ENGL 2655 Lecture Notes - Lecture 8: World War I, Softcore Pornography, Munitionettes
Document Summary
English: modern literature, poetry of first world war. An attempt to grapple with the problem of memory and masculine identity. Three short stories where masculine identity is compromised and questioned raise questions that are difficult to answer. Yellowing implied link with femininity, the munitionettes (= the women who worked assembling shells in britain during the war, and the tnt had the effect of turning their skin yellow) Wants to reestablish his relationship to the earth through the proximity to animals. He gets his dog and names it carp at the same time he is breaking things off with his girlfriend. Animal friend (french poodle) becomes strange mediator for cairn"s relationship to women and men. His return to the trenches is an escape, an escape via death. Why the relationship to his own gender and his gender in distinction from femininity should be conquer-ized in the form of this french poodle.
