Shell shock and the modernist imagination : the death drive in post-World War I British fiction / Wyatt Bonikowski.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Bonikowski, Wyatt., author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Ford, Ford Madox, 1873-1939. Parade's end.

Ford, Ford Madox.

West, Rebecca, 1892-1983. Return of the soldier.

West, Rebecca.

Woolf, Virginia, 1882-1941. Mrs. Dalloway.

Woolf, Virginia.

English fiction--20th century--History and criticism.

English fiction.

World War, 1914-1918--Literature and the war.

World War, 1914-1918.

Psychic trauma in literature.

Physical Description:

viii, 192 p.

Edition:

1st ed.

Other Title:

Death drive in post-World War I British fiction

Place of Publication:

London ; New York : Routledge, 2016.

Summary:

Looking closely at both case histories of shell shock and Modernist novels by Ford Madox Ford, Rebecca West, and Virginia Woolf, Wyatt Bonikowski shows how the figure of the shell-shocked soldier and the symptoms of war trauma were transformed by the literary imagination. Situating his study with respect to Freud's concept of the death drive, Bonikowski reads the repetitive symptoms of shell-shocked soldiers as a resistance to representation and narrative. In making this resistance part of their narratives, Ford, West, and Woolf broaden our understanding of the traumatic effects of war, exploring the possibility of a connection between the trauma of war and the trauma of sexuality. Parade's End, The Return of the Soldier, and Mrs. Dalloway are all structured around the relationship between the soldier who returns from war and the women who receive him, but these novels offer no prospect for the healing effects of the union between men and women. Instead, the novels underscore the divisions within the home and the self, drawing on the traumatic effects of shell shock to explore the link between the public events of history and the intimate traumas of the relations between self and other.

Contents:

Introduction: shell shock and the traces of war

The invisible wound: shell shock and psychoanalysis

Transports of a wartime impressionism: Ford Madox Ford's Parade's end

The "passion of exile": Rebecca West's The return of the soldier

"Death was an attempt to communicate": Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway

Conclusions: the ethics and aesthetics of the death drive.

Notes:

First published 2013 by Ashgate Publishing.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

1-4724-0288-X

1-4094-4418-X

1-317-05556-X

1-315-60892-8

1-317-05557-8

9781315608921

OCLC:

1018160174