The Production of a creative work an illustrated contemporary gothic novel entitled The Silting, accompanied by a research-based critical reflection exegesis of the work

This PhD project involved the writing of an illustrated contemporary Gothic novel entitled The Silting. Concurrent with the writing of the novel, a substantial, theoretically informed exegetical critique of the novel was also produced.

The Novel: The Silting

The Silting is a contemporary Gothic novel set in a fictitious English seaside village called Cove. The Silting's narrative is predominantly driven by the psychotic interior monologue of the narrator Johnathan Wolms. Despite Johnathan's cynical and nihilistic demeanour, he becomes obsessed with the apparent divine presence of an ancient stone cube - the Cube - that 'speaks' to him from its housing in an old windmill. The Cube's influence seems intrinsically connected to a number of other characters, such as the mill owner's daughter Abby.

The Exegesis of The Silting

The Exegesis, produced concurrently with the writing of The Silting, explores the process of creating The Silting particularly with regard to its location within the contemporary Gothic genre, as well as its role in terms of metafictionality. Significantly, the latter concept became more pronounced as both the novel and exegesis drafts proceeded, in that the self-reflexive, metafictional interplay of the novel seemed to 'spill' across both fictional and exegetic frames. In this way, the writing of the novel influenced the nature of the exegesis; and vice versa, exegetic research came to influence the content and narrative direction of the novel.

Please Note: The novel The Silting is an unpublished novel, which for MLA referencing purposes normally requires the use of quotation marks (i.e. "The Silting") rather than be underlined. However, as the title is used frequently in the Exegesis, I have chosen to underline The Silting (as with other titles) in order to maintain the "flow" of reading. This action also serves to avoid the awkward situation of the use of the title in a possessive form ("The Silting's") in which the possessive apostrophe tends to clash with quotation marks.