Graham Greene calls
The Good Soldier“probably one of the finest novels of our century”; to Max Saunders, it is Ford Madox Ford's “masterpiece”, the novel that proves that the period of literary modernism is as much Ford Madox Ford's era as it is Pound's, or Eliot's, or Joyce's. It emerged out of the crucible of a literary London dominated by the literary Cubists, and by the Vorticists, Imagists and other 'riotous
jeunes“, a phrase Ford Madox Ford used to signify his feeling that he was an “Old Man” of letters, past his chronological best, when the novel appeared. He termed it his “great Auk's egg”, to signify his intention to continue supporting those “riotous
jeunes“, rather than competing with them in what was now their world. (This intention was necessarily…
2152 words
Citation: Haslam, Sara. "The Good Soldier: A Tale of Passion". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 08 January 2001 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=714, accessed 28 November 2024.]
