“It’s a Pagan Communion, and We Are the Priests”: Plenitude in Michèle Roberts’s Short Fiction

Roberts’s short stories have not received extensive scholarly attention, yet they make up a substantial part of her oeuvre. Her output is configured in particular and coherent way, one that overlaps with novels, but consistent itself. This configuration summed by the term plenitude. Abundance noted in: genre mood—in shifts mixture comic dark; characters settings—the range female figures presented fiction, time place settings; character morphology—the recurrence motifs emotional excess, longing, desire, passion, shaping (gender shifting also relevant here); language—the excess on level language, list, metaphoricity self-referentiality, interpenetration variety discourses. In Roberts conflates spiritual sensual, meals wild gardens, dark light. The plenitude created world its language are entries to redemptive or consolatory experiences.