Continuous Performance: the Senses, Memory and Film in Dorothy Richardson's Pilgrimage

Abstract

Dorothy Miller Richardson (1873-1957) shows a tendency to break down the boundary between the object and the subject, and the past and the present, turning her life-long work Pilgrimage (1915-1967) into an intricately crafted novel which portrays the interaction between her protagonist Miriam and the objective world that she travels through. The aim of this study is to examine the work's construction by exploring such interaction and collaboration between Miriam's outer perception and inner contemplation. Richardson also wrote a number of essays about film under the running title of "Continuous Performance" for the magazine Close Up (1927-1933). Drawing on Richardson's writing on the collaborative relationship between film viewers and film, this study approaches Pilgrimage by investigating two interconnecting processes: Miriam's sensory interaction with the objective world and her contemplative revisiting of memories. Senses have been used to guide the examination of the interaction between Miriam the subject and the objective world as it is realised in the sounds she listens to, the spaces she touches and the lights illuminating her pilgrimage. Accompanying Miriam's sensory exploration of the objective world is her active contemplation of her memories, to which she gains access through attentive perception. Investigating the interaction between Miriam, the objective world and her past, the thesis reveals that the world that Miriam travels through in Pilgrimage is haptically experienced, fabricated out of Miriam's attentive listening to, touching, remembering and seeing what she finds. By exploring Pilgrimage in both the context of sensory experience and Richardson's broader aesthetic theory, as articulated in her filmic articles, this thesis aims to shed new light on Richardson's literary practice as well as the close connection between her writing and the art of film. Key words: Modernism, Dorothy M. Richardson, the Senses, Continuous Performance, Film, Memory