Susanna Clarke’s Cautionary Tale of Re-enchantment

Abstract This article offers a reading of Susannah Clarke’s 2020 award-winning novel Piranesi in relation to theories of enchantment. Clarke’s novel has often been read as an affirmation of re-enchantment, but this article will show that Piranesi acts more as a cautionary tale, pointing out the inherent tensions in projects of re-enchantment which often reinforce rather than dissolve the boundaries between inner and outer world which characterize disenchantment. Clarke’s critique of re-enchantment is largely indebted to Owen Barfield’s distinctive and complex account of modernity through his notion of the evolution of consciousness and his affirmation of anthroposophy, which has often been overlooked in contemporary scholarship of enchantment. Thus, this article both brings to light Barfield’s influence on Clarke, but also highlights how Clarke and Barfield might be drawn upon as resources for diagnosing and describing the phenomenon of disenchantment, and even perhaps constructing alternative modernities.