Parade's End de Ford Madox Ford ou le patrimoine en déroute

National audienc

May Sinclair’s Literary Criticism: A Commitment to Modernity

Although May Sinclair’s work has tended to be relegated to the periphery of modernism, Sinclair entertained close relationships with many major modernist figures such as Ford Madox Ford, Ezra Pound, and Rebecca West. A prolific novelist, Sinclair also wrote extensively on ways in which literature could participate in the modern movement, from the Brontë sisters to the Imagist poets, and is perhaps best known for first applying William James’s metaphor of the “stream of consciousness” to literary technique in her analysis of Dorothy Richardson’s first three instalments of Pilgrimage. Additionally, Sinclair’s intensely personal and dynamic critical style is itself a mindful exercise in a more innovative approach to criticism that proves akin to the modernist works that she tackles. Lastly, Sinclair’s criticism of her fellow modernist writers gives us a better insight into the innovation present in Sinclair’s own literary works, and into her career’s trajectory as it moved away from traditional realism to psychological realism. Examining Sinclair’s critical work thus allows us to establish the specificity of her perspective on modernist practices of writing and to re-examine the canons of modernism against the grain of what came to be the accepted definition of avant-garde writing

Leslie de Bont, Le Modernisme singulier de May Sinclair

Romancière britannique du début du xxe siècle encore souvent méconnue, May Sinclair joua pourtant un rôle indéniable dans l’environnement intellectuel et littéraire de son temps, à travers ses romans et nouvelles comme ses écrits philosophiques et critiques. Née en 1863, Sinclair fit partie de la génération des « anciens » modernistes, qui négocièrent la transition entre l’époque victorienne et l’époque édouardienne et qui, bien qu’ayant aiguisé leur plume sous l’égide d’auteurs et de penseur..

Towards an Ethics of Singularity: The Shattered Mirror of Identity in Ford Madox Ford's Parade's End

International audienc

Between Impressionism and Modernism: some Do Not . . ., a poetics of the Entre-deux

Conference in conjunction with the University of BirminghamInternational audienc

Max Saunders, Ford Madox Ford: a Dual Life

Ford Madox Ford: A Dual Life is a welcome paperback reprint of Max Saunders’s authoritative monograph, which was initially published in 1996. The history of criticism and reception for Ford Madox Ford’s writing has been far from straightforward from the early twentieth to the early twenty-first century. Ford Hermann Hueffer, then Ford Madox Hueffer, then Ford Madox Ford (1873-1939), was at the centre of intellectual circles in the first three decades of the twentieth century. A prevalent figu..

Ford Madox Ford’s Parade’s End: Ironising Edwardian England

Parade’s End by Ford Madox Ford depicts the decay of a stable English national community during the Edwardian era. Ford renders the multifarious response of characters from the Establishment to the ideological changes concurrent with World War One. This article examines the way in which Parade’s End can be considered both as a State of England novel in its own right, and an ironical, detached, albeit nostalgic comment on this very genre. Englishness in Parade’s End is exposed as a construct that becomes synonymous with a parade, and is impossible to approach otherwise than peripherally. The concept’s negativity is deepened by the ironical perspective offered by the narration. Ultimately, the elusiveness of what is the central topic of the four novels has a direct effect on the status of the text itself. Parade’s End is an ungraspable novel because it tackles an ever elusive topic and refuses all attempts to fix its meaning

The Imprint of the War in Ford Madox Ford’s Critical Writings

Ford Madox Ford said of the year 1914 that it “seem[ed] to be cut in half” by the First World War (“Literary Portraits – LXIX”, 15). This phrase, one may argue, also largely applies to Ford’s personal timeline. Both his private life and his literary career were profoundly disrupted by the global conflict. In the early months of the First World War, Ford wrote prolifically about the future of literature and on a broader scope, of civilisation and human psychology; in his “Literary Portraits” that were published in Outlook, he showed remarkable prescience when it came to the consequences that the war would bear on the arts and on what he termed “the mind”. Yet when one examines the chronology of Ford’s non-fictional writing, and indeed of his literary work, one can sense a sharp dividing line that coincides with the moment when Ford enrolled in the British army in 1915, and was no longer a spectator from afar, but a direct witness of the unprecedented mass killing that was taking place on the front. His pre-war assertions gave way to questions; and as was the case with many other writers who took directly part in the hostilities, a decade elapsed before Ford succeeded in rendering his war experience in a novelistic form, through the Parade’s End tetralogy. This paper aims to examine Ford’s critical writing during the First World War, and to analyse the way in which he attempted to come to terms with the representational aporia that was triggered by his first-hand experience of battle. It focuses on Ford’s “Literary Portraits”; the pair of essays “A Day of Battle”, written in the Ypres Salient; “War and the Mind”, composed shortly after Ford’s return from the front; and the dedicatory letters to No More Parades, A Man Could Stand Up—, and Last Post. These allow us to explore how the impressionist technique which Ford started to theorise before the war, came to be renewed and refined in his post-war writing, trying as it does to render the inexpressible experience of the war.Ford Madox Ford estimait que l’année 1914 « semblait être coupée en deux » par la Première Guerre mondiale ; cette expression s’avère également pertinente dans la chronologie personnelle de Ford. Sa vie privée comme sa carrière littéraire furent de fait profondément bouleversées par le conflit mondial. Durant les premiers mois de la guerre, Ford produisit des essais prolifiques sur le futur de la littérature et, à plus large échelle, de la civilisation et de la psychologie humaine. Dans ses « Portraits littéraires » publiés dans la revue Outlook, il anticipa de manière remarquable les conséquences que la guerre aurait sur les arts et sur ce qu’il appelait « l’esprit ». Cependant, il suffit de se pencher sur le détail des essais comme de la production littéraire de Ford dans les années 1910 pour constater une coupure nette qui coïncide avec l’entrée de Ford dans l’armée en 1915, et son changement subséquent de statut : non plus un spectateur et un commentateur lointain, mais un témoin direct de la tuerie de masse qui se déroulait sur le front. Ses affirmations d’avant la guerre laissèrent la place à des questions ; et comme ce fut le cas de nombreux auteurs qui participèrent directement aux hostilités, une décennie s’écoula avant que Ford ne parvînt à transcrire son expérience de la guerre sous une forme romanesque, à travers la tétralogie Parade’s End. Cet article a pour objectif d’examiner les essais critiques de Ford durant la guerre, et d’analyser la façon dont il s’efforça de composer avec l’aporie représentationnelle qui fut provoquée par son expérience directe du combat. Le corpus de cette étude est formé des « Portraits littéraires » susmentionnés ; des deux essais « A Day of Battle », rédigé sur le Saillant d’Ypres, et « War and the Mind », écrit par Ford peu après son retour du front ; ainsi que des lettres dédicatoires en exergue de trois volumes de Parade’s End : No More Parades, A Man Could Stand Up— et Last Post. Ces différents textes permettent d’explorer la façon dont la technique impressionniste que Ford commença à théoriser avant la guerre en vint à être renouvelée et approfondie dans son écriture d’après-guerre, dans sa tentative de rendre l’expérience indicible de la guerre

Looking Back to Look Ahead: Ford Madox Ford's Parade's End as a Modernist Condition of England novel

International audienc