Artistic experiment as the basis of the storytelling in the novel «Company K» by W. March
Abstract
The novel «Company K» by W. March, dedicated to the experience of an American in the World War I, is under consideration. The discreteness of the storytelling is noted. The story of 113 infantry characters acquires artistic integrity, forming a so-called collective hero – a literary subject that summarises individual small complementary episodes of human existence during the war. It allows the writer to approach the embodiment of the global armed conflict in a comprehensive manner. Typological parallels with Western European prose about the events of 1914 –1918 have been studied. The anti-war pathos of the work is emphasised, predetermined by the W. March’s biography as a military man. The main semantic dominants of the storytelling are analysed (the creation and destruction of a letter to the mother of a murdered man, the execution of German prisoners, the death of a soldier who got rid of his insignia to preserve the right to anonymity). Attention is drawn to the author’s experiments with the word, which was supposed to embody adequately the sound image of the battle or the feelings of a person who survived a gas attack.
References
- Gandal K. War isn’t the only hell: a new reading of World War I American literature. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press; 2018. 274 p.
- Matsen WE. The Great War and the American novel: mimesis and craft in selected fiction of Dos Passos, Boyd, March, and Hemingway [dissertation]. Grand Forks: University of North Dakota; 1990. 228 p.
- Donnelly T. Vogue diagnosis: the functions of madness in twentieth-century American literature [dissertation]. Eugene: University of Oregon; 2012. 360 p.
- Eilefson SL. The trauma thesis: medical and literary representations of psychological trauma in the twentieth century [dissertation]. Chicago: Loyola University of Chicago; 2015. 282 p.
- Lundberg D. The American literature of war: the Civil War, World War I, World War II. American Quarterly. 1984;3:373–388.
- Trout S. William March’s «Company K»: history, memory, and metafiction. First World War Studies. 2021;12:219–237. DOI: 10.1080/19475020.2022.2046481.
- Cobley E. Representing war. Form and ideology in First World War narratives. Toronto: University of Toronto Press; 1993. 261 p.
- March W. Company K. New York: Arbor House; 1984. 212 p.
- Lanoux A. [Henri Barbusse, or Trial by fire]. In: Barbusse H. Ogon’ [Fire]. Parnakh V, Moiseenko OV, translators. Moscow: Nauka; 1985. p. 439 –446. Russian.
- Plenkov O. [Notes on the diaries of the eternal nonconformist]. In: Junger E. Gody okkupatsii (aprel’ 1945 – dekabr’ 1948) [Years of occupation (April 1945 – December 1948)]. Streblova IP, translator. Saint Petersburg: Vladimir Dal’; 2007. p. 5– 42. Russian.
- Nedoseikin M. Roman L.-F. Selina «Puteshestvie na krai nochi»: chelovek v mire [L.-F. Céline novel «Journey to the end of the night»: a person in the world]. Moscow: Nauka; 2006. 222 p. Russian.
- Klein HM. Introduction. In: Klein HM, editor. The First World War in fiction. New York: The Macmillan Press Ltd; 1978. p. 1– 9.
Copyright (c) 2024 Journal of the Belarusian State University. Philology
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
The authors who are published in this journal agree to the following:
- The authors retain copyright on the work and provide the journal with the right of first publication of the work on condition of license Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial. 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0).
- The authors retain the right to enter into certain contractual agreements relating to the non-exclusive distribution of the published version of the work (e.g. post it on the institutional repository, publication in the book), with the reference to its original publication in this journal.
- The authors have the right to post their work on the Internet (e.g. on the institutional store or personal website) prior to and during the review process, conducted by the journal, as this may lead to a productive discussion and a large number of references to this work. (See The Effect of Open Access.)
