Agency and the Natural World in the Ecogothic fiction of Andrew Michael Hurley & <i>Roundings Road</i>, a novel

Both my novel and the critical study address the agency of protagonists in gothic fiction. </p> <p><i> Roundings Road</i> is a gothic novel set somewhere in Ireland and is a modern take on the vampire myth. The couple at the centre of the story, Francis and Fiona, are caught up in events that they seemingly can’t control, when they buy and move into an old house where Francis stayed as a student. </p> <p> The critical study – ‘Agency and the Natural World in the Ecogothic Fiction of Andrew Michael Hurley’ – is an appraisal of Hurley’s first three novels, and my analysis engages with the ecogothic to consider its effect on the agency of protagonists.

Through close readings I position his work within the ecogothic and larger gothic traditions. I show how Hurley uses gothic tropes and themes to present the reader with an indifferent and all-powerful natural world that ensures protagonists have futures that are preordained. Chapter 1 examines <i>The Loney</i> (2014), arguing that a priest’s experience of the sublime undermines his agency and religious belief.