[Vwoolf] New book

Wyatt Bonikowski wyattbonikowski at gmail.com
Tue Mar 12 12:24:27 EDT 2013


Dear Woolfians,

 I would like to announce the publication of my book, which includes a
chapter on _Mrs. Dalloway_. I was fortunate to be able to present a
part of this chapter at an MLA panel sponsored by IVWS in 2008,
organized by Brenda Helt. The title is _Shell Shock and the Modernist
Imagination: The Death Drive in Post-World War I British Fiction_,
published by Ashgate Press. Here is the description and a link to
book’s web page:

 http://www.ashgate.com/isbn/9781409444176

 "Looking closely at both case histories of shell shock and Modernist
novels by Ford Madox Ford, Rebecca West, and Virginia Woolf, Wyatt
Bonikowski shows how the figure of the shell-shocked soldier and the
symptoms of war trauma were transformed by the literary imagination.
Situating his study with respect to Freud’s concept of the death
drive, Bonikowski reads the repetitive symptoms of shell-shocked
soldiers as a resistance to representation and narrative. In making
this resistance part of their narratives, Ford, West, and Woolf
broaden our understanding of the traumatic effects of war, exploring
the possibility of a connection between the trauma of war and the
trauma of sexuality. _Parade’s End_, _The Return of the Soldier_, and
_Mrs. Dalloway_ are all structured around the relationship between the
soldier who returns from war and the women who receive him, but these
novels offer no prospect for the healing effects of the union between
men and women. Instead, the novels underscore the divisions within the
home and the self, drawing on the traumatic effects of shell shock to
explore the link between the public events of history and the intimate
traumas of the relations between self and other."

Thank you very much.

 Best,

 Wyatt Bonikowski
Assistant Professor
English Department
Suffolk University
Boston, MA




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