The Sound of Ford Madox Ford: War-Time, Impressionism, and Narrative Form

This article argues that sonic consciousness structured the time of the First World War for Ford Madox Ford. Sound was the primary medium of apprehension for trench soldiers, producing physical and psychic injury while signaling duration and eventfulness. Ford's frontline "notes on sound" to Joseph Conrad in 1916 explore the narrative possibilities of an auditory impressionism. As a shellshocked veteran, Ford discovered sound's inextricability from the sudden eruptions and lasting reverberations of trauma. Ford redeployed this convergence of sound, event, trauma, and temporality in the writing of the third novel of Parade's End, A Man Could Stand Up (1926).