Fenland Gothic: incursion and interruption in Caryl Churchill, Susan Hill, and Daisy Johnson

Description

This paper explores the significance of incursion and interruptions in human communities in the Fenlands, as explored in gothic texts by Caryl Churchill, Susan Hill, and Daisy Johnson. In their works, human subjectivities are continually under threat of interruption, becoming unwilling mouthpieces and ventriloquists for the Fens’ radical and oppressive histories. In this landscape, human subjects are literally forced to accommodate other subjectivities and speak in other voices – human and nonhuman. These texts emphasise the Fens not as a site of ‘fine monotony’, but rather unsettling tonal multiplicity, where the human is not an individuated creature, but one suffused by the wetlands. As such, the texts urge acknowledgement of the foreign histories and bodies by which the human is, in some manner, composed.

Period	Jul 2022
Event title	International Gothic Association Conference 2022: Gothic Interruptions
Event type	Conference
Location	Dublin, IrelandShow on map