routledge+history+of+literature+in+english

410 The twentieth century: 1900–45
own right for The Good Soldier (1915), subtitled The Saddest Story
Ever Told, which has been described as ‘the greatest tragedy of sexuality
in English prose’. It is recounted by a first-person narrator, John Dowell,
whose unreliability undermines every scene in the novel, rendering
the whole story ambiguous. Full of time-shifts, and with a mysterious
death which is only resolved on the last page, it has remained both
fascinating and influential. Something of the ambiguity and necessary
uncertainty of the narration can be gauged in this paragraph:
I have, I am aware, told this story in a very rambling way so that it
may be difficult for anyone to find their path through what may be a
sort of maze. I cannot help it. I have stuck to my idea of being in a
country cottage with a silent listener, hearing between the gusts of
the wind and amidst the noises of the distant sea, the story as it
comes. And, when one discusses an affair – a long, sad affair – one
goes back, one goes forward. One remembers points that one has
forgotten and one explains them all the more minutely since one
recognizes that one has forgotten to mention them in their proper
places and that one may have given, by omitting them, a false
impression. I console myself with thinking that this is a real story and
that, after all, real stories are probably told best in the way a person
telling a story would tell them. They will then seem most real.
Ford’s ‘Impressionist’ trilogy, Fifth Queen (1907–8), and the tetralogy
Parade’s End (1924–28), with its hero Tietjens, were notable
contributions to the experimentation with narrative techniques and
styles which Ford spent his life promoting. The trilogy is about one of
the wives of Henry VIII, Catherine Howard; the tetralogy follows its
hero through intrigues of passion and the experience of the war,
bringing together personal and universal themes, tracing the breakdown
of the old order and the emergence of the new, in a way that few
other novels have done.
Like many other creative writers, Ford published a great deal of
criticism. Henry James had constantly commented on his own and others’
writing in The Art of Fiction (1885) and The Art of the Novel (1893).
Shaw had used the prefaces to his plays to raise social issues. Artists
frequently used their position to discuss, evaluate, and pronounce on
the rapidly changing world in which they lived. D.H. Lawrence’s essays