12-14 September 2013
Swansea University
Organised in Association with the Ford Madox Ford Society
Delegates to this year’s Ford Madox Ford conference, held at Swansea University and organised (and designed) by Geraint Evans, were treated to 20 papers over two days by scholars from France, New Zealand, Istanbul, the US, Australia and the UK.
Together, along with a Keynote delivered by Peter Marks (’Under surveillance eyes: Wells, Orwell, and The Good Soldier’), and Catherine Belsey’s Ford Lecture (‘The Good Soldier, Ford’s postmodern novel’) they proved to this listener at least just how much remains to be said about Ford’s most well-known and widely-analysed novel.
Papers ranged from comparative readings of Ford’s novel alongside those of contemporaries (Kipling, James), to contextual analyses (Dowell as nurse, eugenics, sympathy and sentimentalism), to new examinations of genre, gender, form and, not surprisingly, the precise nature of Ford’s contribution to the concept and performance of the unreliable narrator.I think in the end we decided Dowell knew quite a lot!
We had the opportunity to consider the 1981 TV adaptation of The Good Soldier, and the camera’s contribution to exploding the myth of ‘good people’, as well as hormones, luggage fetishes, rabbits and poisons. It was a packed two days, and thanks are due to Geraint, as well as Helen, and also the team of helpers at Swansea for making it such an enjoyable, wide-ranging and stimulating conference.
Geraint’s design of the event will, I am sure, become legendary in Ford annals. He has significantly raised the bar as to what is required from site management.
Sara Haslam