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Scaling war: poetic calibration and mythic measures in David Jones’s In Parenthesis
David Jones’s In Parenthesis (1937) counters the reduction of the First World War to shorthand metaphors. The poem foregrounds how cliché, idioms and proverbs, transported to the battlefield, literalise. Drawing attention to the violence figured in everyday language, Jones faces a conundrum: How to call for a recalibration of the scale by which experience is measured without invoking ‘sense of proportion’, and, in so doing, laying down a universalising law? The question arises from consideration of the breaking of measuring instruments in the poem, and also Jones’s depiction of those who attempt to impose abstract standards unilaterally upon others. A partial resolution to the problematic connection between proportion and conversion is found in myth. Mythical analogy makes for a long and complex process of weighing up. Jones’s frustrations with the measuring instruments available to him can be linked to a more general attempt, one that has been associated with modernism, to find new representational modes. In Parenthesis seeks out means of communicating the excessive quality of war experiences without falling back on conventions and aggressive hyperbole.
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Publication status
- Published
File Version
- Accepted version
Publisher
Oxford University PressPages
280.0Book title
The First World War: literature, culture, modernityPlace of publication
OxfordISBN
9780197266267Series
Proceedings of the British AcademyDepartment affiliated with
- English Publications
Full text available
- No
Peer reviewed?
- Yes
Editors
Kate McLoughlin, Santanu DasLegacy Posted Date
2016-12-14First Compliant Deposit (FCD) Date
2016-12-14Usage metrics
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