Patterns of Continuity in Peter Ackroyd’s First Light
Patterns of Continuity in Peter Ackroyd’s First Light

Summary/Abstract: One of the most important characteristics of Peter Ackroyd’s work resides in his ability to use the texts of his precursors for his own creative purposes and to insert in the structure of his novels fragments from an impressive array of sources, thus demonstrating the possibility of achieving uniqueness by combining elements belonging to the works of past writers with the products of one’s own creativity, by acknowledging the role played by influence as well as original vision. Although to a certain extent quite different from his more famous novels, First Light is characterized by the same belief in the importance of both innovation and continuity at the level of artistic creation but most notably in terms of the eternal succession of the generations. This paper aims to identify the intricate ways in which time present and time past interact at the level of a text that ultimately represents, like all Ackroyd’s novels, a complex repository of words and ideas belonging to a vast literary tradition.

• Details
• Contents