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www.sciedu.ca/wjel World Journal of English Language Vol. 3, No. 1; 2013 “Like a Furnace Burning and Turning” – London in Peter Ackroyd’s The Great Fire of London Petr Chalupský1,* 1 Department of English Language and Literature, Faculty of Education, Charles University, Prague, Czech Republic *Correspondence: Department of English Language and Literature, Faculty of Education, Charles University, Celetná 13, Prague 1, 116 39, Czech Republic E-mail: petr.chalupsky@pedf.cuni.cz Received: December 5, 2012 Accepted: December 26, 2012 Online Published: January 22, 2013 doi:10.5430/wjel.v3n1p11 URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.5430/wjel.v3n1p11 Abstract Unlike the two subsequent novels, The Last Testament of Oscar Wilde (1983) and Hawksmoor (1985), Peter Ackroyd’s first novel, The Great Fire of London (1982), was not published to high critical acclaim. However, the novel establishes its author’s concept of his fictional London, which focuses primarily on the city’s unofficial, off-the-record history. The aim of this article is to demonstrate that although it is a seemingly unambitious work and a relatively raw text, especially due to its explicit treatment of the theme of male homosexuality and the

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