‘Introduction’ to Kingdoms of Elfin (Handheld Press, 2018)

Abstract

Originally conceived of as an introduction to a new edition of Sylvia Townsend Warner’s Kingdoms of Elfin (Handheld Press, 2018), this article provides an overview of the place of Kingdoms of Elfin (1977) in Sylvia Townsend Warner’s oeuvre and life, placing it in the final phases of her life as an astonishing new departure. In Kingdoms, Warner experiments with the excision of affect from the narrative process, producing stories which construct the narrative voice uncompromisingly as a voice of observation rather than identification. The playing field on which this is carried through is nothing less than a whole new fictional universe in the form of meticulously worked-out ‘Elfin’ worlds. The narratives’ observational stance unfolds itself as a disinterested ethnography of the strangeness of behaviours both human and non-human, radically decentring human perceptions and moral convictions in the process.