The Art of Writing War: David Jones' In Parenthesis

(5 Credit Hours) · Undergraduate

This module will focus on David Jones's In Parenthesis (1937). Despite his relative obscurity, Jones is an essential figure in the story of British Modernism, both in poetry and in visual art, and the years since the centenary of the First World War have seen a significant resurgence of critical interest in his work. In Parenthesis, his long poem based on his own experience as a soldier in World War One, was recognized at the time of its publication as a major work. In this module, we will read the poem closely, considering issues including form, language, and genre, and delving into the complex and varied allusions Jones built into his poem - to Catholicism, Welsh mythology, Roman Britain, and the London of his childhood and youth. We will look at Jones's strategies for representing the body in pain, perception and sense experience, space, and violence, and reflect on how these issues resonate more widely in Modernism. We will explore his essays, to illuminate his convictions about craft, ritual, and the relationship between the human, the animal, and the non-human, man-made, weapons of mass warfare. We will consider his work alongside other writers of the period, including Eliot, Wilfred Owen, John Rodker, and Isaac Rosenberg, and we will be constantly attentive to the relationship between his poetry and visual art - so contemporary artists including Stanley Spencer, Mark Gertler, and Paul Nash will also be discussed. Finally, we will explore a range of critical and theoretical engagements with Jones's work and the literature of war more broadly.