Look into the Closet: Curiosity and Exploration in Sarah Perry’s Enlightenment with Diganta Roy

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In his discussion on the philosophy of horror, Noel Carroll argues that the pleasure derived from horror fiction is primarily cognitive, based on the whetting of one’s curiosity. The discovery, proof and confirmation of the horrific object, and the curiosity to understand the unknowable forms the central driving force, according to Carroll. This talk will focus on the centrality of the idea of curiosity in the process of writing ‘ghostly’ fiction in the light of Sarah Perry’s novel Enlightenment. On the one hand, Perry’s novel deals with the character of Thomas Hart and his exploration of his own homosexuality, especially through his relationship with James. On the other hand, the novel also focuses on the cosmic and the spiritual dimensions, following Hart’s obsession with the Hale-Bopp comet, and the mysterious disappearance of a Romanian astronomer Maria Văduva who has turned into a ghost. This talk will study how Perry uses the idea of curiosity at a philosophical, temporal and narrative level to construct a ghostly tale that combines the microcosmic desires and emotional turbulence of human beings with the macrocosmic phenomenon of the appearance of the comet. Although the philosophy of curiosity is based on the existence of an epistemological paradigm wherein there is a division between the knower and the object of knowledge, Perry’s novel gradually erases this division. This talk will discuss how Hart’s exploration of the documents left behind by Maria Văduva, and her presence as a ghost in the narrative, establishes curiosity as a quintessential element of writing ghostly fiction.