ENGL 2655 Lecture Notes - Lecture 5: Stiff Upper Lip, Gobstopper, Stuttering
Document Summary
English: modern literature, poetry of first world war. Repression of war experience by sassoon: unrhymed iambic pentameter, good for drama, mind that is fighting itself - trying not to think about something o. War is present in both: speaker is giving traditional advice - don"t think about it, Masculinity = having a stiff upper lip, not showing emotion - which is disastrous in this case: sense of dead crowding in, have to remind the dead are being imagined. Dead = past coming back to live. Guns that whisper is paradoxical o: outside has shattered distinction between outside and inside, left mark inside subject, difficult to move from personal experience to an objective picture aka the story that is told by history. Treatment of shellshock which had become prominent and a problem. Ana - patient in 1980s - her cure was talking. Past is making itself felt in the presence in form of physical symptoms.
