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- Title
Ford Madox Ford's Musical Legacy: Parade's End and Wagner.
- Authors
Lockyer, Rebekah
- Abstract
As the son of a musicologist and Wagner expert, Ford Madox Ford (1873–1939) was greatly influenced by the radical aesthetics of the composer, and despite an abortive musical career his understanding of music was carried into his subsequent literary work. Taking as its starting point the pioneering work on Ford's musical youth by Carl Stang and Sondra Smith (1989), this article contends that the writer's musicality finds its ultimate outlet in his Great War tetralogy, Parade's End (1924–1928). By examining the relationship between particular moments within the text and passages from Wagner's Tannhäuser and Tristan und Isolde, the combined force of this duality of artistic form can be seen as enabling Ford to address the ‘inexpressible’ trauma of war. Examining key musical references and formal techniques from across the novel, the article argues that the long-neglected connection between music and Ford's formal literary innovations is vital for an appreciation of Parade's End.
- Subjects
WAGNER, Richard, 1813-1883; FORD, Ford Madox, 1873-1939; AESTHETICS; WORLD War I; PARADE'S End (Book : Fox); TRISTAN und Isolde (Opera)
- Publication
Forum for Modern Language Studies, 2014, Vol 50, Issue 4, p426
- ISSN
0015-8518
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1093/fmls/cqu040