Fantasy and Mind: Mervyn Peake

Abstract

Many modern fantasies show a dissociation between ‘mind’ and ‘matter’: the images or objects of the story become divided from the more intellectual aspects of the work. Something of this has already been seen with T. H. White, where there is a gap between the raw material of the Arthuriad and the sense Arthur and White try to make of it. It can be seen also in Kingsley’s The Water-Babies, where the wonderful variety of the underwater creatures presented has little to do with the theme of moral (d)evolution, or of the soul making the body, in the book; or in C. S. Lewis’s Perelandra, where there is a split between the sections describing the fantastic appearance of the planet and its creatures and those dealing with lengthy debates over whether or not the unfallen Lady of Perelandra should disobey the prohibition of God. In the fantasy of George MacDonald the author is not wholly prepared to let the wonderful imaginative imagery of his story work on the unconscious minds of his readers, but feels the need to enter with discordant explanation or didacticism. In Mervyn Peake’s Gormenghast, the second book of his ‘Titus’ trilogy, is found a breakdown of the unity of ‘objects’ and significance that prevailed in its predecessor Titus Groan, into either too much argumentation or excess of description for its own sake.¹