‘There was a young girl of the Somme, / Who sat on a number five bomb’: The Representation of Violence in First World War Trench Newspaper Nonsense Rhymes

2018 ◽  
Vol 27 (2) ◽  
pp. 129-147 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emily Anderson
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
First World War ◽  
Young Girl ◽  
Great War ◽  
World War ◽  
The First World War ◽  
Active Service ◽  
First World

The nonsense rhymes that were almost ubiquitous in First World War trench newspapers (periodicals produced by servicemen while on active service) present vivid, humorous, and arresting representations of violence. This article draws attention to servicemen’s widespread use of limericks and parodic nursery rhymes to depict soldiers being, variously, shot, shelled, and bayoneted, and establishes the hitherto unrecognised representational significance of these poems. Those portrayals of the First World War most frequently celebrated for their truthfulness and emotiveness tend to be both solemn and, in different ways, ‘new’. In contrast, written in the traditions of nineteenth-century nonsense literature and reflecting the popularity of nonsense in contemporary comic periodicals, nonsensical trench newspaper poems indicate the durability of nonsense as a form of Great War representation.

scholarly journals Shell Shock and the Legacy of the Victorian Past in the Present: Remembering WWI in Pat Barker’s Another World

Humanities ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 26
Author(s):  
Elodie Rousselot
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
First World War ◽  
Great War ◽  
Great Success ◽  
The Novel ◽  
World War ◽  
Shell Shock ◽  
The First World War ◽  
The Great War ◽  
First World

In her 1998 novel Another World, Pat Barker draws from a topic on which she has written previously with great success—the First World War and the experiences of its combatants—and yet approaches that topic from a completely different perspective. The novel returns to the Great War to consider notions of ‘shell shock’, attitudes towards WWI veterans, and the problems surrounding remembering past violence, but what is perhaps surprising about Another World is that it uses a Victorian storyline to address these concerns, and presents the First World War through the means of references to nineteenth-century culture.

The Regime's ‘Musical Weapon’ Transformed: The Reception of Johann Strauss Sr's Radetzky March Before and After the First World War

2009 ◽  
Vol 134 (2) ◽  
pp. 243-269 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zoë Lang
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
First World War ◽  
Great War ◽  
World War ◽  
Contemporary Culture ◽  
The First World War ◽  
Before And After ◽  
The Great War ◽  
First World ◽  
The Revolution

Johann Strauss Sr's most famous composition, his 1848 Radetzky March, was premièred during revolutionary times. The March soon became a standard piece for Habsburg bands in the nineteenth century and was considered ideal for fostering patriotic sentiments at the start of the First World War. After the Great War, however, commentators portrayed the work very differently. No longer a part of contemporary culture, the Radetzky March now belonged to a bygone era. Biographers of the Strauss family found this work to be proof of Strauss Sr's support for the conservatives during the Revolution, a claim not supported by evidence. More generally, treating the piece as a relic from another age transformed it into a marker of nostalgia in the 1930s, as is best demonstrated in Joseph Roth's novel, Radetzkymarsch (1932).

A New History for a New Channel: The Great War and the Launch of BBC2

2017 ◽  
Vol 14 (3) ◽  
pp. 283-297 ◽  
Author(s):  
Taylor Downing
Keyword(s):  
First World War ◽  
Great War ◽  
World War ◽  
Front Line ◽  
Television History ◽  
The First World War ◽  
The Great War ◽  
First World ◽  
Intense Debate ◽  
Do So

This article considers the making of the BBC2 series, The Great War, and examines issues around the treatment and presentation of the First World War on television, the reception of the series in 1964 and its impact on the making of television history over the last fifty years. The Great War combined archive film with interviews from front-line soldiers, nurses and war workers, giving a totally new feel to the depiction of history on television. Many aspects of The Great War were controversial and raised intense debate at the time and have continued to do so ever since.

Great War Prostheses in American Literature and Culture

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aaron Shaheen
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
American Literature ◽  
Disability Studies ◽  
First World War ◽  
Great War ◽  
World War ◽  
Prosthetic Devices ◽  
The First World War ◽  
Recent Developments ◽  
First World

Drawing on rehabilitation publications, novels by both famous and lesser-known American writers, and even the prosthetic masks of a classically trained sculptor, Great War Prostheses in American Literature and Culture addresses the ways in which prosthetic devices were designed, promoted, and depicted in America in the years during and after the First World War. The war’s mechanized weaponry ushered in an entirely new relationship between organic bodies and the technology that could both cause and attempt to remedy hideous injuries. This relationship was evident in the realm of prosthetic development, which by the second decade of the twentieth century promoted the belief that a prosthesis should be a spiritual extension of the person who possessed it. This spiritualized vision of prostheses held a particular resonance in American postwar culture. Relying on some of the most recent developments in literary and disability studies, the book’s six chapters explain how a prosthesis’s spiritual promise was largely dependent on its ability to nullify an injury and help an amputee renew (or even improve upon) his prewar life. But if it proved too cumbersome, obtrusive, or painful, the device had the long-lasting power to efface or distort his “spirit” or personality.

Parallel lives or interconnected histories? Anagarika Dharmapala and Muhammad Barkatullah's ‘world religioning’ in Japan

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-24
Author(s):  
Samee Siddiqui
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
South Asian ◽  
First World War ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
World War ◽  
World Religions ◽  
The First World War ◽  
Parallel Lives ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
First World

Abstract This article compares the ideas, connections, and projects of two South Asian figures who are generally studied separately: the Indian pan-Islamist Muhammad Barkatullah (1864–1927) and the Sinhalese Buddhist reformer Anagarika Dharmapala (1864–1934). In doing so, I argue that we can understand these two figures in a new light, by recognizing their mutual connections as well as the structural similarities in their thought. By focusing on their encounters and work in Japan, this article demonstrates how Japan—particularly after defeating Russia in the Russo-Japanese War in 1905—had become a significant site for inter-Asian conversations about world religions. Importantly, exploring the projects of Barkatullah and Dharmapala makes visible the fact that, from the late nineteenth century until the outbreak of the First World War, religion played a central role—alongside nationalism, race, and empire—in conversations about the possible futures of the international order.

scholarly journals Translations of Novels in the Romanian Culture During the Long Nineteenth Century (1794-1914): A Quantitative Perspective

2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 87-106
Author(s):  
Ștefan Baghiu
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Quantitative Methods ◽  
First World War ◽  
Second Line ◽  
World War ◽  
American Novel ◽  
East European ◽  
The First World War ◽  
French Novel ◽  
First World

This article uses quantitative methods to provide a macro perspective on translations of novels in Romanian culture during the long nineteenth century, by modifying Eric Hobsbawm’s 1789-1914 period, and using it as spanning from 1794 (the first registered local publishing of a translated novel) to 1918 (the end of the First World War). The article discusses the predominance of the French novel (almost 70% of the total of translated novels), the case of four other main competitors in the second line of translations (or the golden circle, as named in the article: German, English, Russian, and Italian), the strange case of the American novel as a transition zone, and the situation of five other groups of novels translated during the period (the atomizing agents: the East European, the Spanish, the Austrian, the Nordic, and the Asian novel).

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