Camilla Ulleland Hoel

Research interests

I wrote my Master's dissertation on "Neo-carnivalesque laughter: the parodic universes of Douglas Adams, Malcolm Pryce and Terry Pratchett" at the University of Edinburgh, and I still retain an interest in parody and contemporary parodic literature.

My PhD (which I am currently completing, also at the University of Edinburgh) explores the function of endings in the reading of narrative texts. More specifically it looks at who has the authority to posit an ending and how the attitude to the perceived authority of the author determines how readers have reacted to the unfinished novel of Charles Dickens, The Mystery of Edwin Drood. It looks at the attempts at completion, either through speculation or through continuations written out in attempts at Dickens' style (and the occasional spiritualist attempt at providing a final solution by contacting the dead author directly). In addition, and in order to properly explore the function of endings in narrative texts, and who is perceived as having the authority to posit them, I draw on the unfinished novels of William Makepeace Thackerat and Robert Louis Stevenson, as well as the (ostensibly) finished narratives on Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle.

I also have a strong interest in literary theory. My current research draws on the writings of Roland Barthes, Peter Brooks, Frank Kermode, Aristotle, Walter Benjamin and Michel Foucault.