Making Meaning Together: Information, Rumor, and Propaganda in British Fiction of the First World War

ABSTRACT Title of Document: MAKING MEANING TOGETHER: INFORMATION, RUMOR, AND PROPAGANDA IN BRITISH FICTION OF THE FIRST WORLD WAR. Rebecca Borden, Ph.D., 2012 Directed By: Associate Professor Peter Mallios, Department of English. Through an examination of fiction by H.G. Wells, Joseph Conrad, and John Buchan, this dissertation examines information as a category as it exists under conditions of modernity, and how the contours of and changes in definitions and understandings of modern information become more visible, and are likely accelerated by, the complex information challenges brought about by the disruptions of the First World War. Given that “information” is a key building-block in understanding systems of knowledge in modernity, this dissertation incorporates theoretical constructs describing information drawn from a variety of disciplines, all of which circle around the problems and concerns of the increasingly saturated, complex, and untethered nature of information as experienced by an individual in modern life. This project also highlights the role that rumor plays in modernity. The war years bring an expansion of government-directed information control, both in the form of actively produced propaganda and in the form of censorship, disrupting the conduits along which information travels under normal conditions. Rumor, generally considered a pre-modern form of communication, remains a part of modern information systems and provides a mechanism for making meaning when other sources of information begin to fail. This dissertation also considers how “wartime” fiction, as a category distinct from pre-war and post-war fiction, is a revealing domain of literature in its own right, and one that has been overlooked in scholarship on literature of the First World War. This project focuses on once popular but long understudied wartime fiction by Wells, Conrad, and Buchan. It also compares the wartime fiction of these authors to their own pre-war fiction in order to trace how the category of information was a concern for these writers from the beginning of their careers. Further, this project explores how wartime texts contain significant elements that can be understood as pre-modern, as modern (and modernist), and as incipiently post-modern, which highlights the existence of both residual and of emerging forms and ideas during the war years, disrupting a dominant understanding of the First World War as a period of cultural and intellectual rupture. MAKING MEANING TOGETHER: INFORMATION, RUMOR, AND PROPAGANDA IN BRITISH FICTION OF THE FIRST WORLD WAR By Rebecca Borden Dissertation submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of the University of Maryland, College Park, in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy 2012 Advisory Committee: Associate Professor Peter Mallios, Chair Professor Brian Richardson Professor Elizabeth Loizeaux Professor Kate Macdonald Professor Jonathan Auerbach Professor R. Gordon Kelly © Copyright by Rebecca Borden 2012 To Charles, my husband. And to Nook – the best “best friend” a girl could have. ii Acknowledgements I would like to thank Peter Mallios, who directed this dissertation and who gave me such thoughtful feedback over many years. His confidence in me has been unwavering, his cheerfulness reassuring, and his advice invaluable. I would also like to thank Brian Richardson and Beth Loizeaux, both of whom made key suggestions that changed the direction of this project. Jonathan Auerbach, Kate Macdonald and R. Gordon Kelly participated in the lively defense of this dissertation and gave me excellent advice for future revisions. Kate has also proven to be a helpful guide in the fields of middlebrow fiction and scholarship on John Buchan. This dissertation would not have been finished without the support and solidarity of my dissertation writing group: Kate Singer, until we lost her to Mt. Holyoke; and Kelly McGovern and Caroline Egan, who read every page of this dissertation more than once. When I read over certain passages, I can hear their voices behind the text and can remember specific suggestions they made which improved both my thoughts and my words. I also would like to thank my mom and dad, April and Henry Peters, who gave me such a great start in life; my in-laws, John and Marian Borden; and my siblings, Emily, Phil, Sam, Jessica, Dan, and Maggie. I told you all that I would finish and, very kindly, you never asked when. The years I spent working on this project were made infinitely better because I had Nook by my side (often literally) for all of them. Nook loves me just the same in triumph or in disappointment. Her unconditional love makes disappointments easier to bear and her animated greeting every time I walk in the door makes simply arriving home at the end of the day feel like a victory. And, most importantly, I would like to thank my husband Charles. He is my best friend, my toughest debate partner, my greatest champion, and the love of my life. iii Table of Contents Acknowledgements iii Making Meaning Together: Information, Rumor, and Propaganda in British Fiction of the First World War 1 Section I: Theorizing Information in the Modern World ......................................................................... 7 Section II: What is rumor? .............................................................................................................................. 17 Section III: The Angels of Mons: A Case Study in Wartime Rumors .............................................. 25 Section IV: Wells, Conrad, and Buchan ..................................................................................................... 34 H.G. Wells and Information: Exoteric/Esoteric Storytelling and the Search for “Truth” 40 Section I: Setting the Record Straight - Exoteric Rumors and Esoteric “Accounts” in The Chronic Argonauts ............................................................................................................................................. 48 Section II: Tono-Bungay - Gaining “Esoteric” Knowledge When Trapped Inside a Pseudo- Environment of Mediated Fact ...................................................................................................................... 54 Section III: Mr. Britling Sees It Through - Propaganda, Wartime Rumors, and the Failure of “Truth” ................................................................................................................................................................... 67 Joseph Conrad: Multiplicity, Counternarratives, and the “Open” Information Environment 95 Section I: “Open Totality” and Conrad’s Information Environment .............................................. 109 Section II: Victory and “Because of the Dollars” ................................................................................. 119 Section III: “The Unlighted Coast” and Conrad’s Wartime Propaganda ...................................... 135 Section IV: “The Tale” and Heart of Darkness ..................................................................................... 145 John Buchan and the Emerging “Post-modern Fact”: Fiction as a Response to Changing Definitions of Information During the War 176 Section I: To Inform or to Misinform – Information and Truth in British Propaganda ............ 192 Section II: “The King of Ypres” and Problems of Empiricism ........................................................ 201 Section III: “Truth” in Buchan’s Pre-war Novel The Thirty-Nine Steps ....................................... 210 Section IV: Greenmantle and the Potentiality of Falsehoods in Wartime .................................... 225 Section V: The Central Role of the “Information” War in Mr. Standfast ..................................... 236 Conclusion 248 Bibliography 260 iv Making Meaning Together: Information, Rumor, and Propaganda in British Fiction of the First World War Scholarship on the years between 1914 and 1918 has traditionally viewed the war as a moment of rupture, a distinct break with the culture of the pre-war world. In recent years, however, an alternative perspective has emerged among scholars of the First World War arguing that previous understandings of the war have overemphasized change at the expense of noticing important strains of cultural continuity across this period. In this project, I engage this new orientation in scholarship by examining the broad category of “information,” looking at how individuals and groups interact, evaluate, and disseminate the various sources of information available to them given the special conditions of the war years. Since “information” is a broad category, I focus particularly on that portion of information that circulates among people as rumor. Although much previous scholarship classifies rumor as a “pre-modern” form of communication and as something that has ceased to be an important part of information culture by the early 20th century, I aim to demonstrate that rumor, and pre-industrial forms of information more generally, maintain a central role within the complex and shifting landscape of information in modern life. Rumor has been present on the fringes of First World War scholarship under various guises, such as in studies of propaganda and of wartime atrocity stories, but studies of rumor as an independent category of information during the war years have not emerged.1 1 Historical research on specific rumors has been done, most notably a First World War rumor known as the “Angels of Mons.” I look specifically at

Load more