Modernism, Male Friendship, and the First World WarSarah Cole examines the rich literary and cultural history of masculine intimacy in the twentieth century. Cole approaches this complex and neglected topic from many perspectives - as a reflection of the exceptional social power wielded by the institutions that housed and structured male bonds; as a matter of closeted and thwarted homoerotics; as part of the story of the First World War. Cole shows that the terrain of masculine fellowship provides an important context for understanding key literary features of the modernist period. She foregrounds such crucial themes as the over-determined relations between imperial wanderers in Conrad's tales, the broken friendships that permeate Forster's fictions, Lawrence's desperate urge to make culture out of blood brotherhood and the intense bereavement of the war poet. Cole argues that these dramas of compelling and often tortured male friendship have helped to define a particular spirit and voice within the literary canon. |
From inside the book
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Page 2
... narrative desire seemed increasingly tenuous. Writers in this period emphasized both the value and the fragility of male ties, developing images of men and masculinity that were at once haunting, beautiful, troubling, desperate, and ...
... narrative desire seemed increasingly tenuous. Writers in this period emphasized both the value and the fragility of male ties, developing images of men and masculinity that were at once haunting, beautiful, troubling, desperate, and ...
Page 3
... narratives surrounding the First World War. It is remarkable how closely Cherry borrows the terms of friendship from the discourse of war, attempting to associate his state of agonized memory with the losses surrounding combat, at times ...
... narratives surrounding the First World War. It is remarkable how closely Cherry borrows the terms of friendship from the discourse of war, attempting to associate his state of agonized memory with the losses surrounding combat, at times ...
Page 5
... narratives that plot the slow decline of the richly optimistic friendships that populated late-Victorian imaginings. In many of the texts and discourses I shall discuss, the pseudocouple will stand as a kind of threat – more desirable ...
... narratives that plot the slow decline of the richly optimistic friendships that populated late-Victorian imaginings. In many of the texts and discourses I shall discuss, the pseudocouple will stand as a kind of threat – more desirable ...
Page 7
... narrative of modernization is ex- emplified by the war: “World War I virtually completed the Industrial Revolution's construction of anonymous, dehumanized man, that impotent cipher who is frequently thought to be the twentieth ...
... narrative of modernization is ex- emplified by the war: “World War I virtually completed the Industrial Revolution's construction of anonymous, dehumanized man, that impotent cipher who is frequently thought to be the twentieth ...
Page 9
... narrative.14 Several models for thinking about male intimacy and the sexual body have received extensive theoretical treatment. The first involves the movements in late nineteenth-century Britain of simultaneous awakening and ...
... narrative.14 Several models for thinking about male intimacy and the sexual body have received extensive theoretical treatment. The first involves the movements in late nineteenth-century Britain of simultaneous awakening and ...
Contents
1 | |
21 | |
CHAPTER 2 Conradian alienation and imperial intimacy | 92 |
friendship and comradeship at war | 138 |
DHLawrence and the aftermath of war | 185 |
Notes | 252 |
Index | 292 |
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Common terms and phrases
Aaron’s aesthetic aestheticized alienation Birkin British Cambridge Carpenter’s century characterized civilian combat comradeship Conrad conventional create critics cultural D. H. Lawrence desire discussion E. M. Forster England English erotic figure former soldiers Forster gender Greek Heart ofDarkness Hellenism homoerotic homosexual idea ideal imagined imperial individual institutions John Addington Symonds Kemp Kemp’s kind language Lawrence’s literary literature London Longest Journey male body male bonds male community male fellowship male friendship male intimacy male love male relations man’s Marlow masculine Maurice Maurice’s men’s modern modernist narrative novel ofthe organization Owen’s Oxford Passage to India Pater perhaps physical poem poet political post-war public schools racial represents returned rituals romance Sassoon seems sense Septimus sexual Shere Ali social spirit story structure suggests Symonds T. S. Eliot text’s tradition University Press Victorian voice war’s Wheels of Darkness women Women in Love Woolf writers York