Here we are again, where pathos and pantomime meet - the theatrical city in Peter Ackroyd's Dan Leno and the Limehouse Golem
Abstract
In his London novels, Peter Ackroyd creates a distinct and original fictional world with a number of idiosyncratic features, such as the city as a reflection of its dwellers' minds, the belief in the power of the genius loci, the concept of mystical time challenging the traditional notion of temporal linearity, the focus on the dark sides and heterogeneous tendencies of the city, the theme of crime and criminality, the exploration of the city's irrational manifestations, and its literary, namely intertextual and palimpsestic, texture. However, one of the most significant defining aspects of Ackroyd's London is its essentially theatrical nature.
Like many prominent literati and scholars in the past, and primarily Charles Dickens whom he acknowledges as his predecessor and influence, Ackroyd notices and renders London's theatricality, both in the sense of a city of theatres and music halls as well as that of the performativeness and spectacularity of the city's everyday life. This article outlines Ackroyd's understanding of London's theatricality and demonstrates the various ways in which it is explored in Dan Leno and the Limehouse Golem (1994), his novel that most forcefully articulates this theme.