1st Edition
Writers at War Exploring the Prose of Ford Madox Ford, May Sinclair, Siegfried Sassoon and Mary Borden
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.
Introduction
1 Ford Madox Ford’s Unrelatable Narrative of War
Introduction
The elusive ‘Muse of War’
Writing as ethical imperative
From ethical injunction to aesthetic reinvention
Conclusion: towards Parade’s End
2 ‘The Fantastic Dislocation of War’: May Sinclair’s Aporetic War Chronicle
Introduction
A war journal?
‘The high comedy of disaster’: Sinclair’s carnivalesque narrative
From representational crisis to an alternative mimesis
Conclusion
3 Writing Oneself at War: Siegfried Sassoon’s War Diaries
Introduction
The generic fluidity of Sassoon’s war diaries
Writing a myth of oneself
An instance of intensely layered writing: recounting the attack on Fontaine-lès-Croisilles
Conclusion
4 From the ‘Bleeding Edge’ of War: The Singular Voice of Mary Borden
Introduction
Writing in defiance of the conventional nurse figure
A liminal geography of care
Writing alienation
Conclusion: modernism and mimesis
Conclusion
Biography
Isabelle Brasme is Senior Lecturer in British Literature at the Université de Nîmes, France, and Researcher at Université Paul-Valéry Montpellier 3, France. She has published books on Ford Madox Ford, a collaborative volume on war writing and essays on Ford Madox Ford, May Sinclair, modernism and war writing. She is the Review Editor for the Cahiers Victoriens et Édouardiens.
