Structure and Dissolution in English Writing, 1910–1920

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-viii

   PDF

2. Language, Tradition and Silence

   • Stuart Sillars

   Pages 1-30

3. Howards End and the Dislocation of Narrative

   • Stuart Sillars

   Pages 31-61

4. Wilfred Owen and the Subjugation of the Poetic

   • Stuart Sillars

   Pages 62-92

5. The Rainbow: Language Against Itself

   • Stuart Sillars

   Pages 93-124

6. ‘The singing will never be done’: Siegfried Sassoon and the Exile of Language

   • Stuart Sillars

   Pages 125-154

7. Language Beneath Words: Edward Thomas

   • Stuart Sillars

   Pages 155-189

8. An Epilogue on Modernism

   • Stuart Sillars

   Pages 190-195

9. Back Matter

   Pages 196-216

   PDF

This book explores key texts - Howards End , The Rainbow , and the poetry of Owen, Sassoon and Edward Thomas - to show the mingled continuation and rejection of convention as their characteristic achievement, exploring features often seen as failures. It also discusses the writing's increasing concern with the inadequacies of language, seeing it within the frame of contemporary society and deconstructive theory, and attempting to locate them in relation to high Modernism.

• bibliography
• English
• exile
• knowledge
• language
• Modernism
• poetry
• society
• structure
• tradition
• writing

'Sillars keeps admirably close to his texts, and his discussions of the poets are especially thoughtful.' - English Studies

STUART SILLARS is a writer and freelance lecturer in Cambridge. His earlier publications include Art and Survival in First World War Britain, British Romantic Art and the Second World War and Visualisation in Popular Fiction, 1860-1960, and numerous articles and contributions to collections.

Policies and ethics