Digging Out Characters: Elizabeth von Arnim in Virginia

2019 ◽  
pp. 115-131
Author(s):  
Ann Herndon Marshall
Keyword(s):  
First World War ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Katherine Mansfield ◽  
World War ◽  
Country House ◽  
The First World War ◽  
Vera Brittain ◽  
Albemarle County ◽  
War Experience ◽  
First World

During both world wars, Elizabeth von Arnim sought sanctuary in Albemarle County, Virginia. The country house, Clover Fields, left its mark on her war novel Christine. She struggled with her own grief as she wrote of Christine’s trials. The war experience underlying the novel comes into clearer focus when compared with the writing of two contemporaries who were equally affected by the First World War, Katherine Mansfield and Vera Brittain. On her second visit to Virginia at age 73, she was again an exile, this time from home in France. As in 1917, she was angry at the American reluctance to enter the war. Preoccupied with her dog Billy, she found a perfect landlady and developed a fascination with Virginia author Amélie Rives. The resemblance of a Charlottesville man to her long-dead husband Henning evoked nostalgia for her days in Prussia and allowed her to reconcile with Henning’s ghost in a way reminiscent of Fanny Skeffington’s late equanimity.

scholarly journals Two 1916s: Sebastian Barry’s A Long Long Way

Humanities ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 60
Author(s):  
Allison Haas
Keyword(s):  
20Th Century ◽  
First World War ◽  
British History ◽  
The Novel ◽  
World War ◽  
Irish Nationalism ◽  
Easter Rising ◽  
The First World War ◽  
War Experience ◽  
First World

As Paul Fussell has shown, the First World War was a watershed moment for 20th century British history and culture. While the role of the 36th (Ulster) Division in the Battle of the Somme has become a part of unionist iconography in what is now Northern Ireland, the experience of southern or nationalist Irish soldiers in the war remains underrepresented. Sebastian Barry’s 2005 novel, A Long Long Way is one attempt to correct this historical imbalance. This article will examine how Barry represents the relationship between the First World War and the 1916 Easter Rising through the eyes of his politically-conflicted protagonist, Willie Dunne. While the novel at first seems to present a common war experience as a means of healing political divisions between Ireland and Britain, this solution ultimately proves untenable. By the end of the novel, Willie’s hybrid English–Irish identity makes him an outcast in both places, even as he increasingly begins to identify with the Irish nationalist cause. Unlike some of Barry’s other novels, A Long Long Way does not present a disillusioned version of the early 20th century Irish nationalism. Instead, Willie sympathizes with the rebels, and Barry ultimately argues for a more inclusive Irish national identity.

The Short Career of the Indian Labour Corps in France, 1917–1919

2015 ◽  
Vol 87 ◽  
pp. 27-62 ◽  
Author(s):  
Radhika Singha
Keyword(s):  
Military Personnel ◽  
First World War ◽  
Newspaper Coverage ◽  
One Dimension ◽  
World War ◽  
The First World War ◽  
The Status ◽  
War Experience ◽  
Social Agendas ◽  
First World

AbstractThis essay adds the story of the Indian Labour Corps (ILC) to the narratives of the various “coloured” units brought in to France to deal with the manpower crisis that had overtaken that theater of the First World War in 1916. The label “coloured” or “native labour” justified inferior care and a harsher work and disciplinary regime than that experienced by white labor. However, official reports and newspaper coverage also expose a dense play of ethnographic comparison between the different colored corps. The notion was that to “work” natives properly, the managerial regimes peculiar to them also had to be imported into the metropolis. The register of comparison was also shaped by specific political and social agendas which gave some colored units more room than others to negotiate acknowledgement of their services. One dimension of the war experience for Indian laborers was their engagement with institutional and ethnic categorizations. The other dimension was the process of being made over into military property and the workers own efforts to reframe the environments, object worlds, and orders of time within which they were positioned. By creating suggestive equivalences between themselves and other military personnel, they sought to lift themselves from the status of coolies to that of participants in a common project of war service. At the same time, they indicated that they had not put their persons at the disposal of the state in exactly the same way as the sepoy.

scholarly journals Podatek od zysków wojennych w polskim systemie danin jako źródło finansowania kosztów wojny polsko-bolszewickiej

2021 ◽  
Vol 43 (3) ◽  
pp. 395-406
Author(s):  
Dobrosława Antonów
Keyword(s):  
Social Function ◽  
First World War ◽  
World War ◽  
The First World War ◽  
Additional Burden ◽  
History Of ◽  
War Experience ◽  
First World

The paper draws attention to one of the emergency taxes in the history of the Polish Treasury, i.e. a tax on war profits. It was levied under the Decree of 5 February 1919 on the Establishment of a Tax on War Profits. This levy introduced a concept which was developed in Europe and built on the First World War experience. In the reborn Poland, the tax was supposed to have two functions: fiscal — as a source of financing the extraordinary expenditure arising from the war against the Soviets and a social function — as an additional burden on those taxpayers who were able to accumulate wealth and earn substantial profits as a result of the First World War.

scholarly journals ‘Weeping tears of blood’: exploring Italian soldiers' emotions in the First World War

Modern Italy ◽  
2012 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. 171-184 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vanda Wilcox
Keyword(s):  
First World War ◽  
Vital Role ◽  
Cultural Norms ◽  
World War ◽  
Cultural Elements ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
The First World War ◽  
History Of ◽  
War Experience ◽  
First World

Emotion plays a vital role in any rounded history of warfare, both as an element in morale and as component in understanding the soldier's experience. Theories on the functioning of emotions vary, but an exploration of Italian soldiers' emotions during the First World War highlights both cognitive and cultural elements in the ways emotions were experienced and expressed. Although Italian stereotypes of passivity and resignation dominated contemporary discourse concerning the feelings and reactions of peasant conscripts, letters reveal that Italian soldiers vividly expressed a wide range of intense emotions. Focusing on fear, horror and grief as recurrent themes, this article finds that these emotions were processed and expressed in ways which show similarities to the combatants of other nations but which also display distinctly Italian features. The language and imagery commonly deployed offer insights into the ways in which Italian socio-cultural norms shaped expressions of personal war experience. In letters that drew on both religious imagery and the traditional peasant concerns of land, terrain and basic survival, soldiers expressed their fears of death, isolation, suffering and killing in surprisingly vigorous terms.

Women In and Out

2020 ◽  
pp. 52-74
Author(s):  
Gemma Moss
Keyword(s):  
First World War ◽  
Male Sexuality ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Considerable Influence ◽  
Female Characters ◽  
World War ◽  
Economic Success ◽  
Difficult Time ◽  
The First World War ◽  
First World

Women exerted a considerable influence on Maurice, even though admirable female characters are absent from the narrative. Before the First World War, a sexually conservative reform movement called Social Purity was bringing male sexuality under particular scrutiny, making this a difficult time for Forster to be claiming that homosexuality was not morally wrong. Interpreted against this background, Maurice can be read not as a rebellion against attenuated Victorian attitudes or against women but as a challenge to the contemporary social purity movement. In this context – the difficulty of talking about homosexuality, of which the novel explores the effects – the willingness of Forster’s friend and confidante, Florence Barger, to discuss homosexuality also needs to be seen as significant. She contributed to Forster’s ability to represent homosexuality as a valid alternative to bourgeois masculinity that equated heterosexuality with morality, health and economic success.

scholarly journals Una creadora olvidada: Irène Hillel-Erlanger, entre el simbolismo y las vanguardias

Çédille ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 313-332
Author(s):  
Isabel González Gil ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Science Fiction ◽  
First World War ◽  
The Novel ◽  
World War ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
The Gaze ◽  
Main Work ◽  
The First World War ◽  
First World

"This article is about an unknown author of the French avant-garde, Irène Hillel-Erlanger, and her main work, Voyages en kaléidoscope, an unusual poetic novel, published in 1919, belonging to the genre of the “Scientific-marvellous”, the proto-science-fiction developed in France between 1900 and 1930. As a result of the hybridisation of the languages of symbolism and avant-garde experimentalism, the novel shows the tensions between these two movements, which will be studied through the analysis of thematic and formal aspects, such as allegory, hermeticism, fragmentarism, or visuality, as well as textual and discursive plurality. Finally, we will address the poetics of the gaze underlying the utopian invention of the kaleidoscope, in the context of the end of the First World War. "

scholarly journals The poetics of Vasyl Stefanyk’s story «Children’s Adventure»

2021 ◽  
pp. 24-34
Author(s):  
Ольга Цівкач
Keyword(s):  
First World War ◽  
New Method ◽  
Emotional Expressions ◽  
The Novel ◽  
World War ◽  
Running Away ◽  
The First World War ◽  
Great Force ◽  
First World

Aim. The article analyses the means of using a new method of storytelling with elements of the poetics of behaviourism, which deeply showed the consequences and impact of the First World War on the lives of civilians in the sphere of hostilities. The heroes of the novel are little children who were running away from the soldiers and found themselves in the dark woods near a fatally wounded mother. The hero of the novel Vasilko, a boy of six or eight years, must fulfil the prayer of a dying mother and save his sister Nastya, who is very young and cannot even speak. The novelty of the author of the novel does not describe Vasylko’s inner emotions, but using the poetics of behaviourism, shows only the actions of the boy and his behaviour in these circumstances. The novel is devoid of emotional expressions, conveys the boy’s behaviour, his actions caused by external pathogens. The author with great force conveys his attitude to the war and its inhumane nature.

scholarly journals Matthew's Legs and Thomas's Hand: Watching Downton Abbey as a First World War Historian

2019 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 78-93
Author(s):  
Jessica Meyer
Keyword(s):  
Social History ◽  
Psychological Trauma ◽  
First World War ◽  
British Society ◽  
Past Century ◽  
World War ◽  
The First World War ◽  
Historical Accuracy ◽  
War Experience ◽  
First World

From its first series in 2010, the ITV television drama Downton Abbey laid claim to representing early twentieth-century British society with great historical accuracy while being lambasted by critics for presenting a sanitised version of modern British social history. This article looks at how the programme was drawn, over the course of its broadcast between 2010 and 2015, into a wider discussion of the representation and commemoration of the First World War and debates about accuracy and authenticity in fictional depictions of the war which date back at least to 1915. Locating the discussion in the historiography of the cultural commemoration of the war in Britain, it will examine three particular military medical storylines – Matthew's paralysis, Thomas's self-mutilation of his hand, and the servants' reactions to Archie's psychological trauma – to examine how the drama reflects both the historic reality of the war's impact and the myths of war experience which have developed within British culture over the past century. In doing so, it will argue that Downton demonstrates both the advantages and drawbacks of invoking historical accuracy and authenticity to locate representations within historic narratives of the First World War in Britain.

scholarly journals “Like being trapped in a drum”: The Poetics of Resonance in Frances Itani’s Deafening

2018 ◽  
pp. 201-232
Author(s):  
Rūta Šlapkauskaitė
Keyword(s):  
First World War ◽  
The Body ◽  
The Novel ◽  
World War ◽  
Life And Death ◽  
Phenomenological Experience ◽  
The First World War ◽  
Theoretical Reasoning ◽  
The Great War ◽  
First World

This paper considers how Frances Itani’s Deafening imaginatively rethinks our understanding of the Great War in the age of postmemory. Seeing as the novel is set in Canada and Europe during the First World War and takes as its protagonist a deaf woman, the poetic attention given to the senses as a horizon of phenomenological experience magnifies the moral bonds that the characters establish in defi ance of both deafness and death. Guided by the theoretical reasoning of Marianne Hirsch, Elaine Scarry, and Alison Landsberg as well as contemporary phenomenological thinking, most significantly that of Edward S. Casey, Steven Connor, Michel Serres, and Jean-Luc Nancy, this paper examines how the novel’s attentiveness to the materiality of the body in regard to the ethical collisions of sound and silence as well as life and death contributes to a poetics of resonance that generates prosthetic memories, turning the anonymous record of war into a private experience of moral endurance inscribed on the ear of historical legacy.

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