‘To Inhabit in Tranquility’: Landscape, Vision and Empathy in Ford Madox Ford’s No Enemy

Abstract

In Ford Madox Ford’s No Enemy, the mortal threat posed by the war affects the forms and even the possibility of empathy. After showing how he participates in contemporary discourses on Einfühlung, I investigate his musings on the distortions of his sympathetic imagination and his grief for mutilated territories. The aim is to show how rare surreal visions of landscapes untouched by the war offer him the possibility of reconnecting himself with the deepest thoughts, fears and longings of his fellow beings. Recent psychological research on different levels of empathy and its impairment under stress provide the conceptual framework of my analysis.

DOI: 10.17456/SIMPLE-130

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