The Liminal Landscape of John Cowper Powys

Author: Ride, David

Source: Time and Mind, Volume 2, Number 1, March 2009 , pp. 71-76(6)

Publisher: Berg Publishers

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Abstract:

The concept of liminality, the mystic properties of boundaries and thresholds, is discussed in relation to various landscape elements such as water/land interfaces, enclaves, and islands. Reasons are given to identify the Dorset setting of John Cowper Powys's novel Wolf Solent as a liminal landscape. The literary mechanisms Powys employs to achieve this status are described: they include defining a circumscribed area by means of towns referred to by their real names; renaming places within this boundary to assign special meaning to them; and naming his characters with geological and topographical terms, and with the names of animals and plants. In an overtly liminal event, the novel's hero, Wolf Solent, named after a strait off the coast of Hampshire, marries Gerda, identified here as a personification of the Wessex countryside. The novel is Powys's most autobiographical, and so sheds light on his own philosophy, an uneasy amalgam of atheism and mysticism.

Keywords: JOHN COWPER POWYS; WOLF SOLENT; LIMINALITY; SYMBOLIC LANDSCAPES; WESSEX

Document Type: Research article

DOI: 10.2752/175169709X374281

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