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Literary Criticism General

Be a Good Soldier

Children's Grief in English Modernist Novels

by (author) Jennifer Fraser

Publisher
University of Toronto Press
Initial publish date
Nov 2011
Category
General, Marriage & Family
  • Hardback

    ISBN
    9781442643130
    Publish Date
    Nov 2011
    List Price
    $72.00
  • eBook

    ISBN
    9781442695511
    Publish Date
    Nov 2011
    List Price
    $60.00

Classroom Resources

Where to buy it

Description

In the modern era, children experiencing grief were encouraged to dry their tears and ‘be good soldiers.’ How was this phenomenon interrogated and deconstructed in the period's literature? Be a Good Soldier initiates conversation on the figure of the child in modernist novels, investigating the demand for emotional suppression as manifested later in cruelty and aggression in adulthood.

Jennifer Margaret Fraser provides sophisticated close readings of key works by Joseph Conrad, Virginia Woolf, and James Joyce, among others who share striking concerns about the concept of infantry — both as a collection of infants, and as foot soldiers of war. A phenomenon associated traditionally with Freud, Fraser instead uses a unique, Derridean theoretical prism to provide new ways of understanding modernist concerns with power dynamics, knowledge, and meaning. Be a Good Soldier establishes a pioneering, nuanced vocabulary for further historical and cultural inquiries into modernist childhood.

About the author

Jennifer Margaret Fraser holds a PhD in comparative literature from the University of Toronto.

Jennifer Fraser's profile page