The Pragmatics of Romance in the First World War' Poetry

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jinan Kadhim Isma'eel ◽  
Rufaidah Kamal Abdulmajeed
Keyword(s):  
First World War ◽  
World War ◽  
War Poetry ◽  
The First World War ◽  
First World

The Motif of Sacrifice in the Literature and Culture of the Second World War

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark Rawlinson
Keyword(s):  
Short Stories ◽  
First World War ◽  
Second World War ◽  
Home Front ◽  
World War ◽  
War Poetry ◽  
Anglophone Literature ◽  
The First World War ◽  
Second World ◽  
First World

This chapter explores how Anglophone literature and culture envisioned and questioned an economy of sacrificial exchange, particularly its symbolic aspect, as driving the compulsions entangled in the Second World War. After considering how Elizabeth Bowen’s short stories cast light on the Home Front rhetorics of sacrifice and reconstruction, it looks at how poets Robert Graves, Keith Douglas, and Alun Lewis reflect on First World War poetry of sacrifice. With reference to René Girard’s and Carl von Clausewitz’s writings on war, I take up Elaine Cobley’s assertion about the differing valencies of the First and Second World Wars, arguing that the contrast is better seen in terms of sacrificial economy. I develop that argument with reference to examples from Second World War literature depicting sacrificial exchange (while often harking back to the First World War), including Evelyn Waugh’s Sword of Honour Trilogy (1952–61), and William Wharton’s memoir Shrapnel (2012).

The Scottish Soldier and Scotland, 1914–1918

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hew Strachan
Keyword(s):  
Military Service ◽  
First World War ◽  
World War ◽  
War Poetry ◽  
Literary Representation ◽  
The First World War ◽  
Local Impact ◽  
Big Cities ◽  
First World

This chapter addresses Scottish military service during the First World War, showing how from having underperformed before the war, Scotland overperformed during the war’s first two years. Particularly striking was how many recruits came from agricultural backgrounds, although in absolute terms the big cities still contributed more men. As the Territorial Army (TA) was the principal Scottish route into the army, the battle of Loos in October 1915 had an enormous local impact: this was Scotland’s equivalent of the Somme. Every Scottish infantry regiment was represented, and both the 9th and 15th Scottish Divisions were TA Lowland Divisions. From Loos came the literary representation of the war, especially Ian Hay’s The First Hundred Thousand and John Buchan’s war poetry. The effect of the First World War, with Scottish infantry regiments raising twenty-plus battalions, was to disseminate those regimental identities much more widely across Scottish society. An enhanced Scottish identity was created, and it emerged in a military context. Overwhelmingly this identity was set within the context of the Union and the empire.

‘We Are the Dead’: The War Poets, metal music and chaos control

2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 299-315 ◽  
Author(s):  
Arturo Mora-Rioja
Keyword(s):  
Chaos Control ◽  
First World War ◽  
World War ◽  
War Poetry ◽  
Metal Music ◽  
The First World War ◽  
Musical Resources ◽  
Religious Establishment ◽  
And Control ◽  
First World

During the course of the First World War, the generation of British authors known collectively as the War Poets revolutionized the popular culture of their time. Due to their changing attitudes towards armed conflict, their portrayal of war chaos included realist descriptions of life in the trenches, unusual choices of subject matter and an eventual challenge to the political and religious establishment of their time. Metal music, a genre with an inherent lyrical and musical concern about chaos and control, has crafted several songs inspired on the First World War poetry. This specific relationship has not been studied before. Based on Weinstein’s and Walser’s insights on chaos and control in metal music, the aim of this article is to evaluate the ability of metal music to either transmit or refute the War Poets’ discourse on chaos, and to study the textual and musical resources metal bands use to relay and control said discourse. For this purpose, I perform a comparative analysis of nine metal music adaptations and appropriations of six different First World War poems they are based on. A chronological path of the evolution of the First World War poetry is followed. The study concludes that, besides effectively transmitting or contesting the War Poets’ discourse on chaos, metal music exerts chaos control through its use of musical resources, especially in the case of extreme metal subgenres.

A War to Remember (2)

2021 ◽  
pp. 204-240
Author(s):  
Fatemeh Shams
Keyword(s):  
Emotional Responses ◽  
First World War ◽  
Islamic Republic ◽  
World War ◽  
War Poetry ◽  
Literary Traditions ◽  
The First World War ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
First World ◽  
Shed Light

As the war continued, and the death toll grew, some official poets began to engage with the conflict through greater degrees of realism. This chapter examines this aspect, and the ensuing complications in the relationship between poetry and the state, to present a nuanced, more complex portrait of the diversity of official war poetry. By drawing on other war literary traditions, such as English poetry during the First World War, this chapter aims to shed light on the ways in which the official poets of the Islamic Republic symbolized their emotional responses to war, depravation and trauma.

‘Cosmopolitan Sympathies’: Poetry of the First Global War

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jahan Ramazani
Keyword(s):  
Sigmund Freud ◽  
Theoretical Work ◽  
First World War ◽  
World War ◽  
War Poetry ◽  
National Differences ◽  
The First World War ◽  
Paul Gilroy ◽  
Global War ◽  
First World

In keeping with recent attention to the global dimensions of the First World War, this essay explores how Isaac Rosenberg, Thomas Hardy, Robert Service, Wilfred Owen, Mary Borden and other wartime poets seized on and developed the cosmopolitan potentialities of poetry, in the sense of grounded attachments that span specific cultural and national differences. While the anti-heroism of First World War poetry has been amply discussed, its overlapping but distinct capacity for imaginative solidarity across enemy lines, if often acknowledged, remains less fully explored. Drawing on the theoretical work of Paul Gilroy, Richard Rorty, Martha Nussbaum and Sigmund Freud, but above all attending to the poetry, this chapter examines First World War poems that not only state but linguistically, formally, and thematically enact what Rosenberg called ‘cosmopolitan sympathies’ with the enemy other.

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