The Writing of Anxiety : Imagining Wartime in Mid-Century British Culture

This study suggests that it was the representation of anxiety, rather than trauma and memory, that emerged most forcefully in mid-century wartime culture. Thinking about anxiety, Lyndsey Stonebridge argues, was a way of imagining how it might be possible to stay within a history that frequently undermined a sense of self and agency. "Whereas trauma and memory have come to dominate discussions of World War Two, Lyndsey Stonebridge suggests that it was in fact the representation of anxiety - a state in which we look forwards as well as backwards - that emerged most forcefully in mid-century wartime culture. For two crucial but understudied second generations, the psychoanalysts who came after Freud and whose work thrived in 1940s Britain, and the later modernists who had cut their teeth on the expressive verve of their First World War-shocked elders, thinking about anxiety, she argues, was a way of imagining how it might be possible to stay within a history that frequently undermined a sense of self and agency. There is a kind of madness to living in wartime that makes itself felt in our dreams, nightmares, fantasies and, above all perhaps, in our anxieties. With studies on the war in the nursery, the psychology of spectatorship in wartime, and war-guilt, The Writing of Anxiety is a timely description of what it means to imagine the experience of 'total' war"--Back cover "Cities are concrete realities. Words and images have long been used to describe the presence of cities and their physical impact on human life. From the nineteenth century to today, writers, critics, philosophers, architects and film-makers have shown conflicting attitudes towards the city, from rejection to idolatry. This book includes Baudelaire's Paris; Poe's urban fantasies; Hofmannsthal's and Musil's Vienna; Massimo Cacciari's Venice; and New York as conceived by Adolf Loos, Aldo Rossi, and Martin Scorcese. Cities, Words and Images reflects on the changes in human perception created by urbanization and the way in which these changes are expressed in the various arts, in terms of form and content. The urban theme is fundamental in order to understand modern art, whatever the media, and regardless of national frontiers."--Jacket Machine generated contents note: Acknowledgements vi Introduction by Colin MacCabe vii Part One: Essays I 1 Wallace Stevens' Harmonium: the Course of a Particular 3 2 On the Use of the Sonnet in Romeo and Juliet, or 'But Where's the Bloody Horse?' 52 3 The Community of Interpretation: T. S. Eliot and Josiah Royce 81 4 Hong Kong, Shanghai, the Great Wall: Bernard Shaw in China 110 Part Two: Essays II 5 The Comedy of Suffering 145 6 Totalitarian Logic: Stalin on Linguistics 164 7 Oaths and Laughter and Indecent Speech 189 8 On Linearity 212 Part Three: Memoirs 9 Piers in Hong Kong by Denis MacShane 253 10 Language: Black, White and Shades of Gray by Roy Harris 258 Index 261. Front Matter....Pages i-x Introduction: ‘Dreading Forward’: the Writing of Anxiety at Mid-Century....Pages 1-13 Anxiety at a Time of Crisis: Psychoanalysis and Wartime....Pages 14-32 The Childhood of Anxiety....Pages 33-54 Bombs and Roses: the Writing of Anxiety in Henry Green’s Caught....Pages 55-74 Bombs, Birth and Trauma: Henry Moore and D.W. Winnicott....Pages 75-91 The Writing of Post-War Guilt: Rose Macaulay and Rebecca West....Pages 92-114 Hearing Them Speak: Voices in Bion, Muriel Spark and Penelope Fitzgerald....Pages 115-134 Back Matter....Pages 135-173 "This final collection of Snead's writings range from Plato to basketball, from the classic European canon to film and television. It also publishes for the first time some of his short fiction. Years after his untimely death Snead's writings remain crucial to understanding the need to bring into conjunction the European tradition and African American culture in order to better analyse both. Snead's work is genuinely multidisciplinary crossing literature and film, English and German, black and white."--BOOK JACKET Providing new perspectives on British wartime writing and art, this book adds to contemporary trauma theory by shifting emphasis from memory to anxiety - a term which looks forward as well as back