‘Unpenned’: a collection of responses to fairy tales, together with a critical commentary

The creative component of the thesis comprises a collection of prose poems, poetry and short stories, all of which draw on and re-present the landscape of fairy tales. Some narratives are visited several times, from the viewpoint of different characters or time frames. The prose moves closer to poetry as the collection progresses, and also becomes more surrealist in nature. The liminality of the spaces described becomes more pronounced. Whereas the earlier pieces tend to be character-driven and intertextual, the later ones move further away from the original tales, and focus more sharply on topographical features and on forming a creative relationship to them. The critical commentary takes the form of a guidebook, the chapters of which focus on different aspects of fairy tale settings: forests, castles, cottages and so on. After an introductory chapter establishing premise and methodology, the commentary examines the ways in which settings are presented in the creative work, placing this in the context of fairy tales (and imaginative responses to them), and of the critical material surrounding them. I also interweave, throughout, an exploration of my own creative process, touching on automatic writing, surrealism, postmodernism and metanarrative. Theoretical frameworks are employed where they seem most relevant, particularly those pertaining to psychoanalytic thinkers such as Klein. The commentary concludes with a chapter on Agency and Style in which I further examine artistic choices I have made and the rationale underpinning them.