WWI and the Literary Imagination

1. WWI and the Literary Imagination HUM 2213: British and American Literature II Spring 2013 Dr. Perdigao January 9-11, 2013

2. Modernization • From Victorian to modern • Modernization, modernity, modernisms • Morality: aestheticism, “art for art’s sake” • Education Act of 1870 in England—universal compulsory elementary education • Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee in 1897, changing times with fin de siècle • Between Victorian and modern—pessimism and stoicism • Social and technological change, mass relocation of populations by war, empire, and economic migration, mixing of cultures and classes in expanding cities

3. Ch-ch-changes • Electricity, cinema and radio, new pharmaceuticals developed (Greenblatt 1829) • Wireless communication, Wright Brothers flew first airplane (1903), Model T as first mass produced car (1913) (1829) • Modernity “disrupted the old order, upended ethical and social codes, cast into doubt previously stable assumptions about self, community, the world, and the divine” (1828) • Sigmund Freud’s Interpretation of Dreams in 1900 • Foundations of psychoanalysis • Max Planck’s quantum theory (1900) and Albert Einstein’s theory of relativity (1905) • Emphasis on uses of the past, ideas about the future (1829): • Yeats’ line “Things fall apart / the centre cannot hold” • Eliot’s “still point of the turning world” • Ezra Pound’s directive to “Make it new” • Gender constructs: Married Woman’s Property Act of 1882; women at university; suffragettes, women’s suffrage in 1918 for women 30 and over, 1928 for 21 and over (1830)

4. Nation and Identity • Anglo-Boer War (1899-1902): Britain and two republics, Orange Free State and South African Republic (Transvaal Republic), ends in British Victory • Edward VII (1901-1910): Edwardian period; sense of change and liberation (Greenblatt 1830) • George V, king in 1910, Silver Jubilee in 1935, died 1936, succeeded by son Edward VIII; Georgian period, lull before WWI (1830) • Effects of WWI in poetry by Owen, Sassoon, Rosenberg representing “major shifts in attitude toward Western myths of progress and civilization” (1830), disillusionment to follow • Beginning of WWI, nearly quarter of earth’s surface and world’s population under British dominion (1830) • Imperialist and anti-imperialist sentiments, independent nations under British Commonwealth • Irish nationalism • Easter Rising (1916)—revolt in Dublin • Southern counties Irish Free State (1921-22), Northern Ireland remained part of Great Britain (1831)

5. Poetics • Imagist movement, developed in London: “direct treatment of the ‘thing,’ whether subjective or objective’” (Greenblatt 1834) • Ezra Pound, T. S. Eliot—American poets abroad • Return to metaphysical poetry, John Donne’s 17th century poetics • Irony, wit, puns • Eliot—synthesis of metaphysical poetry, French symbolist, complexity, irony • Influence from art—French impressionist, postimpressionist, cubist painters, modern music

6. Narratology • 1920s—high modernism, “personal and textual inwardness, complexity, and difficulty” (Greenblatt 1838): “shattering of confidence in the old certainties about the deity and the Christian faith, about the person, knowledge, materialism, history, the old grand narratives” (1838) • New ideas about language as transparent medium, self as knowable, authority of writer, narrator, ordering of narrative (beginning, middle, ending) • Emphasis on perception, stream of consciousness techniques • 1930s and 1940s, “reaction against modernism,” “return to social realism, moralism, and assorted documentary endeavors” (1838) • 1960s onward, after collapse of British Empire, urban, proletarian, provincial English (e.g., northern), regional (e.g., Scottish and Irish), immigrant, postcolonial, feminist, gay perspectives asserted alongside a “continuing self-consciousness about language and form and meaning,” the “enduring legacy of modernism” (1838) • Postmodernism and postcolonialism • Joseph Conrad, James Joyce, Henry James, Virginia Woolf, D. H. Lawrence—creating the “modernist ‘English’ novel” (1838)

7. Remembrance • Twentieth century—modern, contemporary in American; post-War British • Freud—mourning and melancholia, no visible body after the war • Over 9 million soldiers killed in WWI (1 in 5) • From patriotic poems to poems questioning idea of war versus reality • Memorialization—how to represent loss • Cenotaph of Whitehall and Menin Gate: London, Kipling’s “The Glorious Dead,” Tomb of the Unknown Warrior nearby at Westminster Abbey; Ypres, Belgium, designed 1921, opened 1927, “To the greater glory of God,” “He is not missing. He is here.”

8. Memorialization

9. Rupert Brooke (1887-1915) • Son of headmaster, Rugby School, went on to King’s College, Cambridge • Published first book of poems in 1911 • Joined Royal Navy Division’s Antwerp expedition 1914 • Writing during 1914 • Dies on way to Gallipoli of blood poisoning and dysentery • First of the war poets to die, never experienced trench warfare; romanticism and idealism in his war poems • Yeats described him as “the handsomest man in England” • Buried in Skyros, Greece • Westminster Abbey, Poet’s Corner slate monument commemorated in 1985, inscription by Wilfred Owen: “My subject is War, and the pity of War. The Poetry is in the pity.” • Obituary: http://net.lib.byu.edu/english/WWI/poets/rbobituary.html • On Skyros: http://www.rupertbrookeonskyros.com/ • Skyros—Homer, where Achilles hides to avoid entering war

10. Romanticizing the war and poetry

11. Memorializing Brooke

12. Siegfried Sassoon (1886-1967) • Son of Alfred Sassoon and Theresa Thorneycroft • Educated at Marlborough College and Clare College, Cambridge, studied law and history • Out of patriotism, enlists, but kept from fighting because of broken arm • Brother Hamo killed at Gallipoli • Fought at Mametz Wood and in Somme Offensive in July 1916 • Earned Military Cross, nickname “Mad Jack” • Returned to England 1917 after struck by sniper’s bullet • Protest against war, authorities claim shell shock, is sent to Craiglockhart hospital near Edinburgh • Throws Military Cross into river before returning to duty • Returned to Western Front in 1918, wounded, sent home; Owen killed in 1918 • Pat Barker’s novel Regeneration (1991) based on Sassoon’s life, time in hospital

13. Psychoanalyzing Siegfried Sassoon http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/radio4/2009/11/morpurgo_reads_sassoon_on_pm.html

14. Remembering Sassoon

15. Poet’s Corner

16. Wilfred Owen (1893-1918) • Born in Oswestry, North of England; attended Birkenhead Institute and Shrewsbury Technical College • Family circumstances, after death of grandfather, moved to Birkenhead • Family could not afford tuition, failed to gain scholarship to University of London, worked as assistant to clergyman in 1913; took classes part-time at University of Reading; worked as teacher in France • Returned home in 1915, enlisted in Artists Rifles; began training course in Manchester Regiment, commissioned second lieutenant • 1917 shipped out, four months on front line; shell-shock, sent to Craiglockhart • Had been writing Romantic poems, shifts after war experience; “recuperates but distorts the conventions of the pastoral elegy, relocating them to scenes of terror, extreme pain, and irredeemable mass death” (Greenblatt 1971). • Returned to his regiment in November 1917, back to France, earned Military Cross in September 1918, killed November 4, 1918 • Telegram sent to parents on day Armistice ending the war is signed, November 11, 1918 • Poetry collection edited, introduced by Sassoon

17. Remembering Owen

18. Memorializing Owen

19. Freudian Slippage

20. Freud and Pop Culture

21. War culture • http://www.usmm.org/posterbuild1a.html • http://www.iwm.org.uk/