Modernism, Male Friendship, and the First World War

by Sarah Cole

Overview

The terrain of masculine fellowship provides an important context for understanding key literary features of the modernist period. Sarah Cole's examination of the literary and cultural history of twentieth century masculine intimacy considers such crucial themes as 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 voice within the literary canon.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780521819237
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	08/28/2003
Pages:	308
Product dimensions:	6.30(w) x 9.29(h) x 0.83(d)

About the Author

Sarah Cole is Assistant Professor in the Department of English and Comparative Literature at the Columbia University. Her articles have appeared in Modern Fiction Studies and ELH.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements; Introduction: 1. Argument: the organization of intimacy; 2. Definitions and choices: modernism, modernity, literary authority; 3. Structure: four sites of masculine bonding; Part I. Victorian Dreams, Modern Realities: Forster's Classical Imagination: 4. Hellenism and the beautiful body: Carpenter, Pater, Symonds; 5. The fall of Hellenism: Forster's modern disaffection; 6. A Passage to India and the failure of institutions; Part II. Conradian Alienation and Imperial Intimacy: 7. Friendship's dramatic demise: Heart of Darkness and Under Western Eyes; 8. From system to solipsism: Lord Jim; 9. Homoerotic heroics, domestic discipline: Conrad and Ford's Romance; Part III. 'My Killed Friends are with me where I go': Friendship and Comradeship at War: 10. War discourse: friendship and comradeship; 11. The major war poets: intimacy, authority, alienation; 12. Post-war articulations: lost friends and the lost generation; Part IV. 'The Violence of the Nightmare': D. H. Lawrence and the Aftermath of War: 13. Bodies of men: the landscape of post-war England, 14. Desire and devastation: male bonds in D. H. Lawrence; Notes; Index.

Editorial Reviews

"...Cole is to be strongly commended for producing a study that pushes the agenda of First World War scholarship forward...and presents theoretically sophisticated literary criticism in a highly accessible and wholly engaging manner." Albion, Paul R. Deslandes

From the Publisher