UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones 5-2009 Architecture and nostalgia in the British modern novel Heather Lynn Lusty University of Nevada, Las Vegas Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalscholarship.unlv.edu/thesesdissertations Part of the Architecture Commons, and the Literature in English, British Isles Commons Repository Citation Lusty, Heather Lynn, "Architecture and nostalgia in the British modern novel" (2009). UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones. 1128. http://dx.doi.org/10.34917/2505291 This Dissertation is protected by copyright and/or related rights. It has been brought to you by Digital Scholarship@UNLV with permission from the rights-holder(s). You are free to use this Dissertation in any way that is permitted by the copyright and related rights legislation that applies to your use. 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ARCHITECTURE AND NOSTALGIA IN THE BRITISH MODERN NOVEL by Heather Lynn Lusty Bachelor of Arts Armstrong Atlantic State University 1997 Master of Arts University of Nevada, Las Vegas 2002 Master of Arts University of Nevada, Las Vegas 2004 A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Doctor of Philosophy Degree in English Department of English College of Liberal Arts Graduate College University of Nevada, Las Vegas May 2009 UMI Number: 3383983 INFORMATION TO USERS The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. Broken or indistinct print, colored or poor quality illustrations and photographs, print bleed-through, substandard margins, and improper alignment can adversely affect reproduction. In the unlikely event that the author did not send a complete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if unauthorized copyright material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. 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Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106-1346 Dissertation Approval The Graduate College mmasmsmi University of Nevada, Las Vegas 15 April 09 20 The Dissertation prepared by Heather Lynn Lusty Entitled Architecture and Nostalgia in the Modern British Novel is approved in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in English Examination Committee&hair Dean of the Graduate College Examination Committee Mdnbe/f Examination Committee Member Graduate College Faculty Representative 1017-52 ii ABSTRACT Architecture and Nostalgia in the British Modern Novel by Heather Lynn Lusty Dr. Beth Rosenberg, Examination Committee Chair Professor of English University of Nevada, Las Vegas This dissertation focuses on Modern British literary culture and the construction of literary sites of nostalgia through architecture and landscape. The project considers examples from D.H. Lawrence, Virginia Woolf, Ford Madox Ford, and Evelyn Waugh, and examines how these authors employ presentations of architecture in their narratives to portray the irrevocably altered landscape of modernity. The introduction presents the notion of national consciousness and literature, moving from Lukacs' conception of the historical novel to Victorian art critics John Ruskin and Walter Pater and their writings on national identity and architecture. Twentieth-century European culture responded to the trauma of the Great War with an outpouring of artistic production examining the transformations of the modern era. The importance of commemoration and the preservation of cultural images influence the creation of culturally nostalgic spaces within the novel. Beginning with John Ruskin's architectural theory in The Stones of Venice and The Seven Lamps of Architecture and Walter Pater's aesthetic interiors in Imaginary Portraits, I highlight ideas of architectural iii topography embodying national identity. I trace this theory through the modern novel and responses to the Great War and cultural nostalgia. Chapter One "The Domestic Ravages of War: D.H. Lawrence and the Home Front," examines the way in which the industrial post-war era intersects with architecture and social space in the work of D.H. Lawrence. Ruskin's influence pervades Lawrence's work, particularly in descriptions of the domestic postwar landscape. I consider portrayals of homes and landscapes of rural England in The Rainbow, Women in Love, Lady Chatter ley's Lover, The Virgin and the Gypsy as well as Lawrence's early short stories. Chapter Two, "Woolf and the Familial Structure of Mourning," focuses on how the Victorian conception of nostalgia is transformed in post-WWI novels of Virginia Woolf. Pater's interiors and aesthetic responses influence Woolf s portrayals of family homes and mourning. Using Jacob's Room, Mrs. Dalloway, To the Lighthouse, The Waves, and Carlyle 's House and Other Sketches, I highlight Woolf s use of familial sites to express emptiness, displacement, and pain reflective of a fragmented post-war culture. Chapter Three, "Ford Madox Ford's and the Dismantling of England," explores Ford's tetralogy Parade's End as a chronicle of the demise of English heritage through the physical destruction of its homes and gardens. Chapter Four, "The English Country House and Evelyn Waugh: Mourning Modernity," explores Waugh's use of domestic architecture in both the early novels, including Decline and Fall, Vile Bodies, and A Handful of Dust as well as the later nostalgic works, Put Out More Flags and Brideshead Revisited. His novels blend the Ruskinian notion of architecture as national identity and Paterian attention to nostalgia and interiors; they use architecture to both mourn the onslaught of modernity and foreshadow the decline of English culture. iv My conclusion highlights the ways in which these modernist writers craft a collective nostalgia within their texts based on architectural referents. It also points to the legacy of architecture and memory in post-modern writers like Kazuo Ishiguro and Penelope Lively, who continue to develop the signifiers provided by cultural landscape and architecture to explore history, memory, and nostalgia in a century of violence. Finally, I draw a link the communicative properties of the legacy of English literary interiors in post-colonial fiction. Tayeb Salih's Season of Migration to the North is an example of contemporary writers addressing their colonial relationship and identity with England through the use of interior spaces and architectural topography. v TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT Hi ACKNOWLEDGMENTS vii INTRODUCTION MODERNITY, WAR, AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF ARCHITECTURE AS NARRATIVE 1 CHAPTER 1 THE DOMESTIC RAVAGES OF WAR: D.H. LAWRENCE AND THE HOME FRONT 28 CHAPTER 2 WOOLF AND THE FAMILIAL STRUCTURE OF MOURNING 93 CHAPTER 3 FORD MADOX FORD AND THE DISMANTLING OF ENGLISH HERITAGE 153 CHAPTER 4 THE ENGLISH COUNTRY HOUSE AND EVELYN WAUGH: MOURNING MODERNITY 200 CONCLUSION ARCHITECTURE AND POST-MODERNISM 242 WORKS CITED 253 VITA 265 VI ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to thank my advisor and mentor, Dr. Beth Rosenberg, for a very pleasant experience. My supportive committee members include Dr. Megan Becker-Leckrone, Dr. Nick LoLordo, and Dr. Ralph Buechler. This dissertation was given vital mid-process relief by the Marjorie Barrick Dissertation Fellowship. Finally, thanks to my good friend Jessica Lucero, who has patiently and encouragingly listened to years of ideas, frustrations, and revised inspirations. vn INTRODUCTION WAR, MOURNING, AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF ARCHITECTURE AS NARRATIVE This study traces the legacy of nineteenth-century architecture theory in the British modern novel and highlights ways in which the physical structures in fiction create topoi of nostalgia in post-war England. It focuses on modern British literary culture and the construction of social memory, and it explores responses to the Great War and modernity through the derogation of England's physical landscape. I consider the work of D.H. Lawrence, Virginia Woolf, Ford Madox Ford, and Evelyn Waugh as examples, certainly not unique, of how architecture continues to function in literature as a reflection of culture in post-war narratives. Drawing connections between the development of architecture and an English cultural aesthetic in the Victorian era, I emphasize this adapted continuous tradition in the fiction of the Great War and inter-war years as a way to reflect on the altered landscape. Twentieth-century European culture responded to the Great War with a variety of physical monuments and organized public mourning. The importance of commemoration and the preservation of cultural images in the Modern era reshape Victorian textual memory and create of a commemorative space within the novel. Modernism here is defined widely; as David Ayers posits, modernism studies are quite naturally spread 1 across literature, theatre, music, and art in the first half of twentieth-century Europe: "Indeed [they] ought really to reach back into the nineteenth century, to the poetry of Baudelaire or the music