Pandemic Realism: Exploring the Materialities of Covid-19 in Sarah Moss’s The Fell
In her pandemic fiction, The Fell (2021), Sarah Moss highlights the paradoxes of COVID-19-related lockdowns or so-called periods of “self-isolation” which produced, on a social and mental level, the very asphyxiation that they were meant to prevent on the biological one. As Kate, forced to isolate w...
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| 出版年: | URI:https://journals.openedition.org/ebc, |
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| 第一著者: | |
| フォーマット: | Article ou chapitre numérique |
| 言語: | Anglais |
| 出版事項: |
Études britanniques contemporaines
2025
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| 主題: | |
| オンライン･アクセス: | Accès Université d'Orléans et IFPM Accès Université d'Orléans et IFPM |
| 要約: | In her pandemic fiction, The Fell (2021), Sarah Moss highlights the paradoxes of COVID-19-related lockdowns or so-called periods of “self-isolation” which produced, on a social and mental level, the very asphyxiation that they were meant to prevent on the biological one. As Kate, forced to isolate with her teenage son, decides that she can’t take it anymore and needs to go for a walk over the fell, she triggers a series of events that, like a chain of contamination, will circulate through the text, leading to unforeseen and dramatic consequences. Taking the figure of metonymy as a starting point, this article explores the ways in which the materiality of COVID-19 manifests itself in the novel, the logics of contamination relying essentially on relations of contiguity. It then questions David Lodge’s definition of metonymic realism to explore its performative power and ability to disrupt linearity, countering enforced isolation to foster new forms of empathy and relationality. |
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