Writers at War addresses the most immediate representations of the First World War in the prose of Ford Madox Ford, May Sinclair, Siegfried Sassoon and Mary Borden; it interrogates the various ways in which these writers contended with conveying their war experience from the temporal and spatial proximity of the warzone and investigates the multifarious impact of the war on the (re)development of their aesthetics. It also interrogates to what extent these texts aligned with or challenged existing social, cultural, philosophical and aesthetic norms.
While this book is concerned with literary technique, the rich existing scholarship on questions of gender, trauma and cultural studies on World War I literature serves as a foundation. This book does not oppose these perspectives but offers a complementary approach based on close critical reading. The distinctiveness of this study stems from its focus on the question of representation and form and on the specific role of the war in the four authors’ literary careers. This is the first scholarly work concerned exclusively with theorising prose written from the immediacy of the war.
This book is intended for academics, researchers, PhD candidates, postgraduates and anyone interested in war literature.
Author(s): Isabelle Brasme
Series: Among the Victorians and Modernists
Publisher: Routledge
Year: 2023
Language: English
Pages: 188
City: New York
Cover
Half Title
Series Page
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Table of Contents
List of Figures
Acknowledgements
Introduction
A Note
About Primary References
Notes
Bibliography
Primary Sources
Secondary Sources
Chapter 1: Ford Madox Ford’s Unrelatable Narrative of War
Introduction
The Elusive ‘Muse of War’
Ford’s Scopic Predicament: From Far-Sightedness to Near-Sightedness
A Narratorial Impasse
The Impediment of Overwork
Trauma as a Hindrance to Impressionist Writing
‘What Is the Good of Writing About Literature’ During the War?
Writing as Ethical Imperative
The Mission to ‘Express Emotion’
Ethical Numbness
Towards an Ethics of Singularity
From Ethical Injunction to Aesthetic Reinvention
An Anamorphic Mode of Representation
Developing Auditory Impressionism
Impressionist Resilience and Reinvention in ‘Pon… ti… pri… ith’
Conclusion: Towards Parade’s End
Notes
Bibliography
Primary Sources
Secondary Sources
Chapter 2: ‘The Fantastic Dislocation of War’: May Sinclair’s Aporetic War Chronicle
Introduction
A War Journal?
Generic Instability
A Pervasive Negativity
Textual Sabotage
‘The High Comedy of Disaster’: Sinclair’s Carnivalesque Narrative
An Oxymoronic Account
Laughter at War
A Dialogic Dynamic
Sinclair’s Incongruous Geography of the War
Sinclair’s Liminal Stance
From Representational Crisis to an Alternative Mimesis
Towards ‘Naked, Shining, Intense Reality’?
The Fruitful Mediacy of Writing
A Poetics of Reticence
Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
Primary Sources
Secondary Sources
Chapter 3: Writing Oneself at War: Siegfried Sassoon’s War Diaries
Introduction
The Generic Fluidity of Sassoon’s War Diaries
The Diary as ‘Antifiction’
The Diary as Writing Workshop
Pastoral Prose
Impersonality in the Face of Extreme Danger
Sassoon’s Account of the First Day of the Battle of the Somme
The Teleological Perspective of Sassoon’s Diaries
Writing a Myth of Oneself 20
An Instance of Intensely Layered Writing: Recounting the Attack on Fontaine-lès-Croisilles (11–17 April 1917)
Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
Primary Sources
Secondary Sources
Chapter 4: From the ‘Bleeding Edge’ of War: The Singular Voice of Mary Borden
Introduction
Writing in Defiance of the Conventional Nurse Figure
The Invisibilisation of the Nursing Gaze
The Silenced Voices of War Nurses
Writing as an Assertion of the Nurse’s Scopic Power
Demystifying the Idealised Nurse Figure
A Liminal Geography of Care
An Ironical Cartography
A Derisive Intertextual Geography
Deconstructed Spaces
Interstitial Spaces
Writing Alienation
An Experience of Estrangement
Nursing from the Edge of Oneself
From Abject to Reject
Conclusion: Modernism and Mimesis
Notes
Bibliography
Primary Sources
Secondary Sources
Epilogue
Index
