ENGLISH 1C06 Lecture : History of English Literature Feb.16 "War Poetry"
7 Mar 2012
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Mechanization: dreadnoughts, airplanes, tanks, gas, big guns, zeppelins. Trench warfare: disease, waiting, death from above. Attrition: 9 million soldiers killed, shell shock. Public war: conscription, extensive photographic reporting, rationing, large scale propaganda. How literature can do the work of the state: glorification of death conquest through death, nationalism - england"s great in entirety, made personal, people as pieces of. England: dying for england, you become part of the eternal mind integration of the divine and nationalism; god as an englishman, chivalric bravery. Treated for shell-shock at craiglockhart (hospital for veterans), began writing war poems that became seminal british poetry of the modern condition. Contests the glorification of war found in brooke"s poem: no chivalry possible, retreat of beggars and hags. Death immediate and fully embodied: asking us to watch death"s grotesque work, psychological cost of warfare, no pastoral : a nightmare landscape. Structure: two overlapping sonnets, movement from i" to you".
