Abstract
In the last novel of the Parade’s End-series, Last Post (1928), Ford Madox Ford depicts the aftermath of the First World War, and the cataclysmic social, cultural, and material changes it caused, from the perspective of the Tietjens brothers’ rural home in Kent. The novel’s position in the tetralogy has often been questioned, as its setting as well as form differs significantly from the previous three novels. However, as this article will show, the novel also offers Ford’s most substantial examination of the consequences of war. This article looks at the importance of things in Ford’s depiction of post-war reconstruction, arguing that by foregrounding furniture and other domestic objects as a thematic concern, Ford seeks to evade a homogenising narrative of reconciliation and patriotic celebration. The novel participates in a modernist rejection of empirical, objective representation, where things rather than events serve as nodes of reference for the psychological as well as material transformations of the Post-War period.
Publisher
Foreningen for utgivande av Tidskrift for litteraturvetenskap
Reference23 articles.
1. Adorno, Theodor W. “Commitment.” In Aesthetics and Politics, översatt av Francis McDonagh. London: Verso, 2007, s. 177–195.
2. Adorno, Theodor W. “Cultural Criticism in Society.” In Prisms, översatt av Samuel och Shierry Weber. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1967, s. 19–34.
3. Benjamin, Walter. The Arcades Project, översatt av Howard Eiland och Kevin McLaughlin. Cambridge: The Belknap Press, 2002.
4. Bergonzi, Bernard. “Ford and Graham Greene.” I Ford Madox Fords Literary Contacts, red. Paul Skinner. Leiden: Brill, 2007, s. 211–215.
5. Brown, Bill. “The Secret Life of Things (Virginia Woolf and the Matter of Modernism).” Modernism/modernity 6, nr. 2 (1999): s. 1–28. .