Close-Reading’ and its Role for the Interpretation of E. Bowen’s Novels The Last September and To The North

Abstract

Maria A. Rodina (Moscow, Russian Federation)

The Anglo-Irish twentieth century writer Elizabeth Bowen is a wellknown stylist, that is why the formal analysis of the fragments of the novels is of great interest. ‘Close-reading’, invented and brought into light by the “new critics” in the XX century, gives us an opportunity to research the peculiarities of Bowen’s style and understand the source of the artistic effect it produces. However it turns out that as far as Bowen’s novels are concerned ‘closereading’ also gives us a deeper understanding of the characters and makes for the ‘lacunae’ in the plot. Only through ‘close-reading’ of at least one abstract from the novel The Last September it becomes evident that the young soldier Gerald is a devoted imperialist, as there are no inner monologues in the novel and the dialogues are usually not about politics, this topic being carefully avoided by most of the characters. Similarly, only through ‘close-reading’ of a fragment from To The North we realize that the characters are rushing forward to their deaths and, moreover, that the catastrophe is, most probably, designed by the free will of the driver. Thus, we argue that the seemingly “simple” questions such as ‘what happened?’ and ‘why?’ in Bowen’s prose are sometimes so complicated that to answer them we have to go through the whole process of the formal analysis and only this process can provide the answers. In case with the characters and their psychology there is a similar case: a character’s mind is described by the author in a series of visual images and associations which can only be ‘deciphered’ with the help of ‘close-reading’.

Key words: ‘close-reading’, style, denotation, connotation, character, plot.

DOI 10.23683/1995-0640-2019-2-106-114