Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: http://hdl.handle.net/1959.13/923550
- Title
- The salvaged image: a study of fairy tale, Mervyn Peake and the creative process
- Author/Creator
-
Bell, Francesca
- Institution
- University of Newcastle. Faculty of Education and Arts, School of Humanities and Social Science
- Description
- Research Doctorate - Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
- Description
- This thesis is a personal view of art as a revelatory process. It focuses on fairy tale, firstly as primordial narrative, secondly as the subject of visual illustration, by the twentieth century English artist Mervyn Peake, and thirdly in relation to my own creative work as an illustrator. In this last aspect, the thesis forms an exegesis of my illustrations for the novel 'Mother Moth' by Adrian Bell. The roots of narrative are traced to originate in the mother-child bond. The fracture of this bond drives the human story. Fairy tale asks basic ontological questions, and children respond to its candour. Fairy tale answers in terms of the heroic, telling the hero story in its most rudimentary, narcissistic form. The story equates to the self’s struggle to gain separate identity. During a protracted childhood, the self’s struggle inaugurates repressive mechanisms of defence. Psychological dualities arise, critically, the split of subject and object. Current neurological research supports the concept of the self’s construction as a homeostatic reference, safeguarding the organism. The self’s primary repression is mortality salience, and strategies of the heroic arise to manage this terror. These ideas are explored in an examination of the creative life of Mervyn Peake. Peake’s individualism originated in early exposure to conflicting cultural perspectives. As a case study of the creative process, a close analysis is made of six illustrations from Grimm’s 'Household Tales'. The conclusion reconsiders the impasse of repression, and defines the creative process as a form of salvaging images, or, in an alternate metaphor paralleling Socratic method, art as maieutics.
- Relation
- University of Newcastle Research Higher Degree Thesis
- Date
- 2011
- Keyword(s)
-
fairy tales;
illustration;
Peake;
mortality salience;
creative;
narrative;
metaphors;
Damasio;
Becker;
Grimm
- Resource Type
- thesis
- Rights
- Copyright 2011 Francesca Bell
- Identifier
- http://hdl.handle.net/1959.13/923550
- Language
- eng
-
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