Fault Lines: Viral Disquiet in Sarah Moss’s Fiction
Sarah Moss’s latest novel, The Fell, is a pandemic novel which explores the social fractures that the COVID 19 lockdown blatantly exposed. Its oppressive atmosphere of rising anxiety in the self-isolating context of the epidemic, however, has pervaded Moss’s fiction from the beginning of her career....
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Presses Universitaires de la Méditerranée
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ftdoajarticles:oai:doaj.org/article:2e1ec1647d014d2ab5988f8eb86bb03b 2023-07-02T03:32:26+02:00 Fault Lines: Viral Disquiet in Sarah Moss’s Fiction Émilie Walezak 2023-03-01T00:00:00Z https://doi.org/10.4000/ebc.13490 https://doaj.org/article/2e1ec1647d014d2ab5988f8eb86bb03b EN FR eng fre Presses Universitaires de la Méditerranée http://journals.openedition.org/ebc/13490 https://doaj.org/toc/1168-4917 https://doaj.org/toc/2271-5444 1168-4917 2271-5444 doi:10.4000/ebc.13490 https://doaj.org/article/2e1ec1647d014d2ab5988f8eb86bb03b Études Britanniques Contemporaines, Vol 64 (2023) Sarah Moss affect theory pandemics polyphony climate change Arts in general NX1-820 English language PE1-3729 English literature PR1-9680 article 2023 ftdoajarticles https://doi.org/10.4000/ebc.13490 2023-06-11T00:35:42Z Sarah Moss’s latest novel, The Fell, is a pandemic novel which explores the social fractures that the COVID 19 lockdown blatantly exposed. Its oppressive atmosphere of rising anxiety in the self-isolating context of the epidemic, however, has pervaded Moss’s fiction from the beginning of her career. Her first novel, Cold Earth (2009), published a few months before the swine flu pandemic, imagined a group of archaeologists cut off from the world in Greenland as a consequence of the global spread of a virus. Her 2020 novel, Summerwater, similarly pictures a group of tourists isolated by the rain in Scotland while her 2018 novel, Ghost Wall, describes an experiential archaeological summer camp going wrong. Moss uses extreme quarantine-like circumstances to question individual responses and group behaviours. Thus, the various confining circumstances of her novels unfold as political fault lines questioning single motherhood, domestic abuse, xenophobia, scapegoating, class and gender divides. The paper will explore such rifts through attention to Moss’s diverse writing procedures from the first-person polyphony of her first novel to the disjointed use of free indirect speech, characteristic of pandemic writing, in her latest novel, using affect theory to account for her viral signature brand of writing. Article in Journal/Newspaper Greenland Directory of Open Access Journals: DOAJ Articles Greenland Études britanniques contemporaines 64 |
institution |
Open Polar |
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Directory of Open Access Journals: DOAJ Articles |
op_collection_id |
ftdoajarticles |
language |
English French |
topic |
Sarah Moss affect theory pandemics polyphony climate change Arts in general NX1-820 English language PE1-3729 English literature PR1-9680 |
spellingShingle |
Sarah Moss affect theory pandemics polyphony climate change Arts in general NX1-820 English language PE1-3729 English literature PR1-9680 Émilie Walezak Fault Lines: Viral Disquiet in Sarah Moss’s Fiction |
topic_facet |
Sarah Moss affect theory pandemics polyphony climate change Arts in general NX1-820 English language PE1-3729 English literature PR1-9680 |
description |
Sarah Moss’s latest novel, The Fell, is a pandemic novel which explores the social fractures that the COVID 19 lockdown blatantly exposed. Its oppressive atmosphere of rising anxiety in the self-isolating context of the epidemic, however, has pervaded Moss’s fiction from the beginning of her career. Her first novel, Cold Earth (2009), published a few months before the swine flu pandemic, imagined a group of archaeologists cut off from the world in Greenland as a consequence of the global spread of a virus. Her 2020 novel, Summerwater, similarly pictures a group of tourists isolated by the rain in Scotland while her 2018 novel, Ghost Wall, describes an experiential archaeological summer camp going wrong. Moss uses extreme quarantine-like circumstances to question individual responses and group behaviours. Thus, the various confining circumstances of her novels unfold as political fault lines questioning single motherhood, domestic abuse, xenophobia, scapegoating, class and gender divides. The paper will explore such rifts through attention to Moss’s diverse writing procedures from the first-person polyphony of her first novel to the disjointed use of free indirect speech, characteristic of pandemic writing, in her latest novel, using affect theory to account for her viral signature brand of writing. |
format |
Article in Journal/Newspaper |
author |
Émilie Walezak |
author_facet |
Émilie Walezak |
author_sort |
Émilie Walezak |
title |
Fault Lines: Viral Disquiet in Sarah Moss’s Fiction |
title_short |
Fault Lines: Viral Disquiet in Sarah Moss’s Fiction |
title_full |
Fault Lines: Viral Disquiet in Sarah Moss’s Fiction |
title_fullStr |
Fault Lines: Viral Disquiet in Sarah Moss’s Fiction |
title_full_unstemmed |
Fault Lines: Viral Disquiet in Sarah Moss’s Fiction |
title_sort |
fault lines: viral disquiet in sarah moss’s fiction |
publisher |
Presses Universitaires de la Méditerranée |
publishDate |
2023 |
url |
https://doi.org/10.4000/ebc.13490 https://doaj.org/article/2e1ec1647d014d2ab5988f8eb86bb03b |
geographic |
Greenland |
geographic_facet |
Greenland |
genre |
Greenland |
genre_facet |
Greenland |
op_source |
Études Britanniques Contemporaines, Vol 64 (2023) |
op_relation |
http://journals.openedition.org/ebc/13490 https://doaj.org/toc/1168-4917 https://doaj.org/toc/2271-5444 1168-4917 2271-5444 doi:10.4000/ebc.13490 https://doaj.org/article/2e1ec1647d014d2ab5988f8eb86bb03b |
op_doi |
https://doi.org/10.4000/ebc.13490 |
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Études britanniques contemporaines |
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64 |
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