best fictional castle

piranesi must imply a fictional castle or two in carceri d'invenzione; they can't all be endless subterranean diabloscapes

Castle Rackrent, unless that’s a real castle (I haven’t read the book, just bringing it up as a good castle name)

houses of the holy art all-time of course BUT photographing a castle does not turn it fictional and you can tell don delillo i said so

no but the "sacrifice" and all the stories I projected onto it at age 12 do

wait a second: are all castles fictional

the king is mad: he thinks his house is a castle

xp but there's a pictorial narrative in that art, it is staged

i will grant at least that questions of artifice and ontology are smack within the purview of the fictional castles thread, tho obviously secondary to the determination of the best fictional castle.

this morning i'm wondering who'd bother inventing a fiction without a castle tbh

The Library of Babel and even more so the Name of the Rose's palimpsest of that library are pretty much castles in all bar name and Eco's might be my fave non-video game castle

There must be a ton of Oulipo castles...Calvino's Castle of Crossed Detinies and I know Queneau did a choose-your-own-adventure story about a castle. There have to be others? Castles are def ripe for recursive/discursive games.

*Destinies

are video games the ideal media for castles? xps!

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/d/dc/Castles_Coverart.png/220px-Castles_Coverart.png

hyrule was another deliberate and now-inscrutable cut (it does function better as destination than setting imo, even in link to the past, so fans should vote kafka) but i should have included durlag's tower.

I tried to think of video game castles for this thread and decided they're all too small to be satisfactory but as mental soaces i've inhabited i feel them more than most fictions

suikoden probably deserves a shoutout re: video game castles that are setting rather than destination

Cloppa Castle theme tune, written by one of *Nirvana.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lk_J9h9VNbw

*the UK one

The Library of Babel and even more so the Name of the Rose's palimpsest of that library are pretty much castles in all bar name

Hm, not entirely sure about this. What is it that makes a castle a castle?

Was thinking about Calvino castles earlier but couldn't think of a specific one, my mind was more focused on the many castles of Invisible Cities.

Mistrinaut

Thinking gothicism and a kind of fractal endlessness emily bit yeah i'm only wibbling

(if you want to know what Castle Mistrinaut is, here's a good article about the English translation of Letter For The King: https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/features/tonke-dragts-the-letter-for-the-king-has-finally-been-translated-into-english-50-years-on-9826857.html )

castle voldesad

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Kasell

Castle Anthrax and the Castle of Arghhh

yep

https://assets.catawiki.nl/assets/2016/11/3/3/0/8/308dae04-a1f1-11e6-944d-c2ec2412e9ab.jpg

https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/xnkAAOSwntRcaW-3/s-l1600.jpg

first drawing of scrooge mcduck's ancestral home by carl barks, from "the old castle's secret" (1948)

https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-ImxZM-RBi-8/WMC0dhFXaBI/AAAAAAAABIk/gwCSH7MXmOEri0oiftqqh1_rWPRXk-n-ACLcB/s1600/ducktales_trailer_007.jpg

Tracer Hand - thanks for the link, never heard of that.

One of Ogmor's images is by Ian Miller, who has drawn a lot of very good castles, including Gormenghast.

I feel a little ashamed I cant think of more because castles are one of my absolute favorite things but I hope to update this thread in the future with more finds.

Just remembered the castle drawings by Victor Hugo
https://benedante.blogspot.com/2016/06/victor-hugos-drawings.html

Howl's Moving Castle, with Cadtle Greyskull a close second

The Library of Babel and even more so the Name of the Rose's palimpsest of that library are pretty much castles in all bar name and Eco's might be my fave non-video game castle

― The Xylems of the Limes (Noodle Vague), Monday, April 1, 2019 6:15 AM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Hm, not entirely sure about this. What is it that makes a castle a castle?

Was thinking about Calvino castles earlier but couldn't think of a specific one, my mind was more focused on the many castles of Invisible Cities.

― emil.y, Monday, April 1, 2019 7:30 AM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Thinking gothicism and a kind of fractal endlessness emily bit yeah i'm only wibbling

― The Xylems of the Limes (Noodle Vague), Monday, April 1, 2019 8:55 AM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

for me the castle's key architectural feature (distinguishing it from a mere palace) is fortification; and its key etymological feature is its derivation from castrare-- to cut off. a castle can certainly be a mind or universe unto itself (fractal endlessness) but for it to be a castle there must also be an outside it is fortified against. in elsinore to be overthrown from within is also to be captured from without, because death is only change. the forest and the mountains (and the carvers' houses) are as much a part of the conceptual architecture of gormenghast as the castle itself. the library of babel imo is a palace-- it's all there is.

derivation from castrare

woah, deep dive into the essential boyhood-ness of castles

Crenellation or gtfo

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Ranier Wolf just over Frank.

i still haven't voted. leaning gormenghast.

Watched Howl's Moving Castle again yesterday, still good

act iv might steal it for elsinore. it's the way it looks on the page: all those little bitty scenes, characters running screaming in and out of them like rooms, gaps opening in the text like teeth falling from a skull. and structuring it all, this frantic series of settings:

IV.1: A room in the castle.
IV.2: Another room in the castle.
IV.3: Another room in the castle.
IV.4: A plain in Denmark.
IV.5: Another room in the castle.
IV.6: Another room in the castle.
IV.7: Another room in the castle.

frankly shocked there's no modernist novel called another room in the castle

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

good spread

Old Lunch, thank you for remembering Otranto. I had a spaced-out think once about a South Korean film adaptation of the novel after watching The Wailing. Think it would do well tbh.

I think I voted Kafka

Just finished looking at Art Of Ian Miller and the castles are just spectacular.

Moon's Spawn

https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-fcmKMSyToyw/WKTocIUT0iI/AAAAAAAAPOY/vGtzs7BrXs8si3PmOIL6QOZhMt2_i8onQCLcB/s1600/Malazan%2BBook%2Bof%2Bthe%2BFallen.jpg

Belated write-in for The Enchanted Castle by E. Nesbit

Castle, We Have Always Lived in the, Shirley Jackson

see also: Castle, I Capture the, Dodie Smith