War Poetry Flashcards
World War I: Origins
1879: Germany and Austria-Hungary form an alliance (the Dual Alliance)
• 1892: France and the Russia form an alliance (the Dual Entente). Germany has a potential enemy in the West and the East
• 1907: Britain joined Russia and France to form the Triple Entente
• Continuing disputes between GB and France over colonies in North
Africa
• 1908: Austria-Hungary annexes Bosnia. Resistance from Serbia and Russia
• 1912-13: series of wars in the Balkans. Serbia is the main victor and appeared and a potential threat to Austria-Hungary
Battle of the Somme
• Symbol of horror of trench warfare
• 420,000 casualties in the British army (60,000 on the first day); 200,000 in the French army and 500,000 in the German ally
WW I: Recruitment and Conscription
• 300,000 volunteers by August 1914; 45,000 by September 1914 —> Kitchener’s Army
• 1916: conscription is introduced; 2.6 Million volunteers plus 2.3 conscripted
• 80,000 female volunteers by the end of WW1 —> non-combatant role (e.g. Queen Mary’s Army Auxiliary Corps)
War Poets
• Rupert Brooke “The Soldier”
• John McCrae “In Flanders Field”
• Wilfred Owen “Dulce et Decorum Est”
• Isaac Rosenberg “Break of Day in the Trenche”
• Siegfried Sassoon “Everyone Sang”
“Dulce et Decorum Est“
Süß und ehrenvoll ist es
… pro patria mori (fürs Vaterland zu sterben)
William Butler Yeats
• Poet, playwright, essayist and politician
• Anglo-Irish/Protestant Ascendancy
• Sympathies for Irish Nationalism
• Interest in “Irish” culture —> Irish Revival, Abbey Theatre
• Nobel Prize of Literature
• Majorworks:
- Countess Kathleen
- Cathleen ni Houlihan
-Hawk’s Well
- “Wild Swans at Coole”,“Sailing to Byzantium”, “Leda and the Swan”, “Easter, 1916”
Irish Cultural Revival
• Idea of distinct Irish cultural identity beginning in the 18th century
- Often fostered by members of the Anglo-Irish ascendancy
• Interest in Irish language and folk traditions (—>Romanticism)
• Regional novel (Maria Edgeworth)
• More political in 19th and 20th century
• Gaelic League (founded by Douglas Hydeinü)
Irish Literary Revival
Apart from William Butler Yeats also
• Lady Augusta Gregory
• Cuchulain of Muirthemne
• A Book of Saints and Wonders
• John Millington Synge
• Riders to the Sea
• Playboy of the Western World
• Sean O’Casey
• The Shadow of a Gunman
• Juno and the Paycock
Easter Rising (1916)
• Demands for Irish home rule since 1880s
• Government of Ireland Act 1914 (Third Home
Rule Bill) —> postponed because of WW I
• Irish Republican Brotherhood under Patrick Pearse and James Connolly stage rebellion against British
• Declaration of Irish Republic on Easter Monday
• British Army crushes rebellion using heavy
artillery and machine guns
• 485 deaths, over 2000 wounded, 16 executions, 2000 imprisoned
Poem “Easter 1916”, William Butler Yeats
Britain After 1945
• Austerity despite victory in WW II
• Welfare state under Labour (National insurance, NHS, Implementation of Education Act 1944)
• Decolonialization (Colonies gain independence,new definition of Commonwealth
• UK turns from global power to insular European nation state —> joins EU in 1973
• Social and political changes and social unrest under Margaret Thatcher
Poetry since 1945
• Reaction to Classical Modernism
• New topics
• New voices (Working class, Women, Postcolonial writers, Celtic fringe)
The Movememt
• Starting in the 1950s; anxieties of the post-war era
• Rejection of Modernism and the romantic elements of some of 1940s poetry
• Argued for a limited, rationalist, polished poetics
• Clarity (both in language and content) rather than obscurity and
mystification
• Verbal restraint over stylistic excess, avoidance of rhetoric, austerity in tone
• Colloquial idiom and themes
• D. J. Enright, Poets of the 1950s (1955): “moderate”; “chastened common sense”; poets avoid obscurity “because they find it unnecessary”
Movement Poets
• Philip Larkin
• Kingsley Amis
• Donald Davie
• D. J. Enright
• John Wain
• Elizabeth Jennings
• Thom Gunn
• Robert Conquest
Phillip Larkin
• Worked as a librarian at the University of Hull
• Many accolades; refused to become Poet Laureate
• Mainworks:
- The Less Deceived (“Church Going”, “Toads“)
-The Whitsun Weddings (“The Whitsun Weddings”, “An Arundel Tomb“
-* High Windows* (“This Be The Verse”, “HighWindows”
“High Windows”
• very direct language
• modern times—> change in (sexual) attitudes; new sense of freedom
• melancholy
• sense of having missed out (Not young enough for sexual revolution)
