Handbook of British Literature and Culture of the First World War

Ralf Schneider, Jane Potter, Ralf Schneider, Jane Potter

• Publisher: De Gruyter
• Year: 2021
• eBook ISBN: 9783110422467
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: World History
• Index: Literature

The First World War has given rise to a multifaceted cultural production like no other historical event. This handbook surveys British literature and film about the war from 1914 until today. The continuing interest in World War I highlights the interdependence of war experience, the imaginative re-creation of that experience in writing, and individual as well as collective memory. In the first part of the handbook, the major genres of war writing and film are addressed, including of course poetry and the novel, but also the short story; furthermore, it is shown how our conception of the Great War is broadened when looked at from the perspective of gender studies and post-colonial criticism. The chapters in the second part present close readings of important contributions to the literary and filmic representation of World War I in Great Britain. All in all, the contributions demonstrate how the opposing forces of focusing and canon-formation on the one hand, and broadening and revision of the canon on the other, have characterised British literature and culture of the First World War.

Table of contents

• Editors’ Preface
• Preface
• Contents
• 0 Introduction
• Part I: Systematic Questions: Genres and Perspectives
• 1 The First World War in Poetry
• 2 Autobiographical Writing and the First World War
• 3 The Novel of the First World War
• 4 The Short Story of the First World War
• 5 The First World War in British Narrative Film and Television: From Visual Archive to Filmic Imagination
• 6 Gendering the First World War: Masculinity and Femininity in First World War Literary and Cultural Production
• 7 Indian Writings of the First World War
• Part II: Close Readings
• 8 Richard Aldington, Images of War (1919) and Death of a Hero (1929)
• 9 Enid Bagnold, A Diary Without Dates (1918) and The Happy Foreigner (1920)
• 10 Arnold Bennett, The Pretty Lady (1918)
• 11 Edmund Blunden, Undertones of War (1928) and War Poetry
• 12 Mary Borden, The Forbidden Zone (1929) and Sarah Gay (1931)
• 13 Vera Brittain, Testament of Youth (1933)
• 14 Ford Madox Ford, Parade’s End (tetralogy, 1924–1928)
• 15 Robert Graves, War Poetry and Goodbye To all That (1929)
• 16 Ivor Gurney, War Poetry
• 17 Thomas Hardy, War Poetry
• 18 Storm Jameson, That Was Yesterday (1932) and Mirror in Darkness (1934–1936)
• 19 David Jones, In Parenthesis (1937)
• 20 Rudyard Kipling, Poetry and Short Stories of the First World War
• 21 Vernon Lee, Satan the Waster (1920) and Peace with Honour (1915)
• 22 Rose Macaulay, Non-Combatants and Others (1916) and Other War Writings
• 23 Wilfred Owen, War Poetry
• 24 Ernest Raymond, Tell England (1922) and Other Writings
• 25 Isaac Rosenberg, War Poetry
• 26 Siegfried Sassoon, War Poems (1919) and The Complete Memoirs of George Sherston (1937)
• 27 R.C. Sherriff, Journey’s End (1928)
• 28 May Sinclair, A Journal of Impressions in Belgium (1915), War Poetry and Fiction
• 29 Virginia Woolf, Jacob’s Room (1922), Mrs. Dalloway (1925), To the Lighthouse (1927), The Years (1937) and Three Guineas (1938)
• 30 Joan Littlewood and the Theatre Workshop, Oh What a Lovely War (1963)
• 31 Susan Hill, Strange Meeting (1971)
• 32 Sebastian Faulks, Birdsong: A Novel of Love and War (1993)
• Index of Subjects
• Index of Names
• List of Contributors