POSTMODERN SPACES IN ALASDAIR GRAY’S LANARK AND PETER ACKROYD’S HAWKSMOOR
POSTMODERN SPACES IN ALASDAIR GRAY’S LANARK AND PETER ACKROYD’S HAWKSMOOR

Summary/Abstract: Postmodernism worked at constructing, deconstructing, reconstructing everything, including the literary setting, thus, postmodern spaces in literature became rewarding research topics, offering new insight into the way everything is reshaped and reorganized. This paper analyzes the re-imagination of Glasgow and London, the cities depicted in two postmodern novels - Gray?s Lanark and Ackroyd?s Hawksmoor - as well as the motivation of the authors in using and re-imagining these cities in their texts. The dystopian facet of the two cities as presented in the novels is discussed within the postmodern framework, in which dystopias become a tool in training the reader to adjust to the ugly, the painful and the shocking in order to form a survival instinct. The last part of the paper consists of a presentation of the images of the underground as a postmodern space of death and painful truths, a paradoxical place that promises redemption and offers death.

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