The Visor Effect in Literary Geography

Reformation London in Zadie Smith and John Stow

Authors

  • Tom Muir OsloMet - Oslo Metropolitan University

Keywords:

John Stow, Zadie Smith, NW, interspatiality, Derrida, visor effect

Abstract

This paper asks what conversation might be taking place between two seemingly very different texts, John Stow’s Survey of London (geographical, early modern) and Zadie Smith’s NW (a novel, early twenty first century). The starting point is that NW, like Stow’s Survey, is chorographical, organized by its characters’ passage through and across London; but the conversation between the two texts becomes more striking through their hallucinatory, spectral relationships to time. Both texts conjure images of London in which the present becomes thin, permeable by other periods. By combining the literary geographical term “interspatiality” (Hones 2022) with Derrida’s concept of the visor effect, we can begin to see the ways in which Stow is behind Smith’s text, troubling and interrogating the “timelessness” that NW creates. In this way, we can begin a second conversation between concepts: using this conversation between Smith and Stow to exemplify the way the visor effect can be combined with interspatiality, and, therefore, with other concepts from literary geography.

References

Archer, I. (1995) ‘The Nostalgia of John Stow.’ in Smith, D.L., Strier, R. and Bevington, D. (eds) The Theatrical City: Culture, Theatre and Politics in London 1576-1649. pp. 17-34.Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 17-34.

Collinson, P. (2001) ‘John Stow and Nostalgic Antiquarianism.’ In Merritt, J.F (ed.), Imagining Early Modern London: Perceptions and Portrayals of the City from Stow to Strype 1598-1720. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 27-51.

Derrida, J. (1994) Spectres of Marx: The State of the Debt, the Work of Mourning, and the New International. Trans. Kamuf, P. London: Routledge.

Derrida, J. (1998) Archive Fever: A Freudian Impression. Trans. Prenowitz, E. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Hones, S. (2022). “Interspatiality.” Literary Geographies 8 (1), pp. 15-18.

Johnson, B. (2014) ‘Apostrophe, Animation and Abortion’ in The Barbara Johnson Reader: The Surprise of Otherness. Duke University Press, pp. 217-234.

Manley, L. (1995) 'Of Sites and Rites' In Smith, D.L., Strier, R. and Bevington, D. (eds) The Theatrical City: Culture, Theatre and Politics in London 1576-1649. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 35-54. Smith, Z. (2013) NW. London: Penguin.Smith, Z. (2013) NW. London: Penguin.

Stow, J. (1908) A Survey of London ed. Kingsford, C.L. 2 vols. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

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Published

2024-10-30

Issue

Section

Thinking Space