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" Gormenghast, that is, the main massing of the original stone, taken by itself would have displayed a certain ponderous architectural quality were it possible to have ignored the circumfusion of those mean dwellings that swarmed like an epidemic around its outer walls. They sprawled over the sloping earth, each one half way over its neighbour until, held back by the castle ramparts, the innermost of these hovels laid hold on the great walls, clamping themselves thereto like limpets to a rock. These dwellings, by ancient law, were granted this chill intimacy with the stronghold that loomed above them. Over their irregular roofs would fall throughout the seasons, the shadows of time-eaten buttresses, of broken and lofty turrets, and, most enormous of all, the shadow of the Tower of Flints. "
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What direction or attitude toward this opening is the intended discussion direction?
What's the prompt?
I've read Peake's Gormenghast trilogy, though have no copy to hand.
One noteworthy feature of the above opening fragment is that the castle pile description reflects descriptively the narrative mannerisms of the whole's parts and parcels: A sprawling and ponderous, circumfused pile.
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I suppose one could take the setting as one of the characters, perhaps the main character.
I loved the Gormenghast trilogy when I encountered Volume One of it in my high school library...but haven't reread it in some time, though a few years ago I bought a one-volume paperback reprint.
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