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Communication Dans Un Congrès Année : 2023

Transmitting the War Experience: Pronouns as a Vector for Aesthetic Change in Ford Madox Ford’s War Prose

Résumé

The First World War has traditionally been described as a catalyst for modernism, consecrating avant-garde aesthetics. Its role in precipitating the transition towards modernism may appear even more relevant when it comes to the actual transmission of the war experience. The process of transcribing the war, i.e. of translating such an unprecedented physical, sensorial and psychological experience into words, seems to call for the need to go beyond traditional modes of representation. Yet such notions have not been typically approached in close textual and stylistic detail. This talk centres on Ford Madox Ford, an author who was already part of the avant-garde in pre-war literary London, and aims at examining at close range the effect of his experience of active service onto his writing and more particularly his practice of literary impressionism which he was already developing before August 1914. This essay adopts a stylistic approach to delineate the various pragmatic effects inherent in the use and interactions of pronouns in Ford’s war prose. Ford’s singular use of pronouns is shown to be equally instrumental in his transmission of the war experience and in refining his practice of literary impressionism. In particular, the omnipresent second person is granted a variety of referents that coexist along a 'continuum of reference' (Kluge 2016), from a 'you' that is speaker-oriented to one that is addressee-oriented. Sorlin’s intersection of Kluge’s continuum with a gradient from personalisation to generalisation (2022) is illuminating when delineating the manifold significance of Ford’s use of the second person, as it brings to light the intersection of aesthetic choices and ethical intent. The gradient established by Sorlin to account for the pragmatic effect of 'you' also proves surprisingly useful when applied to the pronoun “one”. Scrutinising the interplay between these various pronouns allows us to investigate in close detail an aspect in which Ford updated and refined his practice of literary impressionism, which was made all the more relevant by his ethical urge to share his war experience.
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hal-04303252 , version 1 (23-11-2023)

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  • HAL Id : hal-04303252 , version 1

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Isabelle Brasme. Transmitting the War Experience: Pronouns as a Vector for Aesthetic Change in Ford Madox Ford’s War Prose. Congrès de la SAES : Transmissions, Université Rennes 2, Jun 2023, Rennes, France. ⟨hal-04303252⟩
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