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UC Riverside UC Riverside Electronic Theses and Dissertations Title Temporalizing the Great War: Wartime in Twentieth-Century American and British Literature Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/2mc9j6zg Author Eason, Edward Publication Date 2015 Peer reviewed|Thesis/dissertation eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA RIVERSIDE Temporalizing the Great War: Wartime in Twentieth-Century American and British Literature A Dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in English by Edward Clark Eason, Jr. June 2015 Dissertation Committee: Dr. Katherine Kinney, Chairperson Dr. George Haggerty Dr. Steven Gould Axelrod Copyright by Edward Clark Eason, Jr. 2015 The Dissertation of Edward Clark Eason, Jr. is approved: Committee Chairperson University of California, Riverside ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The seeds of this project were planted during Katherine Kinney’s undergraduate War Literature course, when I first wrestled with the complicated ethics of wartime violence. Throughout the process of this project her invaluable feedback has developed my intellectual rigor and writing. I would like to thank her and Geoff Cohen for their unwavering support and mentorship throughout my undergraduate and graduate education. Because of them I first considered the prospect of graduate school and reaped the intellectual benefits of research as well as the personal joy of teaching. I appreciate the supportive network my committee provided. I thank George Haggerty, whose prolific and meaningful work inspires me. His steady guidance and encouragement has fueled the writing of this dissertation. My first chapter and subsequent publication would not have been possible without his extensive comments on early drafts and insightful theorization of friendship. Steven Gould Axelrod’s thoughtful conversations have shaped the way I read modernism and poetry. Other faculty members of the English Department as well as teacher-scholars of the University Writing Program have provided support and many opportunities. Andrea Denny-Brown has encouraged and counseled me throughout my graduate studies. From undergraduate coursework to graduate seminars, Vorris Nunley has modeled the definition of teaching innovation. Deborah Willis, a true advocate of graduate student instructors, is always willing to endorse new teaching approaches. Kathleen Moore fosters a stimulating atmosphere to develop interdisciplinary education. They each have made UCR the collegial environment it is. iv I am also grateful to my colleagues in the English Department. I eternally owe my writing group—Kimberly Hall, Chandra Howard, and Melanie Masterton Sherazi—for the motivation to get my thoughts on the page during the first year of writing. Their time and feedback has been indispensible. And I must express my gratitude to my generous officemates, Anne Sullivan and Ann Garascia, who literally gave up the window seat. My family and friends are an integral part of my life. Virginia Nguyen, my best friend and companion, has shown and taught me patience through her kindness. Her determination drives me to reach beyond what I thought I could never do. My grandparents have supported me in countless ways. I would not be who I am without them. My uncle and aunt were the first to teach me critical thinking and to encourage me to find my voice. And my brother motivates me to be someone he would be proud of. I would not have made it through coursework with my sanity intact without the inspiration and humor of Justin Gautreau. He and Alice Contreras have shown me the meaning of generosity. Addison Palacios has been a great friend whose self-driven initiative animated me on days I would have been idle. I thank Robert Langenfeld, editor of English Literature in Transition, for his permission to use a version of my article to be published in January 2016. And I am grateful for permission from the British Library to reproduce Wilfred Owen’s manuscript of “Anthem for Doomed Youth” (Add. 43720, f. 17). v In memory of my mom vi ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION Temporalizing the Great War: Wartime in Twentieth-Century American and British Literature by Edward Clark Eason, Jr. Doctor of Philosophy, Graduate Program in English University of California, Riverside, June 2015 Dr. Katherine Kinney, Chairperson This dissertation highlights the importance of time to the “wartime” experience of the First World War. The power of poetry to commemorate and of narrative plot to sequence defines literature’s unique potential to make sense of time beyond the often reductive logic of linearity. In this way, literature disrupts the premise that wartime is a homogenized experience, unavoidable and necessary for peace. My project defines four unique temporalities of WWI—mobilized time, trench time, civilian time, and retrospective time—across a range of literary works composed by American and British poets and novelists. By delineating particular temporalities of the Great War in literature I argue wartime has been a perpetual norm in modern life, characterized by temporal continuities rather than, as is commonly suggested by propaganda or history, temporal containment. The first chapter, “Trench Time,” examines the commemorative poetry of Rupert Brooke and Wilfred Owen and the sequencing novels of Erich Remarque and Dalton Trumbo in order to reframe the trenches as a temporality—rather than simply a space— vii that has endured in cultural memory on a queer horizon. The second chapter, “Mobilized Time,” analyzes how a montage aesthetic enabled John Dos Passos and Ernest Hemingway to represent the shock of wartime and spectacle of peace that arrested lives and conflated the past, present, and future of their lost generation. Chapter Three, “Civilian Time,” focuses on the temporal margins of the war in order to characterize the experiences of those foreclosed from the benefits of wartime aid and disavowed in remembrance: the precarious women working in wartime through V.A.D. or W.A.A.C. as reflected in Evadne Price’s Not So Quiet and the marginalized men demobilized after the Armistice as reflected in Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway. In the final chapter, “Retrospective Time,” I read the recurrences of trench time, mobilized time, and civilian time in contemporary works that emphasize the provisionality, textual remains, and excentricity of the past: “Last Post” by Carol Ann Duffy, The Stranger’s Child by Alan Hollinghurst, the Regeneration Trilogy and Another World by Pat Barker, and The Hours by Michael Cunningham. viii TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction 1 Chapter One— Trench Time: The Commemorating Poetry and Sequencing Novels of No Man’s Land 22 Queer Moments in Rupert Brooke’s War Verse 36 Conjugal Friendship in the Creation of Wilfred Owen’s “Anthem for Doomed Youth” 53 Toward a Utopian Horizon in Erich Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front 77 Tracing the Line Between “The Dead” and “The Living” in Dalton Trumbo’s Johnny Got His Gun 102 Chapter Two— Mobilized Time: The Shock of Wartime and Spectacle of Peace 121 John Dos Passos and the Shock of Wartime 132 Ernest Hemingway and the Spectacle of Peace 168 Chapter Three— Civilian Time: The Precarity of Women’s War Work and Marginalization of Demobilized Veterans 202 Precarious Labor in Evadne Price’s Not So Quiet: Stepdaughters of War 217 Shared Precarity of Civilian Women and Demobilized Men in Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway 239 Chapter Four — Retrospective Time: The Provisional, Textual, and Excentric Remains of the Great War 272 Provisional Remains of Trench Time in Alan Hollinghurst’s The Stranger’s Child 281 Textual Remains of Mobilized Time in Pat Barker’s Another World and the Regeneration Trilogy 299 Excentric Remains of Civilian Time in Michael Cunningham’s The Hours 324 ix Introduction War is often described as a “time” of violence followed by peace. Yet such linear thinking obscures the distinct temporalities war imposes on its participants. This dissertation highlights the importance of time to the “wartime” experience of the First World War. The power of poetry to commemorate and of narrative plot to sequence defines literature’s unique potential to make sense of time beyond the often reductive logic of linearity. In this way, literature disrupts the premise that wartime is a homogenized experience, unavoidable and necessary for peace. My project defines four unique temporalities of WWI—mobilized time, trench time, civilian time, and retrospective time—across a range of literary works composed by American and British poets and novelists. Although war zones are frequently discussed in terms of space—no man’s land of the trenches, Paris as the center of mobilization, and London as the home front—this dissertation considers how literature maps a temporal sense on spaces of war.1 The literary representations of these temporalities reflect particular relationships between wartime participants and the past, present, and future. As distinct literary reactions to the psychic and physical trauma of wartime violence, these time zones often overlap. After all, the surviving soldiers, ambulance drivers, or nurses mobilized for the trenches eventually returned home to civilian life. Nonetheless, these temporalities cohere in 1 For studies on the experience of trenches of the Great War see Peter Chasseaud’s Rats Alley: Trench Names of the Western Front, 1914-1918, and Eric Leed’s No Man’s Land: Combat and Identity in World War I; for studies on Paris and the war effort see Bruce Porter’s War and the Rise of the State; and for studies on the experience of being at home in London during the war see Jay Winter’s Cambridge History of the First World War, Volume III: Civil Society. 1 twentieth-century literature as alternatives to the linear conception of wartime propagated by military authority to support the war effort. My study explores the dialectic between the two contradictory polarities—the state’s attendant measures of mass-mobilization during total war and the individual’s experience and civil rights—to question how novelists’ and poets’ formal choices reflect, resist, and shape temporal meaning during and after the First World War.