DETAILS
Wednesday 21st August 2024 at 4:30pm (AEST)
Jeremy George PhD.c, University of Melbourne
Settling for Less: Elizabeth Bowen’s World
ABSTRACT
This paper draws on concepts from the recent scholarship in settler colonial studies and “British World” history by John Darwin, James Belich, Priya Satia, Lachlan McNamee, and others, to reassess Elizabeth Bowen’s short story Her Table Spread first published in 1930. One of Bowen’s most famous and anthologised stories, “Her Table Spread” has often been received as an example of the Anglo-Irish gothic tradition pioneered by Sheridan Le Fanu and analysed most prominently by Roy Foster. Taking heed of existing criticism, I nonetheless propose to broaden the coordinates. By treating “Her Table Spread” as a case study alongside refence to Bowen’s other writings, I argue that what she called her “fiction with the texture of history” is not just marked by the disintegration of the historical Protestant Ascendancy in the face of popular Irish nationalism. Her fiction is also finely attuned to the tense and often paradoxical dynamics which marked the modern sea-spanning Anglophone world system discussed in the aforementioned studies. Bowen’s literary modernism is uniquely capable of articulating the relation between progressivism and violence, expansion and isolation, privilege and marginalisation. Reading Bowen’s work in an expanded scholarly field, then, provides a new perspective on the vexed opportunities, limits, and consequences which structured the lifeways of the twentieth century “British World”.
SPEAKER
Jeremy George is writing a PhD in English at the University of Melbourne.
LOCATION (In-Person and Online)
This free public seminar will be held in-person in the Jabiru Room at Newman College (enter via main gate and follow the signs), and streamed live online via Zoom. The Zoom room will be open 10 minutes before the scheduled start to give everyone time to connect. Please keep your microphone on mute for the duration of the talk. There will be time for questions at the end of the seminar. Please RSVP to Dianne.hall@vu.edu.au if you would like the zoom link.
RECORDING
A recording may be posted here after the seminar.