‘The outside after all must be right there beside me’: Claire-Louise Bennett’s Pond and post-critical perspective

Benson, Stephen ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7175-9979 (2024) ‘The outside after all must be right there beside me’: Claire-Louise Bennett’s Pond and post-critical perspective. Textual Practice. ISSN 0950-236X

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Abstract

Claire-Louise Bennett’s Pond has been widely acknowledged as one of the most striking and significant debut novels of recent years. While much praised, however, the nature of the novel’s contemporaneity has proved somewhat resistant to elaboration. The present essay offers one such elaboration, following the motif of perspective as it plays its way through Bennett’s narrative. Perspective in its modern conceptualisation is understood not only in relation to the theory and practice of picturing, and as a highly mobile metaphor for cognition and narration, but also as a medium in the sense proposed by the art critic Rosalind E. Krauss. By following the motif, staying close to the novel rather than succumbing to a critical ‘aboveness’ that Bennett herself mistrusts, the working of perspective is shown to be one significant aspect of Pond’s contemporaneity. On this basis, an interpretative link is made between Bennett’s novel and what has come to be known as a post-critical orientation.

Item Type:	Article
Uncontrolled Keywords:	contemporary fiction,claire-louise bennett,post-critical,postmodernist fiction,perspective,arts and humanities(all) ,/dk/atira/pure/subjectarea/asjc/1200
Faculty \ School:	Faculty of Arts and Humanities > School of Literature, Drama and Creative Writing
UEA Research Groups:	Faculty of Arts and Humanities > Research Groups > Legible / Visible Faculty of Arts and Humanities > Research Groups > Modern and Contemporary Writing Research Group
Related URLs:	http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?...
Depositing User:	LivePure Connector
Date Deposited:	04 Mar 2024 18:32
Last Modified:	22 May 2024 15:30
URI:	https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/id/eprint/94497
DOI:	10.1080/0950236X.2024.2347260

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