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ABSTRACT
Poems written during World Military I provide light on the conflict's psychological, emotional, and social effects by
reflecting the close relationship between historical background and military themes. World War I, with its
unprecedented use of mechanized combat and massive casualties, provided poets with a historical context that
significantly impacted their portrayal of the conflict. As a result of the horrors of trench warfare, the loss of youth,
and the doubting of nationalistic principles, writers such as Rupert Brooke, Siegfried Sassoon, and Wilfred Owen
became increasingly skeptical and disillusioned with their earlier levels of patriotism. Topics covered include the
emotional toll on soldiers, the brutality of battle, and the exaltation of sacrifice, all impacted by the historical context
of the Great War. Poems serve as both memorials and critiques of the war experience, and this research emphasizes
the significance of poetry in this process through textual analysis of essential poems. Thus, it sheds light on poetry's
more significant cultural and historical role during World War I in influencing public recollection and comprehension
of the conflict.
KEYWORDS
Themes of War, Historical Context, World War I.
Research Article
THE INFLUENCE OF HISTORICAL CONTEXT ON THE THEMES OF WAR IN
WORLD WAR I POETRY
Submission Date:
October 06, 2024,
Accepted Date:
October 11, 2024,
Published Date:
October 16, 2024
Crossref doi:
https://doi.org/10.37547/ajsshr/Volume04Issue10-15
Hasan Nassif Jassim
Applied biotechnology department, College of Biotechnology, Al-Qasim Green University, Babylon
Province5103, Iraq
Maytham Obada
College of Computer Sciences and Information Technology, University of Al-Qadisiyah, Al-Qadisiyah, Iraq
Journal
Website:
https://theusajournals.
com/index.php/ajsshr
Copyright:
Original
content from this work
may be used under the
terms of the creative
commons
attributes
4.0 licence.
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INTRODUCTION
World War I poetry captures the experiences and
feelings of the time. However, much of it is not written
from a completely interconnected view, nor does it
address the same overarching themes. The context of
the many generally incomplete drafts of such poetry is
centered upon the lives and perspectives of individual
soldiers, making it more personal and less directly
focused on the end of the war or the course of duty, as
seen in the chapter and verse of newspapers and other
literature at the time. Perhaps most influentially, the
battle taking place from 1914 to 1918 forces soldiers to
endure lengthy periods of warfare, heightening the
intense emotion that is developed and shows through
the individualism cast by loss and frustration on the
people who are attempting to exist.
Many men write of the transition from their previous
state as boys or other young people with mothers,
coming from distinctly different backgrounds in
villages or towns and from farms in regions across the
United Kingdom, into authors and military personnel in
the war. Some discuss the connection between the
people who do not fight and those who are fighting,
intertwining the conscience of the people and their
own with the reason for fighting. None of these
authors has the same conviction; however, they state
that the lack of understanding and commiseration
from people in the United Kingdom only increases the
solidarity of the men with each other and permits them
emotional space to exist in. The sorrow that streams
from the writing of First World War poets still
resonates with readers nearly a century on, in defiance
of the change of tone in favor of clean language that
many poets have seen imposed.
Background of World War I Poetry
World War I poetry has long been an integral part of
the British A-level English Literature syllabus because
of the brutal war context in which it was written.
Although written at different times in the war, this
poetry presents a theme that remains throughout,
detailing how war bears an irreversible impact upon its
soldiers. War-related poetry before the start of World
War I was always romantic, expressing an interest in
the adventure of battle rather than the consequences
a soldier would face before, during, and after battle.
This idea is seen in works by men such as Alfred
Tennyson and W. B. Yeats, who wrote about a soldier
and his romantic conflict with a fair maiden. Following
the outbreak of World War I, poetry morphed into
being focused on explaining the harsh truths of war,
reflecting the experiences of those who had been in
battle; two of the most popular figures encapsulating
the idea of this new war poetry were the voices of
Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen.
Poetry of this new era was written about the true
experiences of battle, and every last detail about the
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physical toll the battle took on a soldier became
illustrated in a haunting, visceral way. Whereas older
war poetry attempted to depict the war as a noble
enterprise, the new war narratives showed the men on
the front lines as mere cattle. The new poetry depicted
physical and emotional injuries considered taboo in the
past as standard subject fare. This war poetry faction
argued that men who had been to the front were the
only ones qualified to speak on war and that the new
poetry exposed the brutality of war in a way that it had
never been exposed before. The poetry by these two
uniquely evocative figures is centered on the idea of
facing death, and their reflections in writing reveal the
traumatic toll war took on the souls of its soldiers.
Importance of Historical Context in Literary Analysis
Many consider historical context to be an essential part
of literary analysis because it can provide rich insights
into themes, expression, form, and narrative that
shape individual works of literature. This paper
connects poetry produced during and after the First
World War to the ideas and social climate surrounding
the war. Numerous historians and poets have
considered the effect that posters, slogans, and
political leaders have on public thinking. It is also easy
to suggest that, at times, changing public mood and
opinion demand the creation and publishing of specific
poetry. Such assertions can increase or decrease the
richness of a given work.
The tone, form, and language of this poetry often
function as an encoded space in which the poet battles
with themselves and not always an accurate reflection
of the poet’s experiences. Thus, the subjects of
heroism, anti-heroism, and the campaign abroad are
neither the true subject of this paper, nor are they
intrinsic to the human experience generally, which
includes a myriad of other emotional priorities. Rather,
they must become peripherally important to the
content of this paper so that a departure point from
which to begin the examination of the process by
which the historical moment created a narrative. The
interconnectedness of literature and history is vast and
unending and takes many forms. It is my hope that the
following pages can illuminate potential directions
along which history had an active influence on
literature.
HISTORICAL CONTEXT OF WORLD WAR I
World War I began in 1914, two years after the first big
event that triggered the war’s outbreak. This war was
considered the “Great War” because a great number
of countries were embroiled in a state of conflict. The
biggest in Europe were Britain, Germany, Russia,
France, Austria-
Hungary, and Italy. Then, the nations’
alliances eventually supported the conflict. The
countries enlarged their mutual support system across
the continents. This network of alliances was mainly
set up to keep peace, but instead it dragged the
countries into trespassing one by one when the
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archduke of Austria-Hungary, Archduke Franz
Ferdinand, was assassinated in Sarajevo. The idea of
nationalism, imperialism, and militarism contributed to
the development of a complex cross-national
community in Europe. The additional conflict countries
of the Entente joined Britain and France.
The war front line had two roads: the western front line
and the eastern front, which were very intense. The
eastern front extended from the coast of the Baltic Sea
and broke out in eastern Germany, which was under
Russian control. The western front was dominated by
trenches from the Alps to the North Sea and from far
France. World War I was the largest and most
significant conflict of the time. Global technology and
infrastructure were developed for the war. The
suitable technology and weaponry were advancing.
World War I turned into a coordinator of advanced
weaponry: guns, incendiary devices, mortars, toxic gas,
tanks, warplanes, and submarines. The psychological
aspect of the war was the rivalry between countries
over mastery.
Causes and Events of World War I
By the early 20th century, rivalries and alliances
between powers in Europe had emerged between
forces that had been part of a balance to support
peace since the reign of Queen Victoria in England. The
nations involved had partly prepared for the events
that would eventually bring on war, and many press
clippings and magazine articles of the era reflected
tension throughout Europe. With the formation of two
different alliances in 1914, just weeks following the
killing of Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand at the
hands of a Serbian nationalist, World War I ensued.
After declaring war, the troops did not see the sort of
limited, short-and-sweet battle presumed by leaders
on both sides. Instead, for the next four years, millions
were forced to endure battles such as the fighting in
Belgium or along the French-German border.
To wage any conflict, a strategy is needed, and several
commanders enlisted in various plans. General Alfred
Joffre of France, keen to reach a breakthrough, opted
for punitive strikes on German forces in a bid to break
lines and force a breach. At the outset, these tactics led
to few men being killed; this was due mostly to the
previous battles fought on German soil. The “race to
the sea” to the west ended in 1914; trenches multiplied
as space dwindled just outside the Belgian port of
Ostend. In early 1915, Joffre opted to go on the
defensive while he coordinated the largest advance in
French military history that the world had seen in the
Champagne. At the same time, to the west, English and
Belgian forces, as well as the French, held their own
against the German military, surrounded by
unoccupied French territory on three sides. There were
periods when trench offensives shifted no more than
50 yards within days or weeks. Hundreds of thousands
of men fighting on both sides died over small but
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significant patches of ground. Raised on this
chronology, the works of the soldier poets and other
writers remain reflective of it, incited by the urgent
need to fix the situation and disbelief and despair at
the task to come.
Social and Political Climate
World War I has often been compared to an
earthquake by historians. Just as an earthquake
fundamentally changes the geological landscape, so
too did the First World War alter the political, social,
and military landscape of the 20th century. It is the
poets of that era who best depict that historical
context. The war had served to prolong and intensify
the mission of the soldier. No longer simply the
protector of the state, the modern soldier had become
the embodiment of the state's ideal citizen and the
guardian of the Enlightenment spirit, battling the
darkness of a past that was anti-national and,
therefore, retrograde. This is reflected in the war
poetry of the time, including the poetry of Brooke, who
in his poems epitomizes the 'officer class.' Throughout
the war, nationality and its attendant patriotism were
not simply uniting forces but were also powerful
dividers between those who belonged to a certain
nation and those who did not. The propaganda
machinery of the governments during the war acted as
a catalyst to this very process. Nationalistic attitudes,
combined with the fear of subversion, helped engrain
war paranoia in the public consciousness. Fear and an
'us versus them' mentality were common symptoms.
Street names, the exhibition of enemy trophies, the
incarceration of various 'enemy' peoples - which
extended beyond those initially suspected as enemy
aliens to include many under that heading, such as
diplomats, priests, lawyers, and industrial competition
- and a patriotic frenzy all typify the period. Yet there
was something surreal about events. These were not
experiences that one could easily appropriate or
conceive of as part of a recognizable template of war-
making. In many cases, this was industrial war beyond
the realm of experience. War poetry also reflects this
all-pervasive and omnipresent fear factor of the time.
At the political end of the scale was a gulf between
leaders and their apparently adoring subjects. The
reality of their situations could not have been more
removed from each other.
Impact on Literature and Poetry
World War I had a profound impact on human
consciousness, and this trauma permeated literature.
The senseless brutality of warfare, drawn out across
four gruesome years, had far-reaching implications. It
not only redefined human tragedy on an institutional
level but also redefined the limits of language and
knowledge. Warfare ravaged the environment, turned
progress into a shibboleth, shattered notions of
empire and human exceptionalism, and gripped a
generation within the thrall of a despair so vast it must
take a blank verse form to englobe it in verbal form.
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Artistic works turned away from the sprawling
narratives of heroics and glory, and the epic or
personal elegy reforged in the context of combat
ceased to be a thing of bombast and hero worship and
became instead a means to confront the raw,
beautiful, and terrifying reality of the dark envelope of
death. Some of these changes were in form, as poets
decried the conceits of cobwebbed poetic fluency for
the earthy, vigorous, and vituperative crudity of the
soldie
r’s song. Some of these changes could be
metrical, as some could make their neutered kind of
doggerel into a virtuous literary adoption of
antiquarian accent. Yet the conflict has proven to be so
persuasive; artists wrote these changes into their very
bones, and thereby the work of countless men during
this period, while presenting an ocean of experience of
hell, presents alongside this a biting and vivid critique
of the very culture and tactics that permitted these
atrocities to unfold. And in particular, a sedulous and
ferocious ethical restitution is sought in the poetry of
this time. Although it is odd for the 'modern' form to
proceed when publication is hardly the goal, this kind
of form has been necessary to emphasize - through its
formal rupture - the cosmic gulf between the terrible
agon of firsthand experience and the apparent
lackluster mutterings of politicians who, with bland
and witless earnestness, oversee the slaughter of
children.
THEMES OF WAR IN WORLD WAR I POETRY
World War I poetry, which arose from the frontline
soldiers, not only provides us with different opinions
and mindsets towards war, but also shares moments
of glory and despair. Different subjects of war are
covered in the poetry shaped by unique and individual
experiences, and they have been condensed into four
major themes: loss and grief, starting from survivors’
guilt to the catastrophic gap in the human psyche
when trying to find a rationale behind its losses; horror
and
despair;
the
pity,
disillusionment,
and
psychological alienation; and finally, patriotism and
nationalism. In discussing the poetry, I will go through
these themes before outlining examples of the best
poems from the literature. Loss and grief provide four
of the five most important themes, but in some sense,
all the poems can be related to these themes. The
poems about loss and grief tend to focus on internal
agony, capturing the tragedy that takes the joy out of
life. Not only are the soldiers who fought in the war
portrayed as victims of this agony, but their relatives
and friends as well. The internal suffering from the
working conditions on the frontline provides an
underlying tone to the themes. Patriotism and
nationalism provide the other part of why people write
poetry, as seen in the second most frequent themes:
the themes reflect different sorts of denial of the
nations and the system underpinning the rationale of
the war that is waged.
Loss and Grief
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Many World War I poems explore the theme of loss
and grief, indicating that the war affected poets more
deeply on an emotional level than on a political or
ideological one. The most frequently analyzed war
poetry relates to some aspect of mourning, whether
that is mourning for particular individuals, comrades as
a group, or for the world that has been lost. Due to the
endurance and profundity of the social and emotional
effects of the war, a lack of direct personal experience
of the front did not necessarily potentiate a lack of
understanding of its emotional landscape within
society: mothers, wives, children, sisters, and even
families of some comrades could depict the war as a
catastrophe.
Just as war poets recount the profound emptiness that
permeates their own experience of the war, the war is
also depicted as a time when other families are bereft.
The mothers, wives, and sweethearts that appear so
frequently in the poetry are portrayed as oppressed by
the unrelenting dread that at any moment they might
receive the telegram, with so many of the best in their
lives already lost. Loss and grief are so deeply ingrained
in this literature, and the imagery used is so powerful
that readers can be easily overwhelmed and mainly
need to withdraw from the field of battle. Examples of
direct personal bereavement include "Sonnet" and
"Mental Cases." These poems are made more powerful
by the fact that, to varying degrees, the poet-prophets
successfully communicate not only the moment of loss
but also the larger emotional context of the loss.
Patriotism and Nationalism
Themes of patriotism and nationalism loom large in the
poetry of World War I. On the one hand, several poets
explicitly align themselves with the state and its war
aims. Some express an intense national pride,
celebrating participation in the war as a crucial element
of their national identity. This sentiment manifested in
a variety of forms: in the imperialistic rhetoric of elder
statesmen, who measured strength in jingoistic terms;
in artworks, literature, music, and drama that used
shifting methods of glorification of imperialism; and in
pamphlets, handbills, books, newspapers, and
propaganda declaring, in ways competitive with other
participating nations, a strong and united purpose of
patriotism.
At the same time, other poets, responding to the same
social forces, critique the overtones of excessive
patriotism. They point to outright government
propaganda pressuring men of all nations in order to
push them into military service. Many poems written in
the immediate months after the outbreak worry that
those who refuse will be understood as unpatriotic
shirkers. "Patriotism ever conceives the neighbor
wayward and a knave," wrote a poet, continuing: "If to
fight, the path of he will most humbly leave." The
proliferations of newspaper and printed calls to arms,
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however, present a more complicated pattern. Some,
having joined up, can demonstrate an exuberant
patriotism as soldiers and further encourage others to
enlist.
Horror and Despair
'Horror' is a sub-theme commonly explored in World
War I poetry. To depict war as 'repulsive matter', many
poets employ grotesque or repugnant imagery. The
main outcome is a poetry subverted by a 'systematic
anti-poeticality'. The first subject of these repulsive
images is the human div, disfigured by war. Most
common among the images of repugnance are decay
and corruption, frequently described as oil or green in
color. Another recurring motif is that of the senses;
smell is often a particularly unwelcome informant on
the damage done to or by the disfigured div. Thus,
poets usually write about the psychological horror
engendered by seeing one's own flesh rot, but later the
sense of smell becomes crucial in determining a wider
despair. The despair of trench warfare lies in the waste
it generates. This despair is often seen as conceptual as
well, extending to the waste of human life and the
shattering of a very old civilization. The main function,
though, of this existential wasteland is to undermine
romantic thought and language, demonstrating that
the world is barren of life-giving value.
The div often displaces the human being in the space
of the poems, the face, hands, eyes, and head turned
away and invisible. This kind of silencing of the
speaker
—
war poet and/or soldier in the trenches
—
is
in line with a denial of the transcendent mission of
poetry. Notably, in some poems, a poet-soldier
heroically raises 'a hymn of hate' for what he sees, but
this is a rare strategy. As such, the only available 'voice'
in these poems is a Socratic futility, a self-critical
acknowledgment of incapacity or refusal. Given the
frequent reliance on a definitive 'no comment', the
task of interpretation and judgments about the value
of these poems is forcefully passed over to the
agonistic reader. Finally, war poems, especially those
of the last part of the Great War, are full of violent
images to gain the reader's attention and to reach a
deep emotional response.
ANALYSIS OF SELECTED POEMS
Virtually all the literature of the First World War
presents male experiences of the conflict, but in the
works of women writers, this imbalance is not the
result of the historiographical and social factors that
influenced their male counterparts. The absence of
women from most accounts of the period is replicated
in the texts that were produced. Of interest here is the
difference between the combatant and colonial
theatres - in the worn-out trenches of Europe, a sense
of lament fermented among all languages of the
combatant powers, producing an instant canon of
poetry and prose. This was less the case in European
overseas territories, the colonies of empire, until
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postcolonial readings of World War One revisit the
literatures and histories of Palestine, Africa, and Syria,
for instance, to find silences and enforced, or assumed,
disinterest of European writers in colonial regions.
Although each publication provides a slightly different
set of poems about similar themes, the most
reproduced poems have turned them into anthologies
of World War One poetry. However, new research on
poetry and emotions shows that poems present more
complex stories since, in European cultures, emotion
has been historically measurable, uniquely private, and
inherently opposed to reason. Although emotion had
been opposed to reason, poems presented alternative
ways for understanding personal and social events,
including the war. Each poem has distinct roots in a
time and place, with unique qualities of tone and
feeling, but beyond their immediate contexts, these
are not irrelevant to the moment of war because
affective intensities in the cultures up to and during the
events of the First World War and the development of
a mass or global condition were part of this.
Wilfred Owen's 'Dulce et Decorum Est'
"Dulce et Decorum Est" was written during Wilfred
Owen's convalescence at Craiglockhart military
hospital in 1917. Originally based upon an incident
where mustard gas was dropped on a transport
column in April of 1916, Owen 'did not realize the
significance of his material.' He returned to it in
October of the same year and completely redrafted it
with renewed vigor. The poem was eventually
published after two further drafts in 1920 without
Owen ever having seen the final version. In the poem,
Owen deals with the question of heroism, a theme
touched upon by Sassoon. In "Dulce et Decorum Est,"
Owen does not show heroism to be glamorous or filled
with glory but as the actions of a man disillusioned and
broken by the true face of war. By using vivid and gut-
wrenching imagery, he makes it clear that the
propaganda being thrust upon the unsuspecting public
by war supporters was false and ethically wrong. Owen
hits directly at the false old lie about nobility in
hardship and the fine reward one gets for dying in
battle. Contrasted to the other poets' treatment of
war, which would lead us to believe that it is
preferable, albeit only slightly, to die "with the glory
and victory of battle," he calls it the most obscene and
loathsome experience to face a human being. Owen's
traumatized poem is far removed from the romantic
image of a heroic English action. It rejects the romantic
and criminal promotion of false slogans. The real
becomes even further removed from Owen's pre-war
and soldier background phase of his writing. He is
becoming less a conventionally English poet than, for
instance, the American, although Owen retained his
anger and compassion, and in this phase has a more
seriously harnessed fury. Their ethical wrath becomes
deeper and more seriously analyzed.
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Siegfried Sassoon's 'The General'
Level 4.2
Siegfried Sassoon's 'The General' focuses particularly
on the military leadership of the First World War and
harshly criticizes a variety of its themes as represented
in the poem by the Scottish officer. The opening
juxtaposition of the famous, battle-winning general
with "a glut of marmalade" paints a picture of a distant,
pampered leadership; this is supported by the clean
handkerchiefs in the officer's pocket. Clearly, he is not
in range of the killing that occurs on the battlefield. In
addition, his "white" gloves suggest a ceremonial
aspect of his figure, picking up on the ironic honors
listed in line two. Sassoon also makes use of ominous
imagery from the off, as the general "splatters our
way"
–
the abattoir simile paints the soldiers as
animals, indicating how the officers view them. Indeed,
Sassoon suggests that the general takes little interest
in his troops beyond their numbers; their actual deaths
are of little consequence. Sassoon personifies the
officer's
moods:
"glum",
"wizard",
"jovial",
juxtaposing these with the privacy of his "officious"
military desk and suggests that he issues orders
mechanically in order to maintain his own distance,
detached from the reality of war.
The third paragraph concludes with a brief
examination of 'The General', showing the poem's dual
thrust. The criticism of blind patriotism is present,
though in this case the foolish men are the generals,
not the poor boys from the working class. Sassoon's
poem draws attention to the radical ignorance, even
when traditional ideas of courage and leadership may
have propelled these men up the chain of command,
and their unwavering belief in the support of God for
their battle in spite of all evidence to the contrary, or
rather that evidence is ignored. Sassoon's focus in
Owen's poem is the actual fighting in the trenches, and
so the ideas conveyed are different in each poem, and
these differences can be read further as coping with
the personal pain of their experiences. This personal
coping is evident in the colloquial language used by
Sassoon throughout, particularly in the repetition of
the general's title; it could equally be argued this
language is used to convey how "ordinary" and
expendable the officer perceives his troops to be, as
well as himself being far above them.
Rupert Brooke's 'The Soldier'
Rupert Brooke’s “The Soldier” is one of the best
-
known war sonnets of the era. It presents an idealized
and romanticized vision of the themes associated with
the period. Written early in the war, this provides a
good starting point for analysis in elucidating the
general sentiment about the conflict at the time. ‘The
Soldier’ is an encomium, an ode in praise of the
willingness of the volunteering poet-soldier to die,
without the spilling of his sacred blood being
experienced as an earthy departure from a clean,
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ardent, and exalted life, in the service of his God, his
king, and England. Brooke’s use of abstract and
idealized language is reminiscent of the glorification of
war in the poetry of the pre-war poets.
‘The Soldier’, as a representative of the transitional
phase, embodies both the aspirational hopes and the
sobering reality in an optimistic sentiment. We might
wonder about the value of latent suffering, if so many
English soldiers had not died and suffered death, for
what might seem, in the context of this culture, the
mere technicality of one drop of gore against another.
Rupert Brooke’s “The Soldier” is marked by his death,
months after war began, and by the circumstance of its
composition. War had already been declared, it was in
full force, and Brooke was on his way as a soldier to the
Western Front. There is no fatuity, no assurance of an
untroubled departure.
COMPARATIVE STUDY OF POETS
In the time of war, these poets each approached
conflict with an individual style and subject matter. For
example, one poet wrote of the dehumanization of the
men in the trenches, the nightmares that he lived after
his exposure to mustard gas, and the pity of war in his
poem. Similarly, another poet was bitter in his satirical
poetry and wrote of the waste, the lies, and the
immorality of the conflict. Conversely, the earlier war
poetry of another poet was patriotic in each of the five
sonnets. He began with a celebration of his hope, the
soldiers of England, in a poem for the enemy country,
along with another poem, which meditated on his
keenness to go to war.
Despite these inherent differences, each poet had
found common ground, writing in times of war, and as
such, there are intricate and sometimes vague
similarities in their subject matter. One sonnet was
published in 1919; it was the first World War poem to
be published to masses of readers, while at the time of
one poet's death, only five of his war poems had been
published in book form. Two poets were both soldiers
and poets, but as one was honorably discharged after
receiving a head injury, the other was treated for shell
shock and invalided back to England through the
influence of the first. It was in the hospital that one
became a poet, physically able to think clearly and
intellectually capable of writing.
Different Approaches to War
In literature, poets approached the war from various
angles. Poets such as Rupert Brooke, who was also one
of the first to die in action, wrote poems about the
nobility and romance of battle. Few of his early poems,
all published posthumously and taken out of context,
have spread around the world, giving the world an
incorrect first impression of war poetry. However, the
poetic voice most synonymous with the Great War is
not Brooke’s romantic hero, but Wilfred Owen’s, who
was more concerned with representing the reality of
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the trenches than incorporating romanticized and
beautiful elements. Owen’s approach is representative
of how many poets saw the war, as a brutal and
pointless conflict. These differences are due to the
personal experiences of the poets and their own way
of seeing the world. More than representing the rest of
society, these poets used their works primarily to try to
represent what they went through. While many of the
war poems that were written during the Great War
revolve around the same key themes about trench life,
there are so many of them that it is easy to locate
poems with significant differences in perspective on
the war. This is healthy for the area of war poetry
because it suggests that there were many different
views of the conflict, and no one poem or group of
poems could ever hope to capture a single, ‘true’
representation of the war. Poetry, perhaps, can never
represent ‘truth’ but merely the ever
-
changing ‘truths’
according to one’s personal experience.
Similarities in Themes and Motifs
Something that makes the poetry such a useful primary
source is that it allows for the recognition of similarities
in experiences between soldiers. Poets chose quite
different forms with different aims, but shared in the
same experiences. It is the recognition of these
common thematic threads woven through their works
that reveal to us a general impression of many soldiers'
wartime experiences. We get a sense that many of the
poets felt the futility of war, treasured moments of
peace, security, and the natural world, and dealt with
the trauma of witnessing death, as well as the actual
onset of depression in some cases. In viewing these
poems together, we can even make out an impression
of the life of human experience.
Though his works are full of both bitterness and sorrow
at the terrible impact the horrors of the war have had
on people, one poet's tone is not so despondent as
commentary on the war poetry generally postulates.
Indeed, some poems step out of this sense of dread,
most famously certain notable works. What makes
these works different is not the motivations behind the
work so much as the moments that stand out most to
the individual, the futility of it. It is in this poetry that
we find many of the themes and symbols viewed as
commonplace to consider in studies of World War I
verse. The overriding theme we find in these poems,
then, is the futility of war summed up neatly by a
notable title. Attesting to the personal experience is
that the vocabulary reveals a preoccupation with
patterns of meaning rather than emotional portraits of
individuals and their struggles. This poetry is filled with
works that are cynical and world-weary, a mood of
disillusionment. Over 130 poems and almost an equal
number of prose pieces were published, nine volumes
by summer 1919. The popularity was such that volumes
of the "War Verse" in the 1914-18 period would usually
contain more of these works and in more flexible
arrangements than proposed in the first two volumes.
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CONCLUSION
The essays in this collection consistently point to the
interpenetration of history and material culture on the
one hand and the literature produced by those who
participated in World War I on the other. To some
extent, the essays consider the life and experience of a
range of individual poets and indicate how this
experience has a clear bearing on the way they write
about World War I and on the themes they negotiate.
Human bodies, time, and place meld in a binary
stretching between the immediate, embodied
experience of the individual on the war front and a
wider history of release, settlement, and betrayal as
part of a more generally felt history.
The first of these causes of mutation is loss, a theme
that is captured in the story of Wilfred Owen, both the
man and the poet. The second theme intersecting
between the essays is that of patriotism. The last
theme coming out of the essays is that of despair. The
relatively small sample of poetry cumulatively indicates
that it was difficult for soldiers to regard death as
anything other than abomination
–
and this is also
evident in the essays when considering the histories of
the individuals involved. In conclusion, this essay has
sought to illustrate how understanding the national
and personal history of all the poets considered here is
integral to their reading. It is useful too because it is a
reminder of how personal responses to the war are
conditioned by a wider, extra-literary response.
Summary of Findings
Following an in-depth examination of World War I
poetry and the period in which it was written, it has
become evident that history had significant bearing
both on the extent to which, and the methods by
which poets addressed the war. In close study of five
key poets of the time, poems have been carefully
chosen to underscore the key thematic and stylistic
elements of World War I poetry. Items such as loss,
grief, patriotism, and others recur throughout the
poems, leading to the further exploration of each
theme on a comparative basis. Yet it has also been
noted in the examination of the poems in question that
both authorial intent and subject matter varied
significantly from poet to poet; whilst certain themes
were undeniably pervasive, the way in which these
themes were approached by each poet suggests that
some were more able to reflect the prevailing mood
than others. The overall thematic assertion remains,
however, that the poems selected each represent a set
of recurring themes representative of World War I
poetry. The varying experiences and psychological
motives of these poets have been identified as an
additional catalyst for their continued and sustained
poetic output. In conclusion, it has been argued that,
only in light of history, can World War I poetry be fully
and widely comprehended.
By revisiting their work, it has become clear that
certain poets aimed to document the conflict in a way
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that others did not feel compelled to. The thematic
concerns of these protest poets were substantially
divergent in nature from those of their peers. The
exploration of the historical context in which World
War I poetry emerged forces a re-reading of these
poems and stresses the symbiotic relationship
between history and literature. This paper, therefore,
concludes by calling for further study into the historical
conditions which have influenced literature and,
conversely, the ways in which literature can shed new
light upon history.
Implications for Understanding War Literature
It is difficult for a reader to grasp the thematic themes
running through war literature if he does not
understand the historical context of the conflict that
gave rise to it. In a broad overview of the framing of
poetry, we find that not only did some of the most
powerful works come out of the Great War, but
prominent poets, too. In other words, poets gave and
still give voice to an experience and perspective of war
that the reader might never truly see without the
services of poetic expression. While we might suppose
that we know the horrors and pain of war, it is only
through war literature and the revealed depths of
human emotion and expression that we really grasp
the full measure of how complex and deadly a war truly
is. Works like these, which directly express the
attitudes of one historical moment, give the student
and scholar of military history an additional
understanding of the war, the people engaged on
either side, and the effects the war had on those
individuals and abroad through the wider angle of
culture. These works serve as a reminder of that rather
obvious point: wars are experienced differently, in
part, by individual people and within collective groups,
and literature of war reflects those varied experiences
that cannot be short-handed. Furthermore, it is
important to see how people have come to reflections
on war and warfare throughout history. Nor can we
reduce all works to the idea that war is bad. Poetry
about World War I points out their view of the war and
the conditions. However, critical examinations also
pointed out that such works utilize concepts as
evidence of our perceptions of knowledge. Such
knowledge is a process of emotion and reason working
together.
REFERENCES
Book
1.
Barker, Pat. Regeneration. London: Penguin, 1991.
2.
Classen, Adam. "In the Trenches." 60-75.
3.
Fussell, Paul. The Great War and Modern Memory.
London: The Bodley Head, 1976.
4.
Goebel, Stefan. "He Has Died of an 'Owlt.'" 127-142.
5.
Graves, Robert. Goodbye to All That. London:
Jonathan Cape, 1929.
6.
Hass, Peter. "Putting Poetry on the Map." 303-319.
7.
Jones, Emyr. "War Poetry." 123-140.
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8.
Parry, J. T. The Letters of Wilfred Owen. London:
OUP, 1967.
9.
Owen, Wilfred. Complete Poems and Fragments.
Ed. Jon Stallworthy. London: Chatto and Windus,
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10.
-----. Complete Poems. Ed. Edmund Blunden.
London: Chatto and Windus, 1964.
11.
Rushdie, Salman. "The Great War and the Great
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Santanu Das, ed. The Cambridge Companion to the
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-----. Indian Troops in Europe.
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Staller, Rebecca. "The Global First World War." 212-
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Article
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Morrison, Beverley. "Four Philosophy Topics on the
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Kershaw, Angela. "Remembering, Representing,
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Schmidt, Scarlett. "'Home': War in the Nursery of
'The Taggart' and 'The Cleansing of the Knife'."
254-268.
Poem
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Brooke, Rupert. "The Soldier." In Wilfred Owen:
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