Contemporary Horrors: Reimagining the Grotesque in British Fiction

This study investigates the representation of the grotesque tradition in three contemporary British novels: William Golding’s Lord of the Flies (1954), Iain Banks’s The Wasp Factory (1984), and Neil Gaiman’s The Ocean at the End of the Lane (2013). The study posits that the grotesque functions as an essential tool to voice dissatisfaction with the cultural climate at the time of their writing, explicitly comparing how the sources of the grotesque have shifted across this sixty-year span. It explores how these novels dismantle classical artistic qualities, namely, aesthetic qualities depicting beauty holding flawless harmony, symmetry, statics and proportion, presenting them as binary opposites to grotesque art. A key aspect is the interrelation of grotesque terminology with the critical term bricolage, arguing that the grotesque tradition positively serves Viktor Shklovsky’s defined “purpose of art.” The analysis delves into physical grotesque representations, hybridity, ambivalence, monstrosity, inversion, carnivalesque elements (particularly excrement), the abject, the uncanny effect, and narrative shock mechanisms. By creating bricolage portraits of the modern world, these novels use grotesque imagery to depict the fragmented, alienated, uncanny, sceptical, and insecure feelings of the contemporary individual, reflecting the pervasive pessimism of the era.