Pierre; or the Ambiguities

>>23545242
Gormanghast Trilogy is peak gothic fiction.

>>23545248
This seems interesting. Though the premise seems to be some strange incest romance intrigue galore. Could be fine.
>>23545430
>Wrote in the '50s
Sell me on this thing. I don't trust anything that's too recent.

>>23545491
Peake's Gormanghast is a Dickensian fantasy set in a impossible large gothic castle called "Gormanghast". The story follows the birth of a new lord(Titus) and a kitchen boy(Stearpike) who is trying to usurp the rulers of the castle. Stearpike is one the best villains in all of British fantasy. Think The Artful Dodger combined with Miltons Satan. He's the major driver of events, but unlike many other great works, Peake actually writers equally compelling foes who stand in his way. Flay is probably the greatest depiction of the English butler/servant. Best way to describe him is Alfred fussed with Solomon Kane. Mervyn Peake was a incredible illustrator and he brings these incredible skills to his prose. The gothic atmosphere probably the thickest. Here is a example of his style.
> And then it came. A light more brilliant than the sun’s – a light like razors. It
not only showed to the least minutiae the anatomy of masonry, pillars and towers,
trees, grass-blades and pebbles, it conjured these things, it constructed them from
nothing. They were not there before – only the void, the abactinal absences of all
things – and then a creation reigned in a blinding and ghastly glory as a torrent of
electric fire coursed across heaven.
To Flay it seemed an eternity of nakedness; but the hot black eyelid of the
entire sky closed down again and the stifling atmosphere rocked uncontrollably to
such a yell of thunder as lifted the hairs on his neck. From the belly of a mammoth it
broke and regurgitated, dying finally with a long-drawn growl of spleen. And then
the enormous midnight gave up all control, opening out her cumulous body from
horizon to horizon, so that the air became solid with so great a weight of falling
water that Flay could hear the limbs of trees breaking through a roar of foam.

These book are the best written and most unique work of British fantasy. They've been widely praised by diverse set of authors including C.S. Lewis, Anthony Burges, Michael Moorcock, Graham Greene, Jorge Luis Borges, and more.

>>23545554
The mention of C.S. Lewis got me interested. I went to search more and apparently this Peake fellow didn't liked Tolkien too much, something contradictory if he was already friends with Lewis. I'm going to read it just to see what's it about.

>>23545554
where did Boregays praise Peake?

>>23545629
Peake didn't personally know Tolkein or Lewis. Lewis wrote him letters praising Gormanghast(which you can read online) and they started a correspondence. Peake probably didn't read LotR. He was suffering from dementia which he was institutionalized for right after Titus Alone. Cringe people who dislike Tolkien try to set the two against each other.

I read 'Ivanhoe' yesterday, I guess I don't really like Romantic fiction but it kept me entranced. A very seminal novel no doubt, the whole of the middle ages could have been the authors invention as far as popular imagination is concerned.

>>23545242
Wuthering Heights

everything written by
>walter scott
>mg lewis
>ann radcliffe
>charles maturin
>francis lathom
>horace walpole

>>23545242
Charles Brockden Brown has some bangers
>Wieland, or the Transformation
>Arthur Mervyn
>Edgar Huntly
Of these, Edgar Huntley is the most distinctly American, desolate moors replaced with a desolate frontier. They're all camp as fuck, which adds to the gothic ambience.

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89 KB JPG

>>23545242
Robert Louis Stevenson might suit you. Check out his stories 'The Sire de Malétroit's Door', 'Olalla', and (my personal favourite) 'The Pavilion on the Links'. You might also like the novella-length 'Room in the Dragon Inn' by Le Fanu.

As an aside, I think you could see Romanticism and the Gothic as part of the dawn of modernity, in a way - modernity as a kind of self-consciousness in the face of tradition and the natural world. Feudalism stops being an all-encompassing social system and crumbles into a sort of haunted house, a curated set of vibes. Likewise nature is no longer a living ecosystem in which you go about your business, plucking herbs and shooting game; it becomes a 'view', a morbid, static spectacle, and the moonlight lights it up specifically for you.

>>23545912
>I think you could see Romanticism and the Gothic as part of the dawn of modernity
Of course. It's self-hating modernism. Fair enough, I say. There is something pathetic about Romanticism but if the only alternative is to embrace modernity then I can hardly blame them.

Try this.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_Stakh%27s_Wild_Hunt

Walpole's Hieroglyphic Tales
Beckford's Episodes of Vathek

>>23545912
I absolutely loved Carmilla. Obvious case of being enchanted by a character. Should read the rest of Le Fanu stuff.