In this seminar we will read poems which arose from the experience of the First World War. Although the focus will be clearly on the anti-war poetry of Wilfred Owen, Siegfried Sassoon, Charles Hamilton Sorley, Isaac Rosenberg and Edmund Blunden, we will also consider poetic responses by Rupert Brooke, Laurence Binyon, Julian Grenfell, W.N. Hodgson and John Freeman which show a heroic and patriotic attitude towards the war. In our discussions we will address the following questions: What strategies are employed in the poems to glorify the war effort of British soldiers and to legitimise the war, or alternatively, to convey the horror and carnage of trench warfare and to condemn the slaughter? Which traditions and ideological constructs are important for an historical understanding of this war poetry? How were the texts written, distributed and received? In what ways do they relate to each other and other representations of the war? Reading war poems by Jessica Pope and Vera Brittain, we will finally examine some of the limitations inherent in the widespread critical division of First World War poetry into war-supportive and war-critical poems.
A reader will be made available through Moodle.
Assessment/requirements:
Übung: test at the end of term
Seminar: 12-page research paper
- Kursleiter/in: Uwe Gerd Klawitter