The Weight of Water: Some Implications of Textual Fluidity for the Study of Comparative Literature

This article looks at the role that water and fluidity can play within the field of comparative literature. Using the example of two recent novels, it explores the idea that water imagery in a narrative can act as a signal towards a wider sense of fluidity within the form of the text. The article looks specifically at three properties of water which can also be traced within literature: its perpetual motion, its shapelessness, and its connective potential. Through an exploration of these properties, this article aims to demonstrate how a fluid reading can help us to find new points of comparison which work at both an intertextual and an intratextual level.