Faculteit Letteren & Wijsbegeerte Matthias Leliaert "A Harmless Young Shepherd in a Soldier's Coat" A Consideration of Pastoralism and Modernism in Edmund Blunden's War Memoir Undertones of War and a Selection of his War Poetry Masterproef voorgelegd tot het behalen van de graad van Master in de taal- en letterkunde Engels - Duits 2015 Supervisor Prof. Dr. Marysa Demoor Vakgroep Letterkunde II Acknowledgements First and foremost, I would like to thank my promotor, Prof. Dr. Marysa Demoor, for her guidance throughout the writing process of not only this master dissertation, but of the writing process of my bachelor paper as well. Whenever I had questions, she did not hesitate to answer hem. It is thanks to her that I was able to finish this dissertation in the form that it has today. Secondly, I want to thank my parents for their enduring support throughout the year. The writing process has not always progressed easily, but thanks to the mental support with which they provided me, I managed to keep my focus on the work and get the job done. Thank you. Also, I want to thank my fellow students, who were in the same predicament as I was, and to whom I could complain or ask questions unscrupulously. Researching, studying, or writing together: it has all been a great pleasure. I thank you all very much. III IV What is it through the battle smoke the valiant soldier sees? The little garden far way, the budding apple trees. Edgar A. Guest: The Things that Make a Soldier Great (1918). V VI Table of Contents Introduction ..................................................................................................................... 1 Chapter 1: Edmund Blunden and his Undertone of The Great War .................... 4 1.1. A Succinct Biography of Edmund Blunden ................................................... 4 1.2. Contextualization: Undertones of War as an Undertone of the Great War .... 7 Chapter 2: Pastoralism ............................................................................................ 11 2.1. What is Pastoralism? A Concise History ..................................................... 11 2.2. Sentimental and Complex Pastoralism......................................................... 13 2.3. Three Kinds of Pastoralism in Undertones of War ...................................... 14 2.4. Anti-Pastoralism ........................................................................................... 18 2.5. Realism in the Descriptive Pause and its Implications ................................ 20 2.6. From Pastoralism to Anti-Pastoralism: The Decay of the Royal Sussex Regiment ...................................................................................................... 24 2.7. Pastoralism as a Structuring Device in the Memoir as well as in Poetry ..... 29 Chapter 3: Modernism and Irony ........................................................................... 36 3.1. Voice and Persona ......................................................................................... 37 3.2. The Use of Meta-Commentary ...................................................................... 42 3.3. “Theory of Modes” and Irony engendered in Undertones of War ................ 44 3.4. Closing Discussion: Modern versus Modernist ............................................ 54 Conclusion ...................................................................................................................... 56 Bibliography .................................................................................................................. 59 Addendum I ................................................................................................................... 63 VII VIII Introduction1 In August, 1915, almost exactly 100 years ago, Edmund Blunden, a young man from Kent, was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the Royal Sussex Regiment. He fought both in Ypres and at the Somme, two of the bloodiest battles of the Great war the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) took part in, and in doing so, he earned himself the Military Cross. Now, almost one century after the Armistice, it is hard to imagine the ordeals Blunden and his fellow combatants had to go through, and this great feat warrants closer attention. The fact that this poet wrote his involvement at the front down in diaries enabled him, almost ten years after his harrowing frontline experiences, to compose his memoir Undertones of War, which has been exultingly called one of the best autobiographical accounts produced by writers of the Great War and has gained a well-deserved position in the British national canon. For me, it is a fantastic opportunity to combine my interest in history in general, and the Great War in particular, and my love for English literature in this dissertation. I have written my bachelor dissertation on a similar topic, but felt unsatisfied due to the fact that there was still plenty to research in this war memoir, which has received comparatively little critical attention, although the great literary critic Paul Fussell admits that “together with Sassoon’s or Graves’ memoirs” Blunden’s memoir Undertones of War “is one of the permanent works engendered by memories of the war” (Fussell 277)2. Being able to write about such a great book and an author who has received remarkably little critical appreciation is captivating, especially in the light of the general rise in interest in the Great War (literature) – in various media and in various countries worldwide – which has taken place now that the war has reached its centenary. In this dissertation I will engage most extensively with Paul Fussell’s findings on Undertones of War, as his writings tie in with my topic the most. Also, his work The Great War and Modern Memory is a very comprehensive work on prose, drama and lyrical work written during or engaging with the Great War. For further background on this topic I recommend Samuel Heynes’ book A War Imagined, as it also holds a treasure of information about not only the First World War, but also the literature that has spawned forth from it. However, I have observed that not much scholarly attention has been given to 1 The entire text of this dissertation is written in British English. However, when an American or Canadian author is quoted, his American spelling is taken over in that way, without changing it to British English. 2 Every time that a quote from Paul Fussell is used in this dissertation with the citation “Fussell [page number], I quote from his book The Great War and Modern Memory. If I use another source by the same author, I will indicate so clearly by adding the full title of the other source. 1 Blunden’s war memoir, and even less on the topic of pastoralism. Therefore, some readers might believe that my work lacks references to secondary scholarly works. However, I can reply that I have used the material that has been written before to build a foundation extensive enough for my own thesis argument proposed here, and have infused the work already done with my own ideas. The thesis that I propose here, deals with Blunden’s prolific use of different kinds of pastoralism, and the uses, implications and consequences thereof. It is my belief that in Undertones of War, Blunden has used various forms of pastoralism as a structuring device and as a moral and formal framework. This wide application of pastoralism imbues the war memoir with a great sense of irony. This irony, along with other traits, give the book a modernist aspect. Thus, it is my thesis that Blunden uses pastoralism as a structuring device in such a way that it evokes irony, which leads me to believe that Blunden’s memoir can be seen as modernist. The structure that Blunden evokes in the memoir through his use of pastoralism goes as follows: first, he sets the scene by means of Nature imagery and pastoralism, only to then return to it to be able to destroy this sereneness in full force, by letting the war intrude upon Nature. Pastoralism is thus used to impose a kind of structure on the otherwise unstructuredness of the war. This very same structure is not only to be found in his prose, but also in a certain amount of his poetical work, which will also be discussed in this dissertation. Another function of pastoralism is, I believe, to foreground the gradual decay of the Regiment Blunden served in, namely the Royal Sussex Regiment. I believe to have discerned a parallelism between Blunden’s Nature imagery and the state of his regiment. The evocation of pastoralism has indubitably had a healing effect for Blunden, who countered the chaos of the war by hanging on to a firm belief in Nature and the structure that pastoralism can provide. The use of pastoralism and everything it entails will be discussed in the second chapter of this dissertating. However, it is true that this use of pastoralism necessarily imbues the memoir with a great sense of irony. When one exults in the beauty of Nature and its tranquillity amidst a war setting, only to obliterate that same peacefulness a few pages later, one cannot but see this as highly ironic. Undertones of War was written and published in 1928, so Blunden could employ an ex post facto view on the matter, which is necessary for to allow irony. I believe that Blunden’s charge against the war has to be found in this irony. He was such an ardent lover of Nature, that he could think of no stronger image or symbol for the vileness of war than the slow annihilation of Nature throughout his memoir. This irony permeating the book opens