Arnold Bennett

Virginia Woolf’s accusation that ‘Life escapes’ from the aesthetic horizons of Bennett’s fiction has long haunted his critical reception. Chapter 3 therefore turns to the function of description within realism, arguing that Bennett does not conceptually prioritize either the particulars, as Woolf argued, or the aggregated scene, as in Barthes’s ‘reality effect’, where the specificities of detail are secondary to its ideological function. The solid superficies for which Bennett has become infamous never constitute individual atoms of meaning, for he insists on both the particularity of a given scene and its transient coherence as a totality. This stereoptic effect mobilizes a searching scepticism as to reality’s appearances, which makes Bennett aim at what is at once both a more abstract and a more concrete notion of truth, one whose material manifestations carry with it the mark of its relation to a whole range of universal truths of which it is part. In this, Bennett acknowledges a debt to the ‘synthetic philosophy’ of Herbert Spencer. By examining more closely the influence of Spencer’s metaphysics on Bennett’s realist aesthetics, and focusing on Bennett’s novels together with his numerous critical writings, this chapter gives long-overdue attention to an often neglected figure in modern British literature.

Distributed Cognition, Porous Qualia and Modernist Narrative

This chapter’s purpose is two-fold: to propose an approach to distributed cognition as qualia and to probe modernist narratives and cultural history for insights about such qualia’s effects. Following Daniel Dennett’s distinction between scientific ontology, dependent on empirically verifiable (or falsifiable) truth, and ‘manifest ontology,’ or the truth of what someone is experiencing, the chapter takes fictional narratives as the manifest truth of ‘porous qualia,’ or what it is like to feel we extend beyond our skin. Drawing on Arnold Bennett, James Joyce, and Virginia Woolf, the chapter defines three modes of porous qualia termed projecting, responding, and circulating, ranging from the most minimal forms to the most penetrating and innovative. Against the background of aggressively unified nationalisms, these modes culminate in Woof’s use of rhythmic repetitive touch to adumbrate a new communal modelling that combines feelings of connectiveness with respect for difference in individual lives.

Modernite ve Mekân İlişkisinin Virginia Woolf ve Arnold Bennett Üzerinden Okunuşu

Mekânı mutlak görüp sadece fiziksel boyutuyla tartışmanın yetersizliğine dair kanı, mekânın toplumsal ilişkileri biçimlendirmede etken olduğu görüşünün kuvvetlenmesiyle ivme kazanmıştır. Bu dönüşüm mekânın bireysel ve sosyal ilişkiler barındırdığı, değişik anlamlar üstlendiği fikirlerini de gündeme getirmiştir. Mekânın çok bileşenli bir kavram olduğunun fark edilmesini tetikleyen unsur ise modernite sürecidir. Bu çalışmada geç modernite döneminde yazarak modernitenin kimlikleşme ve fiziki mekân üzerindeki hâkimiyetini yansıtan Virginia Woolf ve Arnold Bennett’in eserleri modernite ve mekân ilintisi bağlamında tartışılacaktır.

Smith, Pauline (1882–1959)

Pauline Smith was born in Oudtshoorn, in the Little Karoo, South Africa. Her beloved father, who was the first resident physician of the area, died when she was 16, after she had been sent to boarding school in Scotland. Memories of the landscape and people of the Little Karoo remained with her throughout her life, though she spent most of it from 1895 onward in Britain and Europe. She developed a close friendship with Arnold Bennett, who helped her establish herself as a writer, giving her guidance and encouragement, being infallible in his perception of her strong points as a writer.

Bennett, Arnold (1867–1931)

A prolific and popular author, English writer Arnold Bennett was one of the most important Realist/Naturalist writers of the early twentieth century. Strongly influenced by George Moore, Bennett made valuable contributions to this literary tradition, achieving distinction alongside contemporaries H. G. Wells and John Galsworthy. Enoch Arnold Bennett was born in Burslem, Staffordshire in 1867. Bennett showed promise as a student, but at sixteen left school to work in his father’s law office and then later as a clerk in a London law office. In 1893, Bennett left his job to become assistant editor of the journal Woman, later becoming editor-in-chief. He had been writing occasional pieces for the Staffordshire Sentinel for several years before he published his first story, ‘A Letter Home’ (1895), in The Yellow Book. His first novel, A Man from the North, appeared in 1898. Modelled after the fiction of George Moore, it tells the story of a man from the Potteries district of Bennett’s youth who tries to acclimatize to a life as a clerk in London. Emboldened by his initial literary success, in 1900 Bennett gave up his position with Woman to become a full-time writer.