The Aesthetic of Elizabeth Bowen’s Novels

Light, Atmosphere, Fragmentation, and Sensation

Diana Hirst

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2025
• Topic: Literature
• eBook ISBN:
  9781040709207
• Subtopic: Modern Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

This is the first monograph to evaluate Elizabeth Bowen's 'verbal painting', and the first to acknowledge the influence of the East Kent landscape in her novels. Drawing on the work of critics and on Bowen's own essays and articles, Hirst introduces Bowen to the reader, outlining the range of her literary work and elaborating on Bowen's advice that the reader needs to work at understanding her prose. She examines Bowen's use of light and the eye from the perspective of neuropsychology, before considering the importance to Bowen of place. She discusses her 'verbal painting', drawing parallels with different genres (Post-Impressionism, Surrealism, Futurism, Collage) and artists (Paul Cézanne, Pierre Bonnard, Edouard Vuillard, Giorgio de Chirico, Umberto Boccioni, Paul Nash), and the films of French Left Bank Cinema directors (Alain Resnais, Jean Cocteau). Finally, using the neologism 'dyslocution' for Bowen's fragmented syntax, she suggests this has been influenced by French syntax and by poetic techniques, all of which combine in a Cubist style.

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Endorsement Page
• Half Title page
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Foreword
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• Abbreviations
• Non-Fiction
• Fiction
• Introduction
• 1 ‘The Process of Reading Is Reciprocal’
• 2 By the Light of her Eye
• 3 ‘Place-Feeling’
• 4 An Artist in Her Studio
• 5 ‘I Collect Scraps to Make Scrap Screens’
• 6 ‘A Camera at the Tip of Her Pen’
• 7 Dyslocution: Casting off the Superstition of Syntax
• Envoi
• Index