“LET ME GO, IF YOU WANT ME TO LET YOU IN”: THE GHOSTLY CIRCLE IN CARYL PHILLIPS’S THE LOST CHILD

• Authors: Stefanova Svetlana
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

The present article argues that the examination of the significance of Gothic motifs in Caryl Phillips’s The Lost Child (2015) reveals the author’s approach to unresolved individual and collective traumas that haunt his protagonists, but also his texts. The intricate interaction between the circular structure of the novel and the theme of historical and generational cyclicity requires a special attention to the journey trope and its spatial markers. The title of this essay is borrowed from Chapter III of Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights (1847), The Lost Child’s canonical intertext, in which Catherine’s ghost appears at the window and begs Lockwood to let her in. Drawing on some concepts developed by Derrida in his Specters of Marx (1993), the essay explores the meaning and function of spectrality and how it relates to circularity and to Phillips’s commitment to justice, which goes beyond remembering the “lost children” of the past, to actually let them in the present.

Keywords

EN

Caryl Phillips; The Lost Child; circularity; spectrality; Gothic; Wuthering Heights

• Publisher: Inter Litteras Research Centre, STEFAN CEL MARE University, Suceava, Romania; STEFAN CEL MARE Publishing House
• Journal: Concordia Discors vs Discordia Concors: Researches into Comparative Literature, Contrastive Linguistics, Cross-Cultural and Translation Strategies
• Year: 2017
• Volume: 9
• Pages: 41-69

Contributors

author

Stefanova Svetlana

• University of la Rioja, Spain