Peter Ackroyd, Chatterton

Michael Meyer (Universität Koblenz-Landau)

The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 1.2.1.09: English Writing and Culture: Postwar and Contemporary Britain , 1945-present.
Vol. editors: Gina Lyle (University of Glasgow), Graham MacPhee (University of Manchester), Kerry Myler (Birmingham Newman University), Jenni Ramone (The Nottingham Trent University)

Dates

First circulation or publication 1987

Places

England (Country of Origin)

Genres and Modes

Metafiction
Novel

Resources

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The historiographic metafictional novel

Chatterton

intertwines stories about writers and artists over three centuries (Onega 1998, 34). Two historical incidents form the starting point of the novel: the poet Chatterton’s mysterious death at the age of seventeen in 1770 and George Wallis’s famous painting of this scene in 1856. Imitating the style of medieval manuscripts, Chatterton had written a sequence of poems which caused a stir in literary circles because he published them as the authentic writings by the medieval monk ‘Rowley’. His subsequent hopes for a literary career failed to materialize, and one morning he was found dead in his attic room. Playing with the historiographic construction of the past and the romantic myth of the rejected artist, Ackroyd changes the tragic…

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1268 words

Citation: Meyer, Michael. "Chatterton". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 01 August 2013 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=6032, accessed 19 April 2024.]

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