Elizabeth Bowen
Journal Data
| Type | SOURCE_BOOK |
|---|---|
| Publisher | Clarendon Press (GB) |
| ISBN-13 | 9780198186908 |
| Open Library | OL26655W |
| Total publications | 9 |
| Coverage period | 2004 - 2004 |
| Language | EN |
| Cited by | 11 |
| h-index | 1 |
| i10-index | 1 |
This book offers a critical account of Elizabeth Bowen, a significant 20th-century Irish writer still too little known and appreciated. It considers her novels, short stories, essays, and family history, showing how her work both inherits from the Modernist movement and transforms its experimental traditions. The book explores Bowen's adaptation of Irish Protestant Gothic in relation to the Troubles of the 1920s and the Second World War, especially the London Blitz. It reads her explorations of childhood as a response both to Henry James and to the European novel of adultery. Focusing on the ideas of return and reflex, it reads the presence of the supernatural, and of other kinds of haunting, in her work in relation to concepts drawn from both Freud and T. S. Eliot. The book also makes use of non-fictional materials in its interpretations, notably, Bowen's wartime reports from neutral Ireland and the diaries of her wartime lover Charles Ritchie. The intention is to demonstrate the ways in which Bowen's writing merges personal story with public history. The book's radical readings, which depend on a wealth of original research, propose that Bowen is as important to 20th-century literary studies as her much better-known Irish Protestant fellow writer, Samuel Beckett
Motherless Child
This chapter examines Bowen's novel, The Death of the Heart, proposing that its analysis of class relations in 1930s England has affinities with the work of Waugh, Green, and Lawrence. This analysis is focused on the fate of the orphan and ingénue Portia, and emphasizes her various states of mind partly by concentrated close readings of particular passages. Portia's developing sexuality and her awareness of it impels the plot, and is extensively …
A Ghost of Style
This chapter focuses on Bowen's novel, A World of Love, reading it against The Last September as a work taking up again decades later themes announced there, and bringing to an end Bowen's fictional representations of Ireland and the fate of the Anglo-Irish. It interprets the ambiguous presence of the supernatural in the book which reveals, in part, Bowen's permanent obsession with the First World War. It also suggests that this novel is self-con…
Discovery of a Lack
This chapter offers a reading of Bowen's novel, The Last September, set during the Troubles in Ireland in the 1920s, taking stock of some historical accounts of the period, notably Peter Hart's. It understands forms of ellipsis and aporia to be characteristic of Bowen's structures and style, and interprets them as, in part, a response to a cataclysmic contemporary history. It interprets Bowen's attitude to the Anglo-Irish, defining her particular…
Mother and Child
This chapter offers a reading of Bowen's novel, The House in Paris, as her major statement about maternity and orphanhood — subjects that preoccupied her all her life, having strong autobiographical roots. It understands the novel as self-consciously both aligning itself with, and divorcing itself from, the work of Henry James and the 19th-century novel of adultery (Flaubert, Tolstoy), placing unique emphasis on the figure of the child. It interp…
Words in the Dark
This chapter offers a reading of Bowen's collection of Second World War short stories, The Demon Lover and Other Stories, proposing it as a book of unhappy returns. Studies of dislocation, the stories have their Anglo-Irish element, even though they are set mainly in the London of the Blitz. The chapter also considers matters of literary allusion and reference, as well as issues of gender together with sexual and social disruption. The chapter co…
Childless Mother
This chapter focuses on Bowen's last, problematical novel, Eva Trout, which has polarized critical opinion. It explains this opinion and reasons for it, then proposes a new reading of it as the climax in an altogether novel structure of Bowen's interest in the figures of mother and child. In the novel's eponymous heroine, Bowen articulates a representation of that impossible figure — the mother who has no child. A radically unsettling experimenta…
War's Stories
This chapter offers a lengthy reading of Bowen's wartime novel, The Heat of the Day, considering it in tandem with various of its contexts, notably Bowen's wartime reports from neutral Ireland to Churchill's government — which some considered a form of espionage — and the diaries of her wartime love, Charles Ritchie, a high-ranking Canadian diplomat. These contexts establish a frame for interpreting the novel's notoriously slippery preoccupations…
The Ghost in the House
This chapter offers a reading of Bowen's family history, Bowen's Court, and of a crucial short story, The Back Drawing-Room. It suggests that the various types of ghost encountered in both are crucial to an understanding of Bowen's writing. It traces these back to Bowen's inheritance from forms of Irish 19th-century Protestant Gothic and from her origins as a member of the Ascendancy, in which her view of the ‘big house’ is crucial. It also explo…
Elizabeth Bowen
This book offers a critical account of Elizabeth Bowen, a significant 20th-century Irish writer still too little known and appreciated. It considers her novels, short stories, essays, and family history, showing how her work both inherits from the Modernist movement and transforms its experimental traditions. The book explores Bowen's adaptation of Irish Protestant Gothic in relation to the Troubles of the 1920s and the Second World War, especial…
Elizabeth Bowen
This book offers a critical account of Elizabeth Bowen, a significant 20th-century Irish writer still too little known and appreciated. It considers her novels, short stories, essays, and family history, showing how her work both inherits from the Modernist movement and transforms its experimental traditions. The book explores Bowen's adaptation of Irish Protestant Gothic in relation to the Troubles of the 1920s and the Second World War, especial…
Motherless Child
This chapter examines Bowen's novel, The Death of the Heart, proposing that its analysis of class relations in 1930s England has affinities with the work of Waugh, Green, and Lawrence. This analysis is focused on the fate of the orphan and ingénue Portia, and emphasizes her various states of mind partly by concentrated close readings of particular passages. Portia's developing sexuality and her awareness of it impels the plot, and is extensively …
A Ghost of Style
This chapter focuses on Bowen's novel, A World of Love, reading it against The Last September as a work taking up again decades later themes announced there, and bringing to an end Bowen's fictional representations of Ireland and the fate of the Anglo-Irish. It interprets the ambiguous presence of the supernatural in the book which reveals, in part, Bowen's permanent obsession with the First World War. It also suggests that this novel is self-con…
Discovery of a Lack
This chapter offers a reading of Bowen's novel, The Last September, set during the Troubles in Ireland in the 1920s, taking stock of some historical accounts of the period, notably Peter Hart's. It understands forms of ellipsis and aporia to be characteristic of Bowen's structures and style, and interprets them as, in part, a response to a cataclysmic contemporary history. It interprets Bowen's attitude to the Anglo-Irish, defining her particular…
Mother and Child
This chapter offers a reading of Bowen's novel, The House in Paris, as her major statement about maternity and orphanhood — subjects that preoccupied her all her life, having strong autobiographical roots. It understands the novel as self-consciously both aligning itself with, and divorcing itself from, the work of Henry James and the 19th-century novel of adultery (Flaubert, Tolstoy), placing unique emphasis on the figure of the child. It interp…
Words in the Dark
This chapter offers a reading of Bowen's collection of Second World War short stories, The Demon Lover and Other Stories, proposing it as a book of unhappy returns. Studies of dislocation, the stories have their Anglo-Irish element, even though they are set mainly in the London of the Blitz. The chapter also considers matters of literary allusion and reference, as well as issues of gender together with sexual and social disruption. The chapter co…
Childless Mother
This chapter focuses on Bowen's last, problematical novel, Eva Trout, which has polarized critical opinion. It explains this opinion and reasons for it, then proposes a new reading of it as the climax in an altogether novel structure of Bowen's interest in the figures of mother and child. In the novel's eponymous heroine, Bowen articulates a representation of that impossible figure — the mother who has no child. A radically unsettling experimenta…
War's Stories
This chapter offers a lengthy reading of Bowen's wartime novel, The Heat of the Day, considering it in tandem with various of its contexts, notably Bowen's wartime reports from neutral Ireland to Churchill's government — which some considered a form of espionage — and the diaries of her wartime love, Charles Ritchie, a high-ranking Canadian diplomat. These contexts establish a frame for interpreting the novel's notoriously slippery preoccupations…
The Ghost in the House
This chapter offers a reading of Bowen's family history, Bowen's Court, and of a crucial short story, The Back Drawing-Room. It suggests that the various types of ghost encountered in both are crucial to an understanding of Bowen's writing. It traces these back to Bowen's inheritance from forms of Irish 19th-century Protestant Gothic and from her origins as a member of the Ascendancy, in which her view of the ‘big house’ is crucial. It also explo…
Elizabeth Bowen
This book offers a critical account of Elizabeth Bowen, a significant 20th-century Irish writer still too little known and appreciated. It considers her novels, short stories, essays, and family history, showing how her work both inherits from the Modernist movement and transforms its experimental traditions. The book explores Bowen's adaptation of Irish Protestant Gothic in relation to the Troubles of the 1920s and the Second World War, especial…