Elizabeth Bowen: "sperimentando la storia" nella narrativa irlandese post-joyciana

The essay aims at investigating Elizabeth Bowen’s peculiar method of experimentation with the form of the novel. A close analysis of the narrative strategies adopted in two of her novels, The Heat of the Day (1948) and A World of Love (1955), highlights the personal and artistic role played by history in Bowen’s work. Bowen’s personal history is a complex one in so far as the author belongs to two countries, Ireland and England and her terrain, as she claims, cannot be demarcated on any existing map, it is unspecific. The real historical scenario of the war experimented by the author, offers Bowen the model for the representation of the precariousness of her literary themes and for the instability of her writing.