scholarly journals Propaganda, masculinity, and the French interwar novel

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Courtney Webster
Keyword(s):  
World War I ◽  
Gender Norms ◽  
Interdisciplinary Approach ◽  
Literary Representations ◽  
World War ◽  
French Military ◽  
Gender Performances ◽  
War Propaganda ◽  
Alternative Gender ◽  
Propaganda Posters

My dissertation centers on literary representations of non-normative gender performances, the struggle around new gender norms, and the lived realities of gender in pre- and post-World War I- (WWI) era France. The novels discussed in this study, L'Immoraliste (André Gide, 1902), Chéri and La Fin de Chéri (Colette, 1920 and 1926, repectively), and Voyage au bout de la nuit (Céline, 1932) all depict how WWI significantly disrupted French life and troubled gender roles in nearly all environments. The novels that I analyze reveal, in particular, how French manhood became a source of nationalist anxiety in this era, as masculinity was seen as weakened by prior French military defeats and the so-called "excesses" of the belle époque. Using an interdisciplinary approach, the dissertation puts WWI-era novels in dialogue with the visual culture of war propaganda found in French government-sponsored propaganda posters. As I show, propaganda posters heavily promoted heteronormative standards of French masculinity, disseminated images of the ideal French male as physically powerful, courageous, and ready to defend family and nation, and reminded young French men that they carried the weight of defending not only the nation, but the future of French masculinity and the health of the population more broadly. As my study argues, novels by Colette, Gide, Celine, and others call into question WWI propagandized gender norms by imagining alternative gender performances and creating spaces for self-determined gender performances. My dissertation thus argues that novels by Gide, Colette, Céline, and others demonstrate that the normative standards encountered in WWI propaganda were, in fact, fictions that belied the lived realities of gender.

Karikatur als Kriegsdienst: Aby Warburgs »neuer Stil zwischen Wort und Bild«, 1914–1918

2021 ◽  
Vol 84 (1) ◽  
pp. 78-95
Author(s):  
Dorothea McEwan
Keyword(s):  
Public Opinion ◽  
World War I ◽  
Military Service ◽  
Active Role ◽  
World War ◽  
Early Stages ◽  
War Effort ◽  
War Propaganda

Abstract This article attempts to throw a light on Warburg’s little-known engagement in political caricature during World War I. Though deemed unfit for military service, Warburg was eager to contribute to the German war effort. Perceiving Allied war propaganda as anti-German lies, he recorded what he considered its half-truths and falsehoods in his Kriegskartothek, or war archive. But Warburg, as indicated by his involvement with the short-lived La Guerra del 1914: Rivista illustrata in the early stages of the war, kept looking for a more active role in influencing public opinion: From privately commenting on the output of the Allied press, he went on to offering his own ideas for political caricatures to leading artists like Olaf Gulbransson and Max Slevogt, and to well-established satirical journals such as Simplicissimus and Kladderadatsch.

From Africa to Antarctica

2018 ◽  
pp. 54-87
Author(s):  
Mischa Honeck
Keyword(s):  
World War I ◽  
Youth Culture ◽  
Gender Norms ◽  
The Other ◽  
World War ◽  
Age And Gender ◽  
Age Appropriate ◽  
And Gender

This chapter explores how the BSA globalized the masculine myth of the frontier to combat the rise of a largely peer-regulated, frivolous, and sexualized youth culture in the 1920s. As the propagated “return to normalcy” after World War I had not led to a reinstatement of prewar gender norms but was contradicted by working and voting women as well as men struggling to find proper peacetime masculinities, Scout leaders rediscovered the foreign as a field to discipline youth and mold men. They arranged two spectacular expeditions, one to Africa and the other to Antarctica, which sent four Eagle Scouts abroad in the hope that their age-appropriate and consumer-friendly enactments of a young frontier masculinity would stabilize dominant hierarchies of age and gender. While the official narratives of these expeditions offered reassurance to white elites, the boys’ appropriations of manhood and empire were often idiosyncratic and inconclusive, pointing to the incongruities between adult projection and youthful experience.

scholarly journals Processes of Survival and Resistance: Indigenous Soldiers in the Great War in Joseph Boyden’s Three Day Road and Gerald Vizenor’s Blue Ravens

2018 ◽  
Vol 53 (s1) ◽  
pp. 375-394
Author(s):  
Brygida Gasztold
Keyword(s):  
North America ◽  
World War I ◽  
Racial Discrimination ◽  
Indigenous Peoples ◽  
Great War ◽  
Literary Representations ◽  
World War ◽  
Research Focus ◽  
Personal Experiences ◽  
The Great War

Abstract Joseph Boyden’s Three Day Road (2005) and Gerald Vizenor’s Blue Ravens (2014) offer literary representations of the Great War combined with life narratives focusing on the personal experiences of Indigenous soldiers. The protagonists’ lives on the reservations, which illustrate the experiences of racial discrimination and draw attention to power struggles against the White dominance, provide a representation of and a response to the experiences of Indigenous peoples in North America. The context of World War I and the Aboriginal contributions to American and Canadian wartime responses on European battlefields are used in the novels to take issue with the historically relevant changes. The research focus of this paper is to discuss two strategies of survival presented in Boyden’s and Vizenor’s novels, which enable the protagonists to process, understand, and overcome the trauma of war.

The Battle of El Herri in Morocco

2020 ◽  
Vol 46 (3) ◽  
pp. 9-30
Author(s):  
Caroline Campbell
Keyword(s):  
World War I ◽  
Oral Tradition ◽  
Primary Sources ◽  
World War ◽  
Archival Research ◽  
Gendered Violence ◽  
French Military

What does the French massacre of Amazigh people at El Herri in November 1914 reveal about broader patterns of colonial conquest? How do such patterns demonstrate the beliefs of French officers about the best way to conduct war at the beginning of World War I? Using extensive archival research, published primary sources, and Amazigh oral tradition, this article provides a narrative of the Battle of El Herri that analyzes the physical, sexual, and gendered violence that French troops exacted against Amazigh tribes. It argues that leading French military figures spun the “battle” to create a narrative that was racially inflected and self-serving. Led by Resident-General Lyautey, these leaders claimed that their philosophy of conquest was the only one that could result in successful war in Morocco, and by extension, Europe itself.

Natalia Milița Geormăneanu: Microistoria unei „nesupuse” ca demers în studiile de gen

Transilvania ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 9-17
Author(s):  
Maria Bucur
Keyword(s):  
World War I ◽  
Gender Norms ◽  
Veterans Administration ◽  
Gender Analysis ◽  
World War ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
The Past

This study uses microhistory as a useful method for gender analysis of the past, with a focus on the life and activities of Milița Geormăneanu, an unknown and yet revealing personality from interwar Romania. As a volunteer in World War I and then activist in a number of areas after the war, Geormăneanu was one of thousands of citizens of Romania who sought to claim benefits and rights on the basis of the new veterans’ administration legislation and policies during the 1920s and 1930s. Her unsuccessful campaign reveals important realities about the thinking of Romanian policy makers with regard to gender norms and expectations.

World War I Materials in the French Military Archives

1973 ◽  
Vol 37 (2) ◽  
pp. 60 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lee Kennett
Keyword(s):  
World War I ◽  
World War ◽  
French Military

The British Cabinet and the Anglo-French Staff Talks, 1905–1914: Who Knew What and When Did He Know It?

1985 ◽  
Vol 24 (1) ◽  
pp. 110-131 ◽  
Author(s):  
John W. Coogan ◽  
Peter F. Coogan
Keyword(s):  
World War I ◽  
World War ◽  
French Military ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
The First World War ◽  
Two Generations ◽  
The Government ◽  
The Military ◽  
First World

The role of the British cabinet in the Anglo-French military conversations prior to the First World War has been and remains controversial. The acrimonious debate within the government during November 1911 seems linked inextricably to the flood of angry memoirs that followed August 1914 and to the continuing historical debate over the actions and motivations of the various ministers involved. Two generations of researchers now have examined an enormous body of evidence, yet the leading modern scholars continue to publish accounts that differ on the most basic questions. Historians have proved no more able than the ministers themselves were to reconcile the contradictory statements of honorable men. The persistence of these differences in historical literature demonstrates both the continuing confusion over the cabinet's role in the military conversations and the need for a renewed effort to resolve this confusion.The starting point for any discussion of the staff talks must be the recognition that the meaning of the term changed significantly over the nine years before the outbreak of World War I. The contacts began with a series of informal discussions between senior British and French officers during 1905. The first systematic conversations took place early in January 1906 under the authority of Lord Esher, a permanent member of the Committee of Imperial Defence (CID), and Sir George Clarke, the CID secretary. Later in that month a small group of ministers, including Prime Minister Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman, sanctioned formal, ongoing exchanges between the two general staffs.

French Military War Aims, 1914–1916

1985 ◽  
Vol 28 (4) ◽  
pp. 887-899 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roy A. Prete
Keyword(s):  
World War I ◽  
Recent Book ◽  
World War ◽  
French Military ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Archival Documentation ◽  
War Aims ◽  
The Relationship

In his recent book, French war aims against Germany, 1914–1919, David Stevenson comes to the heart of the problem relative to the diplomatic prolongation of World War I. ‘No Government’, he asserts, ‘was willing to jettison its war aims in the interest of a compromise peace, or to place itself at the enemy's mercy while a chance of victory remained’. His work is to be applauded, therefore, for he has given us the first succinct and judicious account of the course of official French war aims from 1916 to 1919, enlarging upon a topic heretofore treated in scholarly articles. Using the wealth of archival documentation now available, and the private papers of numerous participants, Stevenson has made a major and much-needed contribution to our knowledge of the subject by tracing the relationship between official war aims policy, peace diplomacy and the diplomatic impact of allied policy on French war aims from their inception to the Versailles settlement.

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