‘All across Europe it had come’: The Black Death and Fascism in Sylvia Townsend Warner’s <i>The Corner That Held Them</i>
<p class="first" id="d4107983e78"> Sylvia Townsend Warner’s wartime novel <i>The Corner that Held Them</i> (1948), about a nunnery during the Black Death, reflects on female community and bonding in a period of male fascist v...
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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UCL Press
2021-10-01
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| Series: | The Journal of the Sylvia Townsend Warner Society |
| Online Access: | https://uclpress.scienceopen.com/hosted-document?doi=10.14324/111.444.stw.2021.3 |
| _version_ | 1797896253431873536 |
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| author | Adam Piette |
| author_facet | Adam Piette |
| author_sort | Adam Piette |
| collection | DOAJ |
| description | <p class="first" id="d4107983e78">
Sylvia Townsend Warner’s wartime novel
<i>The Corner that Held Them</i> (1948), about a nunnery during the Black Death, reflects on female community and
bonding in a period of male fascist violence. The novel explores the shift from pacifism
to acceptance of the need for anti-fascist war which characterised Warner’s intellectual
beliefs from the 1930s into wartime, probing the arts of peace in compositional practice.
Such a dialectic of war and peace is considered in relation to what Maud Ellmann has
described as the outward turn to collective choral consciousness in mid-century modernism.
This article explores both the staging of fascism as plague and the feminist daring
and limits that Warner saw as operative in female witnessing and withstanding of Nazi
ideology and menace. It closely reads key scenes from the panorama of a novel (notably
Alianor’s stillness as her husband is killed, Alicia’s plans to withstand the economic
impact of the Black Death and the cure of Ralph’s plague symptoms) to register the
satirical and allegorical substance of Warner’s rescripting of Woolfian notions of
resistance to warmongering misogyny by a society of outsiders.
</p><p id="d4107983e85">The readings seek to consolidate a varied and multiple sense of the book as a Marxist
historical novel that gives voice to the ruled. In doing so Warner analyses the Black
Death as a moment in history that saw the emergence of early modern capitalism and
labour relations out of the feudal system, even as the religious framework that had structured medieval Europe gave way to more
secular beliefs in autonomy, self-determination, citizen and collective dreams, projects
and affects. At the same time the plague as a political trope, rooted in anti-fascist
rhetoric that turns Nazi anti-Semitic uses of the Black Death motif on their head,
triggers readings that bring those historical scenes into allegorical relation with
the ways in which the Second World War was experienced by marginalised female communities.
</p> |
| first_indexed | 2024-04-10T07:38:46Z |
| format | Article |
| id | doaj.art-4824c5c16ac04e5d8f97913c06a643ea |
| institution | Directory Open Access Journal |
| issn | 1475-1674 2398-0605 |
| language | English |
| last_indexed | 2024-04-10T07:38:46Z |
| publishDate | 2021-10-01 |
| publisher | UCL Press |
| record_format | Article |
| series | The Journal of the Sylvia Townsend Warner Society |
| spelling | doaj.art-4824c5c16ac04e5d8f97913c06a643ea2023-02-23T12:03:52ZengUCL PressThe Journal of the Sylvia Townsend Warner Society1475-16742398-06052021-10-0121133010.14324/111.444.stw.2021.3‘All across Europe it had come’: The Black Death and Fascism in Sylvia Townsend Warner’s <i>The Corner That Held Them</i>Adam Piette<p class="first" id="d4107983e78"> Sylvia Townsend Warner’s wartime novel <i>The Corner that Held Them</i> (1948), about a nunnery during the Black Death, reflects on female community and bonding in a period of male fascist violence. The novel explores the shift from pacifism to acceptance of the need for anti-fascist war which characterised Warner’s intellectual beliefs from the 1930s into wartime, probing the arts of peace in compositional practice. Such a dialectic of war and peace is considered in relation to what Maud Ellmann has described as the outward turn to collective choral consciousness in mid-century modernism. This article explores both the staging of fascism as plague and the feminist daring and limits that Warner saw as operative in female witnessing and withstanding of Nazi ideology and menace. It closely reads key scenes from the panorama of a novel (notably Alianor’s stillness as her husband is killed, Alicia’s plans to withstand the economic impact of the Black Death and the cure of Ralph’s plague symptoms) to register the satirical and allegorical substance of Warner’s rescripting of Woolfian notions of resistance to warmongering misogyny by a society of outsiders. </p><p id="d4107983e85">The readings seek to consolidate a varied and multiple sense of the book as a Marxist historical novel that gives voice to the ruled. In doing so Warner analyses the Black Death as a moment in history that saw the emergence of early modern capitalism and labour relations out of the feudal system, even as the religious framework that had structured medieval Europe gave way to more secular beliefs in autonomy, self-determination, citizen and collective dreams, projects and affects. At the same time the plague as a political trope, rooted in anti-fascist rhetoric that turns Nazi anti-Semitic uses of the Black Death motif on their head, triggers readings that bring those historical scenes into allegorical relation with the ways in which the Second World War was experienced by marginalised female communities. </p>https://uclpress.scienceopen.com/hosted-document?doi=10.14324/111.444.stw.2021.3 |
| spellingShingle | Adam Piette ‘All across Europe it had come’: The Black Death and Fascism in Sylvia Townsend Warner’s <i>The Corner That Held Them</i> The Journal of the Sylvia Townsend Warner Society |
| title | ‘All across Europe it had come’: The Black Death and Fascism in Sylvia Townsend Warner’s <i>The Corner That Held Them</i> |
| title_full | ‘All across Europe it had come’: The Black Death and Fascism in Sylvia Townsend Warner’s <i>The Corner That Held Them</i> |
| title_fullStr | ‘All across Europe it had come’: The Black Death and Fascism in Sylvia Townsend Warner’s <i>The Corner That Held Them</i> |
| title_full_unstemmed | ‘All across Europe it had come’: The Black Death and Fascism in Sylvia Townsend Warner’s <i>The Corner That Held Them</i> |
| title_short | ‘All across Europe it had come’: The Black Death and Fascism in Sylvia Townsend Warner’s <i>The Corner That Held Them</i> |
| title_sort | all across europe it had come the black death and fascism in sylvia townsend warner s i the corner that held them i |
| url | https://uclpress.scienceopen.com/hosted-document?doi=10.14324/111.444.stw.2021.3 |
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