The thesis consists of the first part of a four-part novel and critical afterword. The Slaughter is an account of Peter Scythes' poetic attempt to accommodate himself in a world he perceives as strange. In this mythological novel, character development takes place where the carnivalesque and the fantastic intersect. The required critical afterward is in three parts: a summary Mikhail Bakhtin's writings on Rabelais; a consideration of plot ambiguities in the text The Slaughter and Henry James' The Turn of The Screw; and a discussion of how Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter and The Slaughter use language, memory and myth-making as essential structural and narrative devices.

Reichertz, Ron (Supervisor)