Writers at War: Exploring the Prose of Ford Madox Ford, May Sinclair, Siegfried Sassoon and Mary Borden

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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. 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