The controversial British writer Ford Madox Ford is increasingly recognized as a major presence in early twentieth-century literature. He is best-known for his fiction, especially The Good Soldier, long considered a modernist masterpiece; and Parade's End, which was adapted by Tom Stoppard for the acclaimed 2012 television series, starring Benedict Cumberbatch.
This volume marks the centenary of The Good Soldier, with eighteen essays by established experts and new scholars. It includes groundbreaking work on the novel's narrative technique, chronology, and genre; plus pioneering work considering the treatment of bodies and minds; eugenics; poison; and surveillance. Innovative comparative studies discuss Ford's novel in relation to Henry James, Violet Hunt, H. G. Wells, Franz Kafka, Jean Rhys, David Jones, and Lawrence Durrell.
CONTENTS
Introduction
MAX SAUNDERS
SECTION 1: NARRATIVE, CHRONOLOGY, GENRE
The Good Soldier: Ford's Postmodern Novel
CATHERINE BELSEY
July 4 to August 4:
Paradigmatic and Palimpsestic Plots in The Good Soldier
MELBA CUDDY-KEANE
The Good Soldier and the Problem
of Compositional (Un)Reliability
EYAL SEGAL
From Disfigured to Transfigured Past:
Memory and History in The Good Soldier
ISABELLE BRASME
'It is Melodrama; but I Can't Help It':
Dowell's Melodramatic Imagination
ROB HAWKES
Screening The Good Soldier
JANET HARRIS
SECTION 2: MIND/BODY, CARE, TREATMENT
Dowell and Dopamine: Information, Pleasure and Plot
SARA HASLAM
The Case of The Good Soldier
MAX SAUNDERS
Affairs of the Heart:
Illness and Gender Subversion in The Good Soldier
ELIZABETH BRUNTON
Caring to Know: Narrative Technique
and the Art of Public Nursing in The Good Soldier
BARRY SHEILS
'Rabbiting On': Fertility, Reformers and The Good Soldier
PAUL SKINNER
The Good Soldier: A Tale of Poison. Lethal Little Bottles
in the Work of Ford Madox Ford and Violet Hunt
VENETIA ABDALLA
SECTION 3: CONTEXTS AND CONTRASTS
'Early Kipling Told by Henry James':
A Reading of The Good Soldier
HARRY RICKETTS
Anglo-German Dilemmas in The Good Soldier,
or: Europe on the Brink in 1913
JULIAN PREECE
'The End is Where We Start from': Spatial Aspects
of Retrospection in The Good Soldier and In Parenthesis
CARA CHIMIRRI
Good People and Chorus Girls: The Notion of Respectability
in The Good Soldier and Quartet
NAGIHAN HALILOGLU
Love's Knowledge: Realisation Beyond Defence:
Durrell's Alexandria Quartet After, and Beyond,
Ford's The Good Soldier
OMAR SABBAGH
'Don't You See?':
Surveillance and Utopian Tranquillity in The Good Soldier
PETER MARKS
Contributors
