Synopses & Reviews
Cole examines the rich literary and cultural history of masculine intimacy in the twentieth century.
Review
"...Cole is to be strongly commended for producing a study that pushes the agenda of First World War scholarship forward...and presents theoretically sophisticated literary criticism in a highly accessible and wholly engaging manner." Albion, Paul R. Deslandes
Synopsis
Cole examines the rich history of masculine intimacy in the twentieth century. She foregrounds such crucial themes as broken friendships, blood brotherhood, and the bereavement of the war poet. Cole argues that these dramas of compelling and often tortured male friendship have generated a particular voice within the literary canon.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments; Introduction: i. Argument: the organization of intimacy, ii. Definitions and choices: modernism, modernity, literary authority, iii. Organizations: four sites of masculine bonding; 1. Victorian dreams, modern realities: Forster's classical imagination: i. Hellenism and the beautiful body: Carpenter, Pater, Symonds, ii. The fall of Hellenism: Forster's modern disaffection, iii. A Passage to India and the failure of institutions; 2. Conradian alienation and imperial intimacy: i. Friendship's dramatic demise: Heart of Darkness and Under Western Eyes; ii. From system to solipsism: Lord Jim, iii. Homoerotic heroics, domestic discipline: Conrad and Ford's Romance; 3. 'My killed friends are with me where I go': friendship and comradeship at war: i. War discourse: friendship and comradeship, ii. The major war poets: intimacy, authority, alienation, iii. Post-war articulations: lost friends and the lost generation; 4. 'The violence of the nightmare': D. H. Lawrence and the aftermath of war: i. Bodies of men: the landscape of post-war England, ii. Desire and devastation: male bonds in D. H. Lawrence; Notes.