Several Landscapes: Bowen and the Terrain of North Cork

Abstract

Abstract:The subject of this essay is the Irish writings of the novelist Elizabeth Bowen. This essay discusses the disjunction between Elizabeth Bowen's critical writings on her family history and her fictive representations of the landscape of North Cork. Looking at her 1942 family chronicle, Bowen's Court and her childhood memoir Seven Winters, also published in 1942, the author suggests a gap between her critical perspectives on her position as an Anglo-Irish writer and her fictions on the same theme. The essay concentrates on her imaginings of the hostile landscape around her home in North Cork and the murderous intent of these Irish fields and hills, in particular in her novel, The Last September and her short story, "The Happy Autumn Fields".