Ford Madox Ford, the early twentieth-century writer most famous for his novel The Good Soldier, perceived his "business in life [as an] ... attempt to discover and to try to let you see where you stand." With this grand purpose in mind, Ford disregarded distinctions of genre in his prolific output of what we would consider novels, memoirs, literary criticism, travel writing, and history. Claiming that "the Novelist ... [is a] historian of his own time," Ford sought his own version of the "truth," a truth that was more faithful to his own subjective impressions than to verifiable "fact." Among these works that depict his age are a series of "memoirs" or "reminiscences," works published from the 1910s to the 1930s which carry out his Impressionistic purpose. What lies behind these memoirs is Ford′s view that his own individual history can be understood as his contemporary society′s collective history. This article explores Ford′s experimentation with boundaries of fact and fiction, and history and narrative, as he employs and expands the memoir form. In particular, 1 focus on two works, Memories and Impressions (1911) and It Was the Nightingale (1933), and Ford′s techniques in these memoirs, such as 1) the adoption of fictional personae from which to comment on his society at large and 2) the use of emblematic "parables" to encapsulate larger lessons of life within the minutiae of existence. Current theorists on the memoir form share interests in these questions of genre and of the social role of the memoir Nancy Miller, for instance, terms the memoir "the record of an experience in search of a community." This article engages these current discussions of the memoir genre by examining Ford′s early twentieth-century examples as innovative experiments that play with the boundaries between fiction and history, and personal impressions and collective truth.
목차
Ford and Memoir-Writing The Personae The Parables Historian of his own time Works Cited 국문요약 abstract
키워드
Ford Madox Ford; narrative; history; memoir; reminiscence; autobiography; persona; parable; Memories and Impressions; It Was Nightingale
국제언어인문학회 [INTERNATIONAL ASSOCIATION FOR HUMANISTIC STUDIES IN LANGUAGE]
설립연도
2000
분야
인문학>언어학
소개
국제언어인문학회는 '언어를 통한 인문학 연구'의 필요성에 동감하는 여러 전공분야 학자들의 뜻을 담고 있습니다. 언어에 초점을 맞추는 것은, 다양한 전공분야의 참여에서 생겨날 수 있는 '이질적 집합'의 상황을 극복하기 위한 장치입니다. 현재로서는 작은 불씨를 지핀 것에 불과합니다. 그러나 이렇게 일구어진 불꽃이 새로운 학풍의 바람결에 커다란 섬광으로 빛나게 될 날이 올 것을 우리는 확신합니다. 우리의 학회와 학술지는 인문학 불변의 가치와 시대적 사명을 인식하는 국내외의 학자들을 향해 활짝 개방되어 있습니다. 특정 전공의 범위를 넘어서서 철학, 문학, 언어학, 종교, 역사, 문화, 예술 등의 시각에서 언어의 본질을 토론할 기회가 될 것입니다.