Paradisiacal Hells : Subversions of the Mythical Canon in Neil Gaiman's "Neverwhere"

Abstract

According to certain theories, Postmodernism makes a conscious use of the cyclical nature of mythical narrations in response to the anxieties of fragmentation and isolation of the self. Hence, Postmodernism, through its own mechanisms and techniques, offers reconceptualizations of the mythical structure applied to the contemporary social conditions. The aim of this article is to analyse how Neil Gaiman consciously employs a mythical structure in his first novel, "Neverwhere" (1996), and how he subverts the final aim of this pattern. My contention is that "Neverwhere" is a postmodernist novel whose structure follows the cyclical pattern of the Campbellian monomyth. But the cyclical nature of the myth is utterly transformed in the novel.