The Language of Siegfried Sassoon

227 Pages·2022·4.173 MB·

by  Marcello Giovanelli

PALGRAVE STUDIES IN LANGUAGE, LITERATURE AND STYLE
The Language of
Siegfried Sassoon
Marcello Giovanelli
Palgrave Studies in Language, Literature and Style
Series Editors
Rocío Montoro, Dept de Filologías Inglesa y Alemana, University of
Granada, Granada, Granada, Spain
Paul Simpson, Department of English, University of Liverpool, Liverpool,
UK
This series offers rigorous and informative treatments of particular writers,
genres and literary periods and provides in-depth examination of their key
stylistic tropes. Every volume in the series is intended to serve as a key
reference point for undergraduate and post-graduate students and as an inves-
tigative resource for more experienced researchers. The last twenty years
have witnessed a huge transformation in the analytic tools and methods of
modern stylistics. By harnessing the talent of a growing body of researchers
in the field, this series of books seeks both to capture these developments
and transformations and to establish and elaborate new analytic models and
paradigms.
Marcello Giovanelli
The Language
of Siegfried Sassoon
Marcello Giovanelli
School of Social Sciences
and Humanities
Aston University
Birmingham, UK
ISSN 2731-8265 ISSN 2731-8273 (electronic)
Palgrave Studies in Language, Literature and Style
ISBN 978-3-030-88468-0 ISBN 978-3-030-88469-7 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-88469-7
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature
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Acknowledgements
This book took a long time to complete and at one point, I wondered if it
would ever get finished. But it is here now, and I would like to thank the
following people for their support.
First, I am grateful to Meg Crane, Jennie Giovanelli, Chloe Harrison,
Robbie Love, Charlotte May, and Tim Penton, who read various earlier
versions of the manuscript and provided supportive and very useful comments
and feedback. Many thanks also to Kate Giles for answering queries I had on
Sassoon’s prose writing.
The research in the book has taken place over many years and I would like
to thank all those who asked questions and provided comments on papers I
have given on the contents of this book, from the very first at the Cogni-
tive Grammar in Literature symposium at the University of Nottingham in
February 2013. Since then, I have presented at numerous research seminar
series and international conferences. My particular thanks go to those who
provided feedback on papers at PALA 2018 in Birmingham and IALS 2019
in Reykjavík, which came to form the basis of Chapter 6. I would also like
to thank the series editors Rocío Montoro and Paul Simpson, and Cathy
Scott and all of the team at Palgrave Macmillan for their advice, support, and
patience. The School of Humanities and Social Sciences at Aston University
provided research start-up funding in 2017 which allowed me to undertake
some of the research for this book, and then covered permissions fees. My
thanks in particular to Phil Mizen for his support in this latter respect.
Completing the writing of this book during long periods of lockdown
came with many challenges, including not being able to access the library
and archive material during that time. But I am grateful to John Wells at
the University Library, Cambridge for answering queries, and to John Whale
of Stand magazine. I would also like to thank members of the Brenchley and
Matfield Local History Society for allowing me to spend some time in their
v
vi ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Sassoon archive, and Alison Gibbons for sharing her expertise—and numerous
papers—on autofiction with me.
Finally, my biggest thanks, as always, for their continued support rests with
Jennie, Anna, Zara, and Sophia.
I am grateful to be able to reproduce various poems, prose, and diary entries
of Siegfried Sassoon throughout this book. These are reprinted with the kind
permission of the estate of George Sassoon.
Parts of Chapter 3 appeared in an earlier form in ‘Conceptual proximity and
the experience of war in Siegfried Sassoon’s “A Working Party” in Cognitive
Grammar in Literature’ (eds Chloe Harrison, Louise Nuttall, Peter Stockwell,
and Wenjuan Yuan, 2014) published by John Benjamins (https://benjamins.
com/catalog/lal.17).
Contents
1 Introduction 1
1.1 Siegfried Sassoon 1
1.2 Style 3
1.2.1 Definitions of Style 3
1.2.2 Style and Language 5
1.3 Cognitive Stylistics 8
1.3.1 Cognitive Grammar 8
1.3.2 Readers 9
1.4 Modelling the Author 9
1.5 Chapters in This Book 10
References 13
2 Cognitive Grammar 17
2.1 Cognitive Grammar and Cognitive Linguistics 17
2.2 Cognitive Grammar: Basic Parameters 19
2.3 Construal 20
2.4 Construal Phenomena 22
2.5 Specificity 23
2.6 Focusing 24
2.7 Prominence 25
2.8 Perspective 27
2.8.1 Dynamicity 28
2.8.2 Reference Points 30
2.8.3 Vantage Point 31
2.8.4 Subjective/Objective Construal 32
2.9 Cognitive Grammar in Stylistics 35
2.10 Construal Constraints 36
2.10.1 Construal and the World 36
2.10.2 Cognition and Context 36
2.10.3 Creativity and Construal: The Case of Metaphor 38
vii
viii CONTENTS
2.10.4 Construal and Creativity 39
2.10.5 Embodiment, Construal and the First World War 40
References 44
3 Observation 49
3.1 Introduction 49
3.2 Sassoon the Georgian Poet 51
3.3 Experience and Prophecy: The Poetry of 1916 54
3.4 ‘A Working Party’ 57
3.4.1 Background 57
3.4.2 Immediate Observation 58
3.4.3 Accessibility 61
3.4.4 Reference Point Relationships 63
3.4.5 Action 65
3.5 ‘The Rear-Guard’ 67
3.5.1 Background 67
3.5.2 Movement 68
3.5.3 Textual Attractors and Reference Points 72
References 77
4 Trauma 81
4.1 Introduction 81
4.2 Trauma and the First World War 83
4.3 Mind Style 87
4.3.1 Parameters of Mind Style 87
4.3.2 Mind Style and Cognitive Grammar 89
4.4 ‘Repression of War Experience’ 92
4.4.1 Background 92
4.4.2 Metaphor and Mind Style 94
4.4.3 Split Construal 98
4.5 Hauntings 101
4.5.1 Dreams and Visions 101
4.5.2 Absence 104
References 107
5 Blame 111
5.1 Introduction 111
5.2 Reacting Against the War 112
5.3 ‘A Soldier’s Declaration’ 115
5.4 Cognitive Grammar and Agency 118
5.5 Clause Structure 118
5.6 Mystification 120
5.7 Intentionality 122
5.8 Assigning Blame 123
5.9 Blame in Counter-Attack and Other Poems 124
5.9.1 ‘Killed’ 125
CONTENTS ix
5.9.2 ‘Die’ and ‘Death’ 127
5.10 Reading Blame Indirectly: ‘The General’ and ‘The Effect’ 131
5.11 Reading Intentionality and Irony in ‘Does It Matter?’ 134
References 141
6 Revision 143
6.1 Introduction 143
6.2 Two Prose Trilogies 144
6.3 War Books 146
6.4 Autofiction 148
6.4.1 The Sherston Trilogy as Autofiction 148
6.4.2 Cognitive Stylistics and Autofiction 150
6.5 Revision as Reconstrual 152
6.5.1 Literary Revisions 152
6.5.2 A Model of Reconstrual 153
6.6 Reconstruing Sassoon’s Diary in MFHM 154
6.6.1 Sherston and the War 154
6.6.2 Arriving in France and Dick Tiltwood 155
6.6.3 Omitting David Cromlech 159
6.7 Reconstruing ‘Died of Wounds’ 163
References 170
7 Reflection 175
7.1 Introduction 175
7.2 The Heart’s Journey 178
7.2.1 On the Threshold 178
7.2.2 ‘Farewell to a Room’ 180
7.3 Vigils and Rhymed Ruminations 184
7.3.1 Re-Journeying in Vigils 184
7.3.2 ‘My past has gone to bed’ 185
7.3.3 Time and Rhymed Ruminations 187
7.3.4 The Past Reborn 189
7.4 Sequences 192
7.4.1 The Spiritual and Religious 192
7.4.2 Metaphorical Construals 193
7.4.3 Image Schemas and Force Dynamics 195
7.4.4 ‘A Chord’ 198
References 200
8 Conclusion: Reading ‘Everyone Sang’ 205
8.1 Introduction 205
8.2 Recentring Sassoon 206
8.3 The Experience of ‘Everyone Sang’ 207
References 211
Index 213