impression that the past can be known through texts that are interpretations of reality (Saglam
2).
As far as the concept of reality is concerned, Ackroyd mingles fictional and factual
and London becomes a fact and fiction at once. The historiographic metafiction is understood
on multiple levels and parallel centuries (Saglam 100). This analogy is foregrounded by the
connection between Dyer and the characters in the twentieth century. The second chapter
describes the story of the first victim in the twentieth century, which is a ten-year old boy
Thomas. This account reveals similarity to the previous chapter in which the first victim of
Dyer´s plan falls down the church tower. Moreover, both Dyer and Tomas are linked with the
literary character of Doctor Faustus who becomes their preferred reading item and when Dyer
narrates that:
it was known to us Boys that we might call the Devil if we said the Lord´s Prayer
backwards; but I never did it myself then. There were many other unaccountable
Notions among us: that a Kiss stole a minute of our lives, and that we must spit upon a
dead Creature and sing Go you back from whence you cam / And do not choose to ask
This shows resemblance to the third person narrator in the next chapter which says:
so it was [Thomas who] learned that, if you say the Lord´s Prayer backwards, you can
raise the Devil; he learned, also, that if you see a dead animal you must spit on it and
repeat, "Fever, fever, stay away, don´t come inside my bed today." He heard that a kiss
Saglam argues that the change of words pronounced upon the carcass is thought-provoking
and she suggests that the addition of the sentence driving the fever out signifies "the
occurrence of the plagues that devastated the city, underlining the role that the city plays in
52
the reincarnation that Dyer goes through, and show that unlike ordinary murderer pursued by
Hawksmoor is a novel which mixes a lot of genres. It is difficult to specify it. There
are a historical novel, detective story, signs of horror, a palimpsest, and it is set both in the
past and present. It is a very unconventional novel about the evil. Edward J. Aehran describes
the novel as "rooted in visionary tradition" (453) and with "a dense network of references to
occult and apocalyptic traditions," (453) which refutes "the stabilities of world and person,
time and space, consciousness and sexual identity, and with them religious and ideological
certainties concerning society and history." (Ahearn 453) Ackroyd sees London as a place of
darkness and mystery. To achieve this vision of London, he loaded the character of an
architect with occultism and placed him into this city. He also invents his life story as a man
since there is little information unveiled about his character or personality. As Downes argues
there is a significant amount of Hawksmoor´s works hidden in museums and libraries, but
these drawings and letters "throw much light on his ideas and methods of working, and – less
explicitly – on his personality" (9). Based on the existence of plans of churches and churches
themselves, Ackroyd envisions Hawksmoor as one of the mysteries of the city. When he
disguised the real architect Hawksmoor as "Dyer" who is one of the secrets of the city, he
continued with his concern to "depict a dark, mysterious London in which there is a
considerable amount of interest in the occult and the supernatural" (Saglam 132). Ackroyd´s
imaginative work corresponds with a kind of chaos and unpredictability which underlines his
effort to display the story of the city as a piece of art sticking together by diversity which can
The central point of the narrative is formed and developed around the churches. There
are seven churches mentioned in the text, six of them are real (Spitalefields, Limehouse,
Wapping, St Mary Woolnoth, Bloomsbury, Greenwich), but the last one is fictional (Little St
53
Hugh in Black Step Lane). The churches represent the axis of the narrative and they are "the
most significant deviation from the factual records of Hawksmoor's life" (Saglam 133). At the
very beginning of the novel, Ackroyd informs the reader of the intention to build these
buildings:
Thus in 1711, the ninth year of the reign of Queen Anne, an Act of Parliament was
passed to erect seven new Paris churches in the Cities of London and Westminster,
which commission was delivered to Her Majesty´s Office of Works in Scotland Yard.
And the time came when Nicholas dyer, architect, began to construct a mode of the first
church. (Hawksmoor 1)
All the mysterious killings are set in their surroundings. Dyer´s conception of
architecture is infused with a combination of different religions and thoughts, evil Biblical
belief that "it was Cain who built the first City" (Hawksmoor 9) and mysticism. Dyer builds
his churches with devilish intentions when he declares that if the Devil were dead, he would
Ackroyd´s Dyer dies in 1715 which suggests that the architect built all seven churches
within the period of four years. Saglam quotes Downes who claims that 1711 Act of
Parliament intended to build fifty new churches and Hawksmoor was not commissioned to
Hawksmoor and William Dickinson were to find and survey sites, treat for their
purchase, obtain artificers, make estimates, record the progress of work both for
payment and for the information of the commissioners, and to see in general that
designs were carried out correctly and soundly. As administrative architects they were
not required to design the churches, although they were in a favourable position when
54
This case is another distortion of fact in Ackroyd novel. Dyer is the only person
responsible for the design and construction of the churches and by 1715 he constructed seven
churches while Hawksmoor is alleged to have constructed only six (Saglam 134). Ackroyd
adds one more church to emphasise the mysterious past of London. He was inspired by the
name of Little Saint Hugh, a boy who was murdered by the members of the local community
in 1255. His story and consequences of his death are aligned to Dyer´s narrative, "making his
name an apt allusive choice for an imaginary church to be built by Dyer. Both stories involve
a ritual sacrifice – it is blood split in his churches (preferably the blood of little boys)."
(Saglam 134) In the concept of churches, Ackroyd balances between two of his techniques,
namely the sense of London as a dark city and falsification of facts, to present the
examined through a fascination for human beings inhabiting this large and threatening city. It
is his matchless sense of place which evokes a mysterious, sinister city. The characteristics of
London in the novel, its streets and architecture "underline Ackroyd´s argument of an eternal
city (Saglam 146). The architecture is the binding factor of the city and the characters. At the
1) That it was Cain who built the first City, 2) That there is a true Science in the World
called Scientia Umbrarum which, as to the publick teaching of it, has been suppressed
but which the proper Artificer must comprehend, 3) That Architecture aims at Eternity
and must contain the Eternal Powers: not only our Altars and Sacrifices, but the Forms
of out Temples, must be mystical, 4) That the miseries of the present Life, and the
Barbarities of Mankind, the fatall disadvantages we are all under and the Hazard we run
of being eternally Undone, lead the True Architect not to Harmony or to Rationall
55
Beauty but to quite another Game […] I build my Churches firmly on this Dunghill
Saglam suggests that "Dyer regards his occupation as possessing the ability to create
eternity and therefore visualises himself as some sort of god, building everlasting structures."
(146) His churches represent strength and force of the city, which Ackroyd describes as
mystical and eternal (Hawksmoor 9). In chapter four, Dyer explains that:
[this]Capital City of the World of Affliction is still the Capitol of Darkness, or the
Dungeon of Man´s Desires: still in the Centre are no proper Streets not Houses but a
Wilderness of dirty rotten Sheds, always tumbling or taking Fire, with winding crooked
passages, lakes of Mire and rills of stinking Mud, as befits the smokey grove of Moloch
[…] Thus London grows more Monstrous, Straggling and out of all Shape; in this Hive
of Noise and Ignorance, Nat we are tyed to the World as to a sensible Carcasse and as
we cross the stinking Body we call out What News? or What´s a clock?. And thus do I
pass my Days a stranger to mankind. I´ll not be a Stander-by, but you will not see me
Following the second chapter the narrative becomes visibly ambiguous. Ackroyd
subverted the convention of historical fiction when he used the unconventional time structure.
(Hutcheon, Poetics 98) There are connections between the chapters divided by the time
changes. Ackroyd employs repetition of images, rhymes, locations and street sounds in both
time frames and he "emphasise the circularity of life in London" and the timelessness of the
"shadow," "time," "child," "tramp," and "dust," which recurrently point to the most
complex layers of meaning underlying the surface message of the novel. Moreover, the
56
crisscrossing of references does not move, as one might expect, in a single direction
from the eighteenth to the twentieth century, but rather works forward and backward at
Ackroyd´s key word that represent the connection between the present and the past is
that of "dust." Dust represent Ackroyd´s concept of timelessness of London and circularity of
life in this city (Saglam 142). Saglam claims that "Dyer understands the infinity and
circularity of the city, and works to develop it according to the same pattern." (147) The
history of London unveils a great number of disasters. Two titular spirits of London, fire and
plague, destroyed parts of the city; the oldest fire dating back into the Palaeolithic period
(Ackroyd, London 283). Dyer met and survived both of them and his intention to become an
architect who is able to rebuild the ruined city is an evidence that he is aware of the
relationship between London and eternality. Detective Hawksmoor shows different perception
of London. His character refuses to understand the circularity and eternity of the city.
Using the character of Dyer, his reincarnation through the history and the mirror image
of the murders which are connected to a certain place (churches), Ackroyd emphasises his
sense of place which this time enables the repetition and circularity of time. London is
depicted as a mysterious city whose eternity is locked in the architecture. Its past contributes
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4. Conclusion
After the deep examination of the selected novels it can be observed that Ackroyd
always uses London as the unifying element in his representation of the contemporary British
fiction. London is the main protagonist of the past functions in the present city. However, this
character is not just the typical black and white depiction of a busy cosmopolitan city and its
history cannot be considered chronological in a sense of linearity and time. Instead of these,
Peter Ackroyd applies the postmodern technique of historiographic metafiction and he creates
the literary city which is based on a great number of texts which inspired the author to use
them in his attempt to rewrite the previously established ones. His London creates a labyrinth
of space, time, and crowds. The fact that the author employs the use of a misnomer in the
narrative and he falsifies historical facts contributes to the novels’ credibility. It seems that in
each of the novels, Ackroyd approaches the image of London from a different point of view
and he puts the emphasis on different issues related to historicity. The strong sense of the
place of the author can be traced helping to tie the plot, characters and the city of London. By
dealing the main protagonists in pair he demonstrates how complicated the historical and
In The Great Fire of London one of the main characters decides to make a film based
on the classic novel Little Dorrit written by Charles Dickens. The London´s literariness is
examined through the personality of Charles Dickens and the Victorian city. Dickens is
considered to be the person who understood London and his writing becomes an object of
both academic and screenplay research. The structure of the novel and the development of the
characters is based on Little Dorrit, which is regarded as an interpretative layer of the novel.
Since the very beginning of the narrative, Ackroyd proves to be termed postmodernist
of distortion of historical facts when he falsified the data in the summery of Little Dorrit, or
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when he used a misnomer if the title of the novel. His strong sense of place is proved in the
identification of London streets and places such as Marshalsea prison. Next, the characters
and plot are a channel through which the reader sees the city. They determine the shape and
image of London. This time it is the vision of a dark and apocalyptic city.
In Hawksmoor one of the main characters decides to follow the ancient religion and he
buries under each of his built churches a sacrifice. The London´s literariness is explored
through the protagonist Nicholas Dyer and his journal. Dyer is considered to be an occultist
architect who builds his churches to conceal a dark secret which will be uncovered in the
twentieth century by a detective Nicholas Hawksmoor. The structure of the novel and the
development of the characters follow the pattern of juxtaposed narratives of the seventeenth
and twentieth centuries. The technique of historiographic metafiction is employed in the use
of parody as a basic layer for other postmodern features. Ackroyd based his novel on the
falsification of historical facts when he invented the date and place of Dyer´s birth. Next, he
used Dyer´s journal as a textual pattern for the literary interpretation of Dyer´s life which is
full of occultism and mysticism. As the reader sees London through the characters, he
envisions it as a dark, eternal and labyrinthine city with a secret buried under its surface.
Concerning the date of issue, The Great Fire of London is Ackroyd´s first novel and it
establishes the essential and traceable features of author´s fictional writing. First of all, both
novels devote attention to a great number of diverse characters. Each of the protagonist is
personally responsible to the city so there are different interpretation of London. Many of
these protagonists are eccentric, marginalised and peripheral figures who question history and
whose fates are brought together through the central motif. Each novel is broken into several
plotlines, The Great Fire of London conceives separate, but related narratives in which the
characters meet each other. It demonstrates the multiplot narrative strategy of Victorian novel
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Hawksmoor the author visualizes the parallel narrative strategy which mixes fictional and real
characters. Both novels have unhappy endings, the main protagonists becoming victims of the
concept of the city. Ackroyd does not envisions the city as a whole, but he needs to have a
Finally, the aim of this thesis was to prove that Peter Ackroyd belongs to the group a
postmodern authors and that his works evidence the features of historiographic metafiction.
The author of this thesis came to the conclusion that there are significant features of
postmodern techniques in two Ackroyd´s novels which demonstrate that he belongs to the
literature and history in contemporary literature. All features mentioned in the theoretical part
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