TY - JOUR

T1 - Enclosure, Dispersal, and The Enigma of Arrival

AU - Dickinson, Philip

PY - 2016/7/1

Y1 - 2016/7/1

N2 - “Enclosure” is a powerful interpretive key to V. S. Naipaul’s The Enigma of Arrival. It is a word that can stand for any contained or bounded space as well as the processes or logics of forming such containment on historical, phenomenological, textual, and subjective registers. A national community, a spatial enclosure, a picturesque image, a literary text, and a human body are all connected figures of enclosure in the text, bodies with borders (or skins) that guard their integrity. I trace how these figures are traversed by countervailing logics of dispersal, where dispersal implies the dissipation of the coherence of a self-contained form. I argue that the tension between logics of enclosure and dispersal centrally motivates the novel’s formal project. My argument is especially interested in illuminating the significance of Romantic lyric form to the novel’s project of formal “gathering” and to its role in forming a writerly subjectivity that would seek to reconcile the dispersed materials of its composition.

AB - “Enclosure” is a powerful interpretive key to V. S. Naipaul’s The Enigma of Arrival. It is a word that can stand for any contained or bounded space as well as the processes or logics of forming such containment on historical, phenomenological, textual, and subjective registers. A national community, a spatial enclosure, a picturesque image, a literary text, and a human body are all connected figures of enclosure in the text, bodies with borders (or skins) that guard their integrity. I trace how these figures are traversed by countervailing logics of dispersal, where dispersal implies the dissipation of the coherence of a self-contained form. I argue that the tension between logics of enclosure and dispersal centrally motivates the novel’s formal project. My argument is especially interested in illuminating the significance of Romantic lyric form to the novel’s project of formal “gathering” and to its role in forming a writerly subjectivity that would seek to reconcile the dispersed materials of its composition.

KW - V. S. Naipaul

KW - enclosure

KW - dispersal

KW - lyric form

KW - landscape

M3 - Journal article

VL - 47

SP - 45

EP - 66

JO - ariel: a review of international english literature

JF - ariel: a review of international english literature

IS - 3

ER -