Waterscapes, fairies and Philip Pullman

This paper assesses the waterscapes of Philip Pullman as affective literary tourism environments. Many of the key landmarks where action occurs in Pullman’s novels, from Abbeys to pubs to Gyptian barges, are set on or beside rivers whose fluidity mirrors the movement between his parallel, otherworldly and actual worlds. Water is considered as a highly significant force in the writing of Pullman, who describes how the vapours river in Oxford rises into the atmosphere, leaving the material city magically altered. Weather can behave as a dominant, malevolent character, and Pullman’s novel La Belle Sauvage is set around the scenario of a great flood in Oxford and the southeast. As the lands between Oxford and London and further afield are reclaimed by water in La Belle Sauvage, an age-old version of the world, Albion, emerges, restoring original genii locorum in the form of fairies and river gods. Waterscapes have been traditionally connected to mythical locations and those infused with associations with fairies and this work reinforces this notion.