Preface

Abstract

Preface Rebecca L. Harrison (bio) The Eye That Is Language: A Transatlantic View of Eudora Welty by Danièle Pitavy-Souques. Ed. Pearl A. McHaney. Jackson: UP of Mississippi, 2022. 188 pp. $99.00 hardcover, $30.00 paperback. Preface Danièle Pitavy-Souques (1937–2019) requires no introduction in the world of Welty studies. The author of two monographs and numerous essays on Welty, recipient of the Eudora Welty Society's Phoenix Award, and a scholar responsible for organizing countless conferences on this acclaimed author, Pitavy-Souques was herself a visionary who recognized Welty's import and championed Welty's recognition in France. Yet, Pitavy-Souques was more than just the French specialist on Welty's canon. She was Eudora's friend, someone who, as editor Pearl McHaney points out, described her personal journey with Welty's opus as "'the passion' of her life, 'something of the heart, and something of the soul after being first something of the mind'" (vii). The Eye That Is Language: A Transatlantic View of Eudora Welty showcases this more than thirty-year journey and the way Pitavy-Souques changed the trajectory of Welty studies by critically locating this Mississippi author's imaginative axis in the context of global twentieth-century intellectual and artistic developments, thus positioning Welty as a powerful modernist writer outside of the South. It seems only fitting, then, that in reviewing a book centering global insights on Welty's daring vision that the scholars collected in this roundtable themselves represent different geographical and generational perspectives on Pitavy-Souques's collection of work. Jacques Pothier [End Page 161] (France), Stephen M. Fuller (U.S.), and Laura Wilson (U.K.) may differ in their approaches to The Eye That Is Language, but they all underscore one common thread: that Pitavy-Souques's theoretical prowess, on some level, resembles Welty's own. Pothier's sweeping review traces the way she "trains her eye" as a "disciplined" close reader across Welty's canon in the pieces represented in the collection. Thus, for Pothier, The Eye That Is Language "teaches the readers to train [their eyes] on the details of Welty's stories that she identifies as keystones to her modernist constructions," convincing yet a new audience of the artist's global significance. Fuller's review hones in on Pitavy-Souques's keen theoretical knowledge and penchant "for the formalism of narratology" in Welty that often "resists the claim to truth implicit in mimetic narrative strategies." As Fuller details, Pitavy-Souques's work teases out Welty's "uncommon power to challenge and outrage" as one that "flows from her late modernist reinvention of tropes identified with" a powerhouse of influential artists, writers, and philosophers. Finally, Wilson's review harnesses the term "perspective" to reveal what Wilson sees as the collection's most prevalent thread—a focus on "what we might call the language that is eyes: that is to say, moments where Pitavy-Souques shows us how Welty viewed, illustrating the multiple perspectives that she wrote both from and about." Wilson both documents the amount of references to sight in the collection as well as its theoretical import for this critic, one she locates as a "mirror symbol" itself that "offers readers another chance to interrogate Welty's fictional technique, questioning the accuracy of reflected images produced by layers of metal and glass, a surface that only ever provides a virtual image since light rays never actually cross over in a reflection." In toto, this roundtable, much like Pitavy-Souques's work, points to the sophisticated operative modes at play in Welty's canon and the necessity of employing cross-cultural lenses that see language as the chief concern in Welty's world. Pitavy-Souques once said that Welty was "both ahead of her time and in deep 'resonance' with it" (xii). The Eye That Is Language mirrors this sentiment in its revelation of Pitavy-Souques's deep resonance with Welty that was, indeed, ahead of its time. [End Page 162] [End Page 163] Rebecca L. Harrison University of West Georgia Rebecca L. Harrison REBECCA L. HARRISON is Professor of English at the University of West Georgia where she teaches courses in southern women writers, American...