{"title":"Elizabeth Bowen’s The Hotel: An ABC of Reading","authors":"N. Royle","doi":"10.3366/olr.2022.0395","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"This essay is an exercise in the phenomenology – and post-phenomenology – of reading in relation to Elizabeth Bowen’s The Hotel (1927), a novel that thematizes and reflects on the uncanny status of reading and provokes in response an experimental critical ABC. Special attention is given to the work of French psychoanalyst Charles Baudouin in foregrounding the role and effects of suggestion in reading. Engaging with the concerns of writing and reading fiction in the ‘Anthropocene’ (especially in the form of what is here called twi-fi) and drawing on notions of literary anachrony, cryptaesthetic resistance, queerness and deferred effect, the essay offers a new critical appreciation of the singularity of Bowen’s novel.","PeriodicalId":43403,"journal":{"name":"OXFORD LITERARY REVIEW","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2000,"publicationDate":"2022-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"OXFORD LITERARY REVIEW","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.3366/olr.2022.0395","RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"0","JCRName":"LITERARY THEORY & CRITICISM","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
This essay is an exercise in the phenomenology – and post-phenomenology – of reading in relation to Elizabeth Bowen’s The Hotel (1927), a novel that thematizes and reflects on the uncanny status of reading and provokes in response an experimental critical ABC. Special attention is given to the work of French psychoanalyst Charles Baudouin in foregrounding the role and effects of suggestion in reading. Engaging with the concerns of writing and reading fiction in the ‘Anthropocene’ (especially in the form of what is here called twi-fi) and drawing on notions of literary anachrony, cryptaesthetic resistance, queerness and deferred effect, the essay offers a new critical appreciation of the singularity of Bowen’s novel.
期刊介绍:
Oxford Literary Review, founded in the 1970s, is Britain"s oldest journal of literary theory. It is concerned especially with the history and development of deconstructive thinking in all areas of intellectual, cultural and political life. In the past, Oxford Literary Review has published new work by Derrida, Blanchot, Barthes, Foucault, Lacoue-Labarthe, Nancy, Cixous and many others, and it continues to publish innovative and controversial work in the tradition and spirit of deconstruction. Planned issues include ‘Writing and Immortality’, "Word of War" and ‘Deconstruction and Environmentalism’.