Thoughts about Masters dissertation and PhD

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Starting with the PhD, on the question whether I would like to do a thematic or a author based PhD, my answer is a thematic because, even though it might be harder – and I always have the tendency to take the most strenuous path – I would like to have the freedom to explore a variety of authors and most importantly I wouldn’t like to be perpetually engulfed by the overwhelming shadow of a giant, having to yell and scream my through his or her incessant yapping.

On the question “In which section of the bookshop you are drawn into first”, I answer the Fantasy section. This urge immediately arouses particular problems when it comes to finding a thesis, not so much for a Master’s but for a PhD, in accordance to what I mostly like. The problem with me is not that I only like one genre, like Fantasy; on the contrary, I like a lot! I have chosen this postgraduate course in order to narrow them down a bit and finally decide on which subject, era, theme etc. I would like to delve into. My professors back in Greece warned me not to do a PhD entirely focused on Fantasy literature because, if I want to follow an academic career, in the long run, this PhD will not help me at all to find a position in a university; sadly, they are right. Focusing on the fact that I like Fantasy literature though, can help me find out what other genres – akin to Fantasy – I like the most. I am attracted to Romanticism a lot because of this fantastical element; this transgression of physical boundaries, its re-appropriation of the past and its sublime landscapes, the supernatural elements, the concept of Nature and anti-Nature, the intriguing politics around Revolution etc. I also like the Gothic element with all its darkness, its supernatural beings, its labyrinthian corridors in dreary castles, which is also akin to Horror literature. I also like the stories of the Dark Romantics, focusing on the grotesque, the irrational and its deviation from the quintessential Romantic idea, focusing on the human fallibility, self-destruction, judgement etc., like Hawthorne, Poe, Melville. Dark Fantasy, coming into the scene as early as Anne Rice’s “The Vampire Chronicles”, William Beckford’s “Vethek”, Edgar Alan Poe’s “The Masque of the Red Death” etc. can surely recompense for my enormous love of H. P. Lovecraft and Michael Moorcock’s works. So, since I like the fantastic, the spiritual and transcendental element in literature, my inclination to Romanticism can be the answer to this problem since it combines both the academic seriousness and the fantastic element which fascinates me. Maybe in my further studies I can also incorporate some early Fantasy works into the Romantic discussion or I can find a way to study all the predecessors of modern fantasy under the umbrella of Romanticism or even not entirely under a particular period such as the Romantic but under a theme such as Intertextuality or whatever.

Similarly, now that we have finished the session on the Romantics – not that I am not drawn into Wordsworth, quite the contrary – but I seem to be inclined towards the late Romantics and particularly P.B. Shelley and Mary Shelley. Through the Romantic session of the Masters I (re)discovered that I am drawn into the terrifying and the Sublime; the Intertextuality such as the influence of the old to the new (see Dante and Shelley’s “The Triumph of Life”) and the re-appropriation of texts by drawing from older ones. Moreover, anything that has to do with the spiritual, the supernatural, the Nature and most of all the Anti-Nature, with the latter being evident in “The Last Man” but also in other texts, apart from the ones of the MA, that I have studied, which fall under the genre of horror literature, such as Arthur Machen’s “The Great God Pan” (1894), Algernon Blackwood’s “The Wendigo” (1910), and Clark Aston Smith’s “The Abominations of Yondo” (1930-1935). [Now that I see it again, all the previous authors have influenced the horror fiction of H.P. Lovecraft; I seem to always hover around him]

The fact that these novels/short stories are not falling under the genre of Romanticism as a temporal period will concern us now. Since I like the late-Romantics and everything that has to do with the adventurous, the supernatural, the sublime, the spiritual, Nature and Anti-Nature, the ghost stories and the horror of the Gothic BUT I also like what comes (not much) after, such as the Dark Romanticism of Hawthorne, Melville, Poe etc. AND the stories of the Victorian period that – despite the fact that they are not quintessentially Romantic – go on in using aspects of it such as the fantastic, the horrific and the supernatural such as Robert Louis Stevenson’s, Arthur Conan Doyle, Henry James, J.M. Barrie, Oscar Wilde etc. This way, by focusing on the most serious elements of Romanticism, delving into them and understanding their essence I will be able to also focus on the “less serious” novels of the adventure fiction etc. that retain the elements of the fantastic and take them up a notch! Is this possible?? Maybe delving into Romanticism for my Masters dissertation and later PhD will also enable me to focus on a later stage on the other genres at my own time? Can H.P. Lovecraft lurk among them??

This brings us to another issue, which appears to be promising of providing us with a breakthrough (or at least with a theme). Do I have to deal with a particular age – a temporal period of literature – or can I study a particular theme which will enable me to talk about various literary works from a lot of different time periods under the umbrella of this term? For example: I was always fascinated by the idea of the kind of Tom Jones characters – the anti-heroes, although I don’t like that term – of literature and I was thinking that maybe that will be a good subject for research. Lately I happened upon a book called “Blokes: The Bad Boys of British Literature” by David Castronovo who researches the Blokes of literature starting from Chaucer’s student in The Miller’s Tale, to Falstaff, to William Hazlitt’s works and to more contemporary ones. Can the “bloke” for example be an umbrella term for analyzing a variety of characters and attitudes in different works of literature from different times? Or do I need something more serious and solid than that? Similar to that, my undergraduate diploma thesis was focused on the theme of Madness in literature and particularly in Ken Kesey’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse Five which can also be a good thematic area to start with and talk about it in a variety of literary periods and genres.

This leads me to the fact that I also like the Postmodern period. It gives you the freedom to explore a variety of areas. It can include the transcendental and the fantastic and the spiritual and the secular and the delusional and the terrifying and the sublime and all. An idea that everybody keeps on telling me to abandon because it is too difficult is the combination of Romanticism with Postmodernism and their mutual inspiration and influence one from the other; but maybe it’s a good idea to abandon such a daring scheme… When the time comes for the Postmodern classes I will have more to say about that. Unless it will be late.

To be continued...