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
Results 1-5 of 67
Page 4
... sexuality , gender , hierarchy , and power . " " The desire to organize male intimacy is not unique to the early twentieth century ; what stands out in this period is , first , that this desire seems to increase and self - perpetuate ...
... sexuality , gender , hierarchy , and power . " " The desire to organize male intimacy is not unique to the early twentieth century ; what stands out in this period is , first , that this desire seems to increase and self - perpetuate ...
Page 6
... sexual identities, or of military service as a rewarding experience of com- radeship. What I have found, by striking ... sexuality will sur- face repeatedly in this study, it by no means dominates my understanding of how and why ...
... sexual identities, or of military service as a rewarding experience of com- radeship. What I have found, by striking ... sexuality will sur- face repeatedly in this study, it by no means dominates my understanding of how and why ...
Page 9
... sexual body have received extensive theoretical treatment. The first involves the move- ments in late nineteenth-century Britain of simultaneous awakening and foreclosure with respect to male desire and homosexual identity. Without ...
... sexual body have received extensive theoretical treatment. The first involves the move- ments in late nineteenth-century Britain of simultaneous awakening and foreclosure with respect to male desire and homosexual identity. Without ...
Page 10
... sexual desire thwarts smooth narratives of friendship, as one might expect; at other times, sexuality remains marginal to the dislocations that unhinge friendship and propel the male subject out into the bleakness of modernity. In ...
... sexual desire thwarts smooth narratives of friendship, as one might expect; at other times, sexuality remains marginal to the dislocations that unhinge friendship and propel the male subject out into the bleakness of modernity. In ...
Page 11
... sexuality in these years seem persistently to read like narratives of pain. Defeat, despair, lost hope – these conditions will continually come to the fore, as will an often bleak picture of the male body. Many works come burdened with ...
... sexuality in these years seem persistently to read like narratives of pain. Defeat, despair, lost hope – these conditions will continually come to the fore, as will an often bleak picture of the male body. Many works come burdened with ...
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 death desire discussion E. M. Forster England English erotic ethos Fiction figure former soldiers Forster gender Greek Heart of Darkness Hellenism homoerotic homosexual idea ideal imagined imperial individual institutions isolation Joseph Conrad Kemp kind language Lawrence’s literary literature London Longest Journey Lord Jim male body male bonds male community male fellowship male friendship male intimacy male love male relations Marlow masculine Maurice men’s modernist modernity narrative novel organization Oxford Passage to India Pater perhaps physical poem poet political post-war problem public schools racial represents returned rituals romance Sassoon seems sense Septimus sexual Shere Ali social spirit story stress structure suggests Symonds T. S. Eliot text’s tradition University Press Victorian voice war’s women Women in Love Woolf writing York