"Who in This World Knows Anything of Any Other Heart?": Ford Madox Ford and the New Cardiology

The Good Soldier (1915) is a novel famously preoccupied by disorders of the heart, whether real, invented, or misdiagnosed. This essay examines Ford Madox Ford's magnum opus in light of his own experiences of medical treatment (including in the spa town of Nauheim where the novel is set), showing just how directly it reflects contemporary innovations in the diagnosis and treatment of heart disease. These innovations were a result of the advent of ‘the new cardiology,’ a movement that sought to disaggregate cardiac and psychiatric diagnoses, bringing to an end a period in which doctors might consider emotions and desires ‘matters of the heart’ in a more than metaphorical sense. The essay aims, firstly, to illustrate how The Good Soldier captures a crucial moment in heart medicine, and secondly, to model an interdisciplinary approach to representations of affect and the body in modernist fiction that emphasises their enmeshment with early twentieth century medical culture.

This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement No 101023501.