Dissertation

Forming the modern mind: a reappraisal of the french combat novel of world war one

Hurcombe, Martin John

2000

Overview

Many have considered the French combat novel as a genre apart, limited to its moment of production, or as the continuation of late nineteenth-century systems of thought. In this way, the anti-war novel's depiction of the horrors of combat are readily associated by some with the Naturalist novel, while the works of many nationalist combat novelists are considered, both in respect of their style and ideology, to be much in the tradition of the works of Maurice Barrès. By contrast, this thesis considers the combat novel to be a defining moment in the development of the early twentieth-century French novel.Examining the genre in Bakhtinian terms of novelistic development, it acknowledges the genre's continued ties with pre-war thinking, but also those that link the genre to the committed and existential novels of the inter-war years and, more generally, to a primarily modernist understanding of humanity's place in the world. This thesis considers the combat novel as a bridge between the essentialist universe of the late nineteenth century and the existential perceptions that characterise the early twentieth century, embodying in its polemic, whether nationalist or pacifist, a response to the absurd. In this perception of the absurd, and in its recourse to political commitment in order to offset this perception, the genre possesses a paradigmatic significance for the committed novel of the 1930s and 1940s where engagement with the world counters a widespread sense of humanity's contingency in relation to the world.

• Publisher: ProQuest Dissertations & Theses
• Subject: Romance literature