‘The Very Complexion of the Mirror’

2015 ◽  
pp. 1-21
Author(s):  
Mhairi Pooler
Keyword(s):  
Henry James ◽  
First World War ◽  
The Self ◽  
World War ◽  
Autobiographical Writing ◽  
Reflective Surface ◽  
The First World War ◽  
Mixed Genre ◽  
The Moment ◽  
First World

The introduction’s title is taken from a quote by Henry James that underlines the book’s focus on the self-theorising artist: the idea that autobiographical writing shows the author’s mirrored reflection as well as an examination of the reflective surface itself. This idea is introduced alongside other key themes of the book, including the concern with genre, especially the mixed genre of ‘creative autobiography’ and how it compares with the Künstlerroman. The choice of authors studied and their interconnections are explained. It is described how each of the works focused on is a response to the moment of its composition – to the new century, to the shock of the First World War, to the experiments in self-expression or to the uncertainty of the interwar years – making Hans Georg Gadamer’s notion of the ‘historical horizon’ important to the study. This discussion dwells on Virginia Woolf’s idea that ‘human character changed’ in 1910.

‘The Cross, naturally’: Decorations in the Belgian Army and their effect on emotions, behaviour and the self, 1914–1918

2018 ◽  
Vol 26 (3) ◽  
pp. 358-383
Author(s):  
Rose Spijkerman
Keyword(s):  
Self Esteem ◽  
First World War ◽  
The Self ◽  
World War ◽  
The First World War ◽  
The Cross ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
First World

During the First World War, many soldiers in the Belgian Army were endowed with a decoration, in order to inspire, motivate, and reward desirable conduct. The relationship between decorations and the soldier’s self-consciousness, his behaviour and his emotions, is present in every aspect of decorating, as it emphasized his self-esteem, pride, and character. By analysing the material aspects of decorations, the ceremonies surrounding their bestowal, and the textual motivation for doing so, this article explores the functions and effects of decorating, the evaluation of behaviour and self-conscious emotions by both Army Command and soldiers.

New Liberalism and the City of London: Reassessing Empire, Finance, and Politics in Francis Hirst’s Economist, 1906–16

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexander Zevin
Keyword(s):  
Social Reform ◽  
First World War ◽  
British Politics ◽  
World War ◽  
The First World War ◽  
Run Up ◽  
The Moment ◽  
City Of London ◽  
The City ◽  
First World

Abstract The influence of the City of London on British politics has been a focus of controversy among historians. Likewise, the ‘death of liberal England’, during the years in which Liberals governed in the run-up to the First World War. The Economist, as the City’s leading liberal weekly, allows us to explore the connection between these themes, in ways that challenge scholarly assumptions about both. Under Francis Hirst, its editor and an influential New Liberal thinker in his own right, The Economist acted as a bridge between the realms of finance capital and political practice, at just the moment that a serious conflict appeared to divide them—over the new taxes and social reform measures in the People’s Budget of 1909–10. This article deploys Hirst and his tenure at The Economist—including his ejection in 1916 for supporting a negotiated peace during the First World War—to argue that finance and politics were deeply intertwined in liberal understandings of free trade, empire, and social reform by the turn of the twentieth century; in addition, it suggests that the conflicts that emerged at this time, over the interests of the City and how and if these were compatible with other economic, social, or political aims or actors, prefigured later, better-known clashes that have recurred in Britain down to the present.

‘A TWILIGHT SMELLING OF VERGIL’: E. E. CUMMINGS, CLASSICS, AND THE GREAT WAR

2014 ◽  
Vol 61 (2) ◽  
pp. 242-260
Author(s):  
Alison Rosenblitt
Keyword(s):  
First World War ◽  
Ambulance Service ◽  
Great War ◽  
World War ◽  
The First World War ◽  
The Moment ◽  
The Great War ◽  
First World

The opened door showed a room,about sixteen feet short and four feet narrow,with a heap of straw in the further end. My spirits had been steadily recovering from the banality of their examination; and it was with a genuine and never-to-be-forgotten thrill that I remarked,as I crossed what might have been the threshold : ‘Mais,on est bien ici.’A hideous crash nipped the last word. I had supposed the whole prison to have been utterly destroyed by earthquake,but it was only my door closing....Here, in a passage taken from the novelized version of his own imprisonment in France in 1917, the American modernist poet E. E. Cummings describes the moment of confrontation with the first of his prison cells. He had volunteered for ambulance service in France during the First World War, but his service lasted only a few months before he and his friend William Slater Brown were arrested and incarcerated – wrongfully suspected of espionage – in a brutal French detention camp at La Ferté-Macé.

Living Through Wartime

2021 ◽  
Vol 88 (3) ◽  
pp. 449-472
Author(s):  
Nicole A. N. M. Van Os
Keyword(s):  
Ottoman Empire ◽  
Social History ◽  
Military History ◽  
First World War ◽  
The Self ◽  
World War ◽  
The Social ◽  
The First World War ◽  
History Of ◽  
First World

Archival sources, but also self-narratives, newspapers, and periodicals, have been im- portant sources for political and military historians of the last two decennia of the Ot- toman Empire in general and the First World War in particular. In recent years, an increasing number of historians have become interested in more than the political and military history of the period. The field has been broadened to include social history. Conventional sources have been reread to get a better understanding of the effects of the War on the social domains and everyday life. Self-narratives have proven to be in- valuable sources for social historians working on the period. These self-narratives were not only produced by the men in charge, but by people from all walks of life: soldiers and civilians, men and women noted down their wartime experiences in their diaries or letters home and in memoirs and autobiographies. In most cases, the self-narratives used by historians were, however, those written by men in which women were objecti- fied. In this paper, the self-narratives of women living in the Ottoman Empire during the First World War are preliminarily explored to give them a voice and turn them into subjects rather than objects.

scholarly journals Politics and the War Effort in Russia: The Union of Zemstvos and the Organization of the Food Supply, 1914-1916

Slavic Review ◽  
1978 ◽  
Vol 37 (1) ◽  
pp. 70-90
Author(s):  
Thomas Fallows
Keyword(s):  
First World War ◽  
Fair Play ◽  
World War ◽  
The Public ◽  
Bolshevik Revolution ◽  
Practical Matter ◽  
The First World War ◽  
War Effort ◽  
The Moment ◽  
First World

Russian liberals can easily be cast as weakhearted idealists, devoted to Western notions of fair play and moderation and naively optimistic of the chances of seeing those principles brought to life in their own country. As the opposing forces of the state and the revolution build toward their climax in 1917, the liberal Hamlets often appear incapable of seizing the moment. Yet consider the efforts of the “public organizations”—the War-Industry Committees, the Union of Zemstvos, and the Union of Towns, as well as the Progressive Bloc in the Duma—to take over the practical matter of running Russia's war effort during the First World War. Prince George Lvov, head of the Provisional Government until the July Days of 1917, seems to personify this stereotype of well-meaning yet tragically ineffective liberalism on the eve of the Bolshevik Revolution, but it was this same figure who energetically directed the Union of Zemstvos during the war.

The Contemporary Commonwealth: A General View

1959 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 204-218
Author(s):  
Zelman Cowen
Keyword(s):  
United Kingdom ◽  
First World War ◽  
The Self ◽  
General View ◽  
World War ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
The First World War ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
First World

There is an old adage that beauty lies in the eye of the beholder. It is certain that the beauty, the utility, and the significance of the Commonwealth association appear very differently to its various members. This was true of the pre-war Commonwealth: between the end of the first world war and the beginning of the second there were marked differences of attitude among the members. The central problem was seen as the definition of the relationship between the United Kingdom and what were then described as the self-governing dominions. To South Africa, the Irish Free State, and Canada—in varying degrees—it was important that the relationship should be spelled out in terms which assured, so far as was possible through the medium of statute and the articulation of conventional rules, a status of equality between the United Kingdom and the dominions. To Australia and New Zealand the attempt at such a definition appeared undesirable; quieta non movere seemed to them the counsel of wisdom.

David Jones: The Heroic Vision

1962 ◽  
Vol 24 (1) ◽  
pp. 62-87 ◽  
Author(s):  
John H. Johnston
Keyword(s):  
World War I ◽  
Literary History ◽  
First World War ◽  
World War ◽  
The First World War ◽  
Contemporary Reality ◽  
The Moment ◽  
Rupert Brooke ◽  
Modern War ◽  
First World

ItIs one of the ironies of English literary history that World War I, the first great modern war, coincided with what C. Day Lewis calls ‘a period of very low vitality’ for poetry. There were no Edwardian or Georgian figures to match the stature of Tennyson or Browning; the main tendencies of the age were visible not in the genius of one or two master spokesmen but in the talents of a host of minor poets. These poets, reacting to the disintegration of nineteenth-century values and conventions, turned from the contemporary reality to the peace and certainty afforded by the mellow beauties of the English countryside. In the words of their most gifted representative, Rupert Brooke, the Georgians sought ‘to forget/The lies, the truths, and pain …’; poetry became a shelter, an escape, an anodyne, a nostalgic daydream. The first Georgian Poetry anthology (1912), as Vivian de Sola Pinto remarks, ‘is a strange collection to represent English poetry at the moment when Europe was preparing for the First World War and England's stability was being rocked by the constitutional crisis and the impending disruption of the Protestant ascendancy in Ireland.’ The characteristic qualities of Georgian poetry — its blandness, its decorum, its homogeneity, its simplicity of attitude — all reflect the decline of a once powerful imaginative vision. Lyric poetry had become a mere exercise of sensibility related neither to the modern reality nor to any intellectual or imaginative vision capable of assimilating it.

The good European in the Great War: Thomas Mann’s Reflections of an Unpolitical Man and the politics of self, nation and Europe

2016 ◽  
Vol 47 (1) ◽  
pp. 34-53 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Gordon Mann
Keyword(s):  
Weimar Republic ◽  
First World War ◽  
Thomas Mann ◽  
The Self ◽  
World War ◽  
German Culture ◽  
The First World War ◽  
Crisis Of Modernity ◽  
The Great War ◽  
First World

This article interprets Thomas Mann’s Reflections of an Unpolitical Man (1918) as a document of the reimagining of self, nation and Europe during the First World War. In this messy and mostly forgotten work, Thomas Mann created an identity that he adopted for the rest of his life: the artist-intellectual as the self-overcoming decadent and saviour of culture. He did this by mapping his heroic vision of Germany as the saviour of Europe onto his own artistic ethic of the self-overcoming decadent. I show how the Reflections allowed Mann to probe the unanswered questions operative in his own work and in his conflicting identities as an artist, an intellectual, a German and a European. Constructing the crisis of modernity according to the opposition of décadence v. Bildung, Mann called for a particularly German and artistic irony to mediate this conflict and preserve the authentic identities of self, nation and Europe. This heroic irony – used as a conservative defence of German culture during the war – would become, ironically, the basis of Mann’s endorsement of the Weimar Republic in 1922 and his future identity as a defender of liberal Europe.

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