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Research Seminar 1st Feb 2023 – Danny Denton

  • robyncoombes
  • Feb 15, 2023
  • 6 min read

Updated: Apr 1, 2023

“Yes, the setting is a worthy one”

- The Hound of the Baskervilles, Chapter 3


George, Mark. "Day Out in Baskerville Country, Dartmoor." Countryfile, 10 Mar. 2019, www.countryfile.com/go-outdoors/historic-places/baskerville-country-dartmoor-devon/




Entitled “Being Present: how ideas of physical space, place & non-place were used to build the worlds of The Earlie King… and All Along The Echo”, our latest talk in the spring seminar series was led by the author, lecturer, and editor, Danny Denton. Designed to de-mystify the world-building process within fiction-writing, Denton gave a fascinating insight into the overlap between research and invention in his writing, while touching on the creative collaboration between writer and reader. As he put it, the same book read by ten different people, essentially morphs into ten different books.


Denton began by charting his evolving language around, and approach to, ‘setting’, from ‘world building’ (now favoured in set/production design), to ‘immersion’, and currently - ‘bodying’ or ‘embodying’. These last terms suitably evoke the tangible qualities which lend a believability and reality to fictional environments. Denton asserted that his research process brings him to the point of creativity and no further, that is, he researches only enough to write. With this refreshing admission, (unfortunately not as applicable to the non-Creative Writers), a ripple of relieved laughter set the tone for a very engaging talk. Though half the audience were staring down the barrel of a long death by thesis/currently stuck in the quagmire of scholarly journals and eBooks, the creative department seemed to be enjoying themselves at least.



Citing the French anthropologist Marc Augé’s 1992 Non-Places as a formative influence on his world-building method, Denton explained that a ‘non-place’ is a space of circulation, consumption and communication, such as an airport, railway station, bridge, dual carriageway, industrial estate, or garage forecourt. These spaces are busy, bustling, and devoid of individuality or character, yet familiar and quotidian to us all. “Nowadays,” says Denton, “our towns are turned into museums, which transport routes allow us to bypass.” Within this (somewhat depressing) cycle, we can often feel a sense of Freud’s Uncanny – that uneasy phenomenon where the familiar assumes an inexplicable air of unfamiliarity.


Though Freud is very prescriptive about what does and does not induce uncanniness, critics have always recognised its wholly subjective nature which permeates diverse generic forms and critical domains. One of these is undoubtedly the relatively recent critical field of ‘Hauntology’. Denton mentioned how this informed his 2018 novel, The Earlie King, and its imagined ruined future. Emerging from Specters of Marx (1993), Derrida coined the term as a portmanteau of ontology and haunting. Brought into the world of music (and the 21st century) by Mark Fisher in his 2014 book Ghosts of My Life: Writings on Depression, Hauntology and Lost Futures, hauntology has come to mean a nostalgia for the past and futures that never happened. At the end of capitalism, will we be trapped forevermore in versions of the 20th century, having reached Freud’s 1919 musings on “all those unfulfilled but possible futures to which we still like to cling in phantasy”? (10).




Considering Fisher’s work on hauntological music, it is fitting that Denton referenced Adam Buxton’s podcast (he formerly of BBC 6 Music and diehard Bowie fan), and his interview with Brian Eno (https://www.adam-buxton.co.uk/podcasts/91). Quoting the episode, he highlighted Eno’s thoughts in relation to Denton’s own approach to writing - “what I also think is much more interesting is to plant a seed in somebody’s mind for it to grow into whatever their mind wants it to grow into.”



As a podcast obsessive (and I don’t use that word lightly), my ears pricked at this reference to one of my favourites, and it got me thinking of podcasts and place. I often return to familiar episodes, and if not transported to a location or feeling tied to my original listening experience, I sometimes get that sense of déjà vu Freud identified as uncanny. Funnily (uncannily?) enough, I first came across Hauntology in a podcast series that also introduced me to … podcasts. In fact, I probably owe my return to studying to the series that is Witch, Please.


“Book 6, Ep. 2 | Hauntology.” Witch, Please from Acast, 5 Apr. 2022,



That’s right. Back in 2016, making embroidery samples for my art college sketchbooks, I would while away the stitches marvelling at the hidden depths (and my they go to depths) these podcasters unearthed in a book series I thought I knew inside out. According to their website, this is “a fortnightly podcast about the Harry Potter world hosted by two lady scholars”. Said Canadian academics are Marcelle Kosman and Hannah McGregor who began applying critical (and beautifully chaotic) tools to the wizarding world with a podcast per book and film. I hadn’t read Potter since a child, so in some ways my adult brain still thought of werewolves as werewolves and not potentially a metaphor for something deeper. Similarly goblins are coded, who knew! Their later and updated runs, beginning in 2020 and continuing today, apply theory in a more structured way with episodes covering areas from feminism, queer theory, the Gothic and Orientalism, to trauma, disability, print culture, celebrity, pedagogy, animal studies, structuralism, critical race theory, trans studies, critical archival studies, media, masculinity, marginalia, life writing, motherhood, sentimentality, and more!

Podcasts, if you haven’t gathered, are my go-to for thought-provoking but entertaining discussions about film, tv, pop culture, books and, of course, food. They are a brilliant introductory tool when thinking about new texts – almost all canonical set readings will have an In Our Time or other reputable podcast devoted to them. But without Films to be Buried With, The Bechdel Cast, Literary Friction, or the sadly discontinued High-Low (with Dolly Alderton and Pandora Sykes), I wouldn’t have encountered such diverse new media, spanning films, books, articles, and ok yes more podcasts.





Bringing us back to Denton’s ‘embodying’, within these aural spaces/non-places are inscribed memories, ideas, and even prospects of futures not yet lost to hauntology and failed capitalism. Those airports, garage forecourts and railway stations could perhaps be saved from cyclical, ghostly spaces of slipping time and grey concrete. (But only if you’re listening to “Werewolves: A Metaphor?”).



Adam Buxton – Recommendations!

From Kazuo Ishiguro to Marian Keyes, and Zadie Smith to annual (and iconic) rambles with Louis Theroux, if you haven’t listened to Adam Buxton, do your ears a favour. (Tash Demetriou impersonating her dad offers a guaranteed chuckle)

  1. “Aisling Bea Ep. 67”, 10 Mar 2018

  2. “Blindboy Ep. 136”, 25 Oct. 2020

  3. “Elizabeth Day Ep. 147”, 7 Feb 2021

  4. “Marian Keyes Ep. 173”, 17 Apr 2022

  5. “Steve Coogan Ep. 35”, 23 Mar 2017

  6. “Tash Demetriou Ep. 82”, 3 Nov 2018 and “Ep. 32”, 25 Oct 2016

  7. “Zadie Smith Ep. 130”, 5 Aug 2020


Witch, Please - Recommendations!

  1. “Ep. 7B: The Goblet is Political.” Witch, Please from Acast, 30 Jun. 2015, www.play.acast.com/s/oh-witch-please/episode7b-thegobletispolitical.

  2. “Ep. 11A: The Full-blood Patriarchy.” Witch, Please from Acast, 12 Jan. 2016, www.play.acast.com/s/oh-witch-please/episode11a-thefull-bloodpatriarchy.

  3. “Book 3, Ep. 5 | Werewolves: A Metaphor?” Witch, Please from Acast, 11 May 2021, www.play.acast.com/s/oh-witch-please/book3-ep.5-werewolves-ametaphor-.

  4. “Book 6, Ep. 1 | Slytherin Pedagogy.” Witch, Please from Acast, 22 Mar. 2022, www.play.acast.com/s/oh-witch-please/book-6-episode-1-slytherin-pedagogy.

  5. “Book 6, Ep. 2 | Hauntology.” Witch, Please from Acast, 5 Apr. 2022, www.play.acast.com/s/oh-witch-please/book-6-ep-2-hauntology.


Literary Friction

An always beautifully articulate podcast by literary agent, Carrie Plitt, and academic/writer, Octavia Bright.

Recommendations with Place in mind

  1. “Minisode Twenty-Three: The Sea, the Sea!” from NTS Radio, 30 Jul 2021, www.podcasts.apple.com/ie/podcast/minisode-twenty-three-the-sea-the-sea/id1000387053?i=1000530493020.

  2. “Coastlines with Patrick Barkham” from NTS Radio, 18 Jun 2015, www.nts.live/shows/literaryfriction/episodes/literary-friction-w-patrick-barkham-18th-june-2015.

  3. “Into the Woods with Luke Turner” from NTS Radio, 22 Jan 2019, www.nts.live/shows/literaryfriction/episodes/literary-friction-21st-january-2019.

  4. “Real Estate with Deborah Levy” from NTS Radio, 17 Jun 2021, www.nts.live/shows/literaryfriction/episodes/literary-friction-16th-june-2021.



Works Cited


Augé, Mar. Non-Places: An Introduction to Supermodernity. Verso, 1992.

“Brian Eno, Episodes 37 & 38 (Parts One and Two).” The Adam Buxton Podcast, 6 Apr.

Denton, Danny. “Being Present: how ideas of physical space, place & non-place were used to

build the worlds of The Earlie King… and All Along The Echo.” Spring Seminar Series,

University College Cork, 1 Feb. 2023.

---. The Earlie King & The Kid in Yellow. Granta, 2018.

Doyle, Arthur Conan. The Hound of the Baskervilles. 1902. Penguin Clothbound Classics,

2009, pp. 29.

Freud, Sigmund. “The ‘Uncanny’.” First published in Imago, Bd. V., 1919; reprinted in

Sammlung, Fünfte Folge, translated by Alix Strachey. Accessed at https://web.mit.edu/all

anmc/www/freud1.pdf, pp. 1-21.

Kosman, Marcelle, and Hannah McGregor. Witch, Please, 2022, www.ohwitchplease.ca.

In Our Time, hosted by Melvyn Bragg, BBC Radio 4, www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006qykl.

Films to be Buried With, hosted by Brett Goldstein, Acast,

www.play.acast.com/s/filmstobeburiedwith.

The Bechdel Cast, hosted by Jamie Loftus and Caitlin Durante, iHeart,

www.iheart.com/podcast/105-the-bechdel-cast-30089535/.

The High Low, hosted by Dolly Alderton and Pandora Sykes, Apple Podcasts,

www.podcasts.apple.com/ie/podcast/the-high-low/id1211338187.



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