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Words in the Dark: The Demon Lover and Other Stories (1945)

Neil Corcoran

in Elizabeth Bowen: The Enforced Return

This chapter offers a reading of Bowen's collection of Second World War short stories, The Demon Lover and Other Stories, proposing it as a book of unhappy returns. Studies of dislocation, the ... More

This chapter offers a reading of Bowen's collection of Second World War short stories, The Demon Lover and Other Stories, proposing it as a book of unhappy returns. Studies of dislocation, the stories have their Anglo-Irish element, even though they are set mainly in the London of the Blitz. The chapter also considers matters of literary allusion and reference, as well as issues of gender together with sexual and social disruption. The chapter concludes with a lengthy reading of the figure of the apparently supernatural ghost in one of Bowen's greatest short stories, The Demon Lover, suggesting an influence from T. S. Eliot, an affinity with William Golding, and an alliance with Freud's conception of the ‘uncanny’. Thus, in various ways the story is the representation of crisis.Less

Culture in the Blackout

Patrick Deer

in Culture in Camouflage: War, Empire, and Modern British Literature

Chapter 3 explores how the World War Two home front was defined and haunted by its founding blackouts: censorship, lack of information, the trauma, sensory deprivation, and destruction of the Blitz. ... More

Chapter 3 explores how the World War Two home front was defined and haunted by its founding blackouts: censorship, lack of information, the trauma, sensory deprivation, and destruction of the Blitz. Yet, it contends, the black out offered opportunities for resistance. In Winston Churchill's panoramic speeches, J.B.Priestley's populist broadcasts, Humphrey Jennings' ethnographic propaganda films, or the surreal radio comedy of ITMA, the official culture offered the spectacle of the People “taking it.” The chapter argues that the state's commitment to the arts created boom conditions, yet its oversight seemed to threaten the very existence of literature. It argues that the Blitz writing of Henry Green and James Hanley reveals a culture haunted by repressions, foreclosures and disavowals. In more fugitive forms like the short story, reportage, or essay, they joined their peers in practising a modernism in camouflage that looted the resources of a literary tradition shattered by war.Less

Ghosts inside the ‘Island Fortress’

Patrick Deer

in Culture in Camouflage: War, Empire, and Modern British Literature

Chapter 4 examines wartime writers' challenges to official projections of an “island fortress” under siege at the heart of a loyal, but distant empire. During a wartime revival of popular ... More

Chapter 4 examines wartime writers' challenges to official projections of an “island fortress” under siege at the heart of a loyal, but distant empire. During a wartime revival of popular imperialism, Graham Greene and Elizabeth Bowen excavated buried histories of empire, representing the home front as a hallucinatory, haunted space. The chapter explores their secret war work as agents in British intelligence and their ironic representations of the corrosive effects of wartime surveillance, secrecy and espionage. In the dislocated perspectives offered by unpatriotic, transgressive figures like the spy, the spiv, the wounded veteran, the adulterous wife, or the rootless “mobile” woman conscripted into the war effort Bowen and Greene turn a sceptical eye on the mythology of “Deep England” and the “People's War.” Their work reveals that the island fortress was constituted by the contradictory relations between an insular Englishness, an expansive British imperial identity, and cosmopolitan traditions of anti-colonialism.Less

‘What targets for a bomb’: Spectacle, Reconstruction and the London Blitz

Mark Rawlinson

in British Writing of the Second World War

This chapter investigates the process by which Luftwaffe's attacks on the United Kingdom cohered into an event known as the Blitz. The new social and psychological geography of the metropolis revises ... More

This chapter investigates the process by which Luftwaffe's attacks on the United Kingdom cohered into an event known as the Blitz. The new social and psychological geography of the metropolis revises our thinking about urban representation. The absence of the human body from aestheticizing descriptions of ruined cityscapes is fundamental to the reinvention of London as an emblem of positive wartime outcomes in both the military and political spheres. Interactions of architectonic space and subjectivity in fictional and travel writing are discussed with particular emphasis on the work of Vera Brittain, Elizabeth Bowen, Henry Green, and William Sansom.Less

Yiddish Bibles

Jean Baumgarten

Jerold C. Frakes (ed.)

in Introduction to Old Yiddish Literature

The Hebrew Bible was the foundation on which most of Old Yiddish literature was based. The Bible played a central role as the basis of education and the transmission of Judaism to the Jewish masses, ... More

The Hebrew Bible was the foundation on which most of Old Yiddish literature was based. The Bible played a central role as the basis of education and the transmission of Judaism to the Jewish masses, whether via glossaries, dictionaries, concordances, verse or prose translations, or homiletic commentaries. It also formed the textual basis on which was built the Jewish literary tradition in the vernacular: epics, romance, and biblical poems and dramas. The translations by Isaac Blitz and Alexander Witzenhausen had scarcely any impact on their own era due to the expanding importance of the Tsene-rene. Nonetheless, they proved that vernacular translation was a territory favourable to experimentation and renewal of earlier modes in the transmission of the sacred traditions.Less

‘The savage and austere light of a burning world’: The Cinematic Blitz

Lara Feigel

in Literature, Cinema and Politics 1930-1945: Reading Between the Frames

This chapter examines the British literature responding to the cinematic and photographic qualities of the Blitz. The cinematic properties of the Blitz were perhaps best captured in literature by ... More

This chapter examines the British literature responding to the cinematic and photographic qualities of the Blitz. The cinematic properties of the Blitz were perhaps best captured in literature by three wartime firemen: Stephen Spender, Henry Green, and William Sansom. The wartime fiction of Elizabeth Bowen had always had an unnerving propensity to stir into life. Sansom's ‘Fireman Flower’ turns both the living and the dead into ghosts. Graham Greene's The Ministry of Fear and Bowen's The Heat of the Day expose the arbitrary nature of international politics in a war that is fought by automata in the sky and by ghosts on the ground. The Blitz literature was necessarily cinematic because the bombing, like the film and the photograph, thrust its victims into the deathly tense of the has-been-there.Less

Class and Community in the Blitz, 1940–1

Geoffrey G. Field

in Blood, Sweat, and Toil: Remaking the British Working Class, 1939-1945

The chapter discusses German bombing of British cities September 1940 to May 1941. It analyses government plans to protect the civilian population and public responses to the raids ... More

The chapter discusses German bombing of British cities September 1940 to May 1941. It analyses government plans to protect the civilian population and public responses to the raids both in London and provincial cities. In working-class neighbourhoods of London and elsewhere people often chose their own makeshift mass shelters, most famously the London Underground. These mass shelters, which developed a social life of their own, became the focal point of public debate about air-raid protection and sites of social exploration for journalists, photographers, artists, and writers—some of whom saw them as microcosms of democratic community and active citizenship. The chapter examines representations of the sheltering population by photographer Bill Brandt and artist Henry Moore and, compared to the public recrimination and class prejudice evident during the first evacuation, the emergence of more positive imagery about workers and the concept of a ‘people's war’. Less

Steelpan Grooves: The US Navy Steel Band, 1975–1995

Andrew R. Martin

in Steelpan Ambassadors: The US Navy Steel Band, 1957-1999

This chapter focuses on the US Navy Steel Band's adolescent years—1978 to 1995. In 1976 alone they performed nearly four hundred performances as part of the US Navy's all-out publicity blitz to ... More

This chapter focuses on the US Navy Steel Band's adolescent years—1978 to 1995. In 1976 alone they performed nearly four hundred performances as part of the US Navy's all-out publicity blitz to celebrate America's bicentennial. Compared to the high-flying times of the 1950s and 1960s, life changed significantly for the members of the US Navy Steel Band during the 1970s and 1980s. Gone were the days of extended Caribbean tours as the band now focused efforts inland and became a regular fixture at festivals across the continental United States. The chapter also examines a period in which the band welcomed its first female member, recorded their final studio album, embarked on their final major international tour, and combated the negative public image perceptions of the post-Vietnam US military.Less

British Women’s Media Narratives of Gender and Collective Memory

Annamaria Motrescu-Mayes and Heather Norris Nicholson

in British Women Amateur Filmmakers: National Memories and Global Identities

This chapter engages with theoretical and historical perspectives on gender, post-colonialism and new media with the aim to trace the visual literacy defined by several examples of British women ... More

This chapter engages with theoretical and historical perspectives on gender, post-colonialism and new media with the aim to trace the visual literacy defined by several examples of British women amateur film and media practice. This literacy appears to inform new understandings of amateur/new media making and to elucidate how gender-driven visual narratives of gender, race and national identities function today within global online networks. It explores issues of belonging, home-and-abroad mind frames, and of colonial and post-colonial identity-building within postcolonial and feminist theories. The theoretical discourse is anchored in detailed analyses of the amateur film made by Eileen Healey of the all-women tragic mountaineering expedition up the Chy Oyu summit in 1959, and of several exceptional scenes filmed in colour by Rosie Newman during the London Blitz, including British military drills during the Second World War and portraits of British colonial subjects and sites. Finally, it identifies the ways in which some documentary filmmakers have recently re-framed and re-contextualized similar footage, such as Beatrice Blackwood’s and Ursula Graham Bower’s colonial amateur (ethnographic) films, either as visual ‘fillers’ for new perspectives on the history of the British Empire, or as cinematic documents relevant to new practices in visual anthropology studiesLess

The Zeppelin in the Sky of the Mind

Christine Froula

in The First World War: Literature, Culture, Modernity

While First World War historians often emphasize civilians’ experience of ‘war at a distance’, the military dirigible floated over the divide between civilian and soldier, brought aerial warfare to ... More

While First World War historians often emphasize civilians’ experience of ‘war at a distance’, the military dirigible floated over the divide between civilian and soldier, brought aerial warfare to Britain’s island fortress, and inaugurated a mode of modern warfare that defies spatial and temporal containment. This essay foregrounds the zeppelin’s psychic impact on the civilian imaginary from 1914 through the Spanish Civil War to the Blitz, tracing its conceptual and aesthetic representation in diaries, letters, novels, essays, and plays by Virginia Woolf, H. G. Wells, George Bernard Shaw, Katherine Mansfield, D. H. Lawrence, Evelyn Waugh, Muriel Rukeyser, Julian Bell and others. These writings document an unending European-civil-imperial-global war in which aerial technologies at once enlarge human powers almost beyond imagining and dwarf them to the point of negation. Inspiring both wonder and the new terror of total war, the zeppelin created a permanent change in civilians’ psychic weather and remains an inescapable presence in the sky of the mind.Less

The Shadow of War

Mathew Thomson

in Lost Freedom: The Landscape of the Child and the British Post-War Settlement

This chapter examines responses to the experience of children in wartime evacuation, the Blitz, and residential homes. Two conclusions emerge. On the one hand, the story of evacuation provided ... More

This chapter examines responses to the experience of children in wartime evacuation, the Blitz, and residential homes. Two conclusions emerge. On the one hand, the story of evacuation provided evidence of the damaging effect of separation of children from families and home. On the other hand, the story of children in the Blitz emphasized the resilience of children and the appeal of new freedoms in war. The dominant resulting message was that which highlighted the need for protection and the need for home, family, and emotional security. But this also reflected war-borne anxieties experienced by adults, and it was in some respects ill-timed in that war also placed considerable strains on the stability of the familyLess

To India with the Friends’ Ambulance Unit

Geoffrey Carnall

in Gandhi's Interpreter: A Life of Horace Alexander

This chapter discusses the arrival of the Friends' Ambulance Unit in India during the Second World War. Alexander and his colleagues were sent to India shortly after the Japanese entered the war and ... More

This chapter discusses the arrival of the Friends' Ambulance Unit in India during the Second World War. Alexander and his colleagues were sent to India shortly after the Japanese entered the war and quickly conquered a huge portion of south-east Asia. The Unit used the experience they had gained in the London Blitz in the cities of India that were most threatened by the air raids. The discussion also considers the Cripps mission, the ‘Quit India’ resolution and Alexander's conflict with the Viceroy.Less

Mother’s Milk: The Early Life of Ridley Scott

Vincent LoBrutto

in Ridley Scott: A Biography

This chapter presents Ridley Scott’s early life. There is background on his mother, Elizabeth, his father, Francis Percy Scott, and his two brothers, Frank and Tony. The chapter examines the impact ... More

This chapter presents Ridley Scott’s early life. There is background on his mother, Elizabeth, his father, Francis Percy Scott, and his two brothers, Frank and Tony. The chapter examines the impact on Scott as a boy and young man of his father’s involvement in the military and the experience of England during World War II. The tough life Scott experienced in northeast England, living in South Shields, made him hardy and resilient. The chapter also covers Scott’s natural talent in art from a young age and his early filmgoing experiences. Ridley Scott did poorly during his early schooling but flourished while attending the West Hartlepool College of Art and the Royal College of Art in London. His innate skills blossomed when he was exposed to new vistas in art and to teachers who were artists themselves.Less

Ghosts of Correlation

Gowan Dawson

in Show Me the Bone: Reconstructing Prehistoric Monsters in Nineteenth-Century Britain and America

This epilogue examines the continuing presence of Cuvier’s law of correlation in the twentieth century. It explores how, although this presence became increasingly shadowy and even spectral, ... More

This epilogue examines the continuing presence of Cuvier’s law of correlation in the twentieth century. It explores how, although this presence became increasingly shadowy and even spectral, especially following the bombing of the Hunterian Museum in the blitz of 1941, the ghosts of correlation continued to haunt paleontologists like Stephen Jay Gould. By the continuing effects of literary replication, the spectral afterlife of this particular paleontological principle persists even in the digital media of the twenty first century.Less

War

Christina Rice

in Ann Dvorak: Hollywood's Forgotten Rebel

This chapter details Leslie Fenton’s enlistment in the British Royal Navy following the outbreak of World War II, and Ann’s desperate attempts to travel to London in order to be near him. Included ... More

This chapter details Leslie Fenton’s enlistment in the British Royal Navy following the outbreak of World War II, and Ann’s desperate attempts to travel to London in order to be near him. Included are descriptions of her harrowing journey through hostile waters, being stranded in Lisbon for an unknown amount of time, flying into London in the midst of bombing during the Blitz, and her work as a war correspondent and ambulance driver for the Mechanised Transport Corps. Also discussed is This Was Paris, a film starring Ann and produced by her old adversary, Warner Bros.Less

Christmas in Hell: The Tube-Shelter Children in Images by Bill Brandt and Henry Moore

David Ashford

in London Underground: A Cultural Geography

The struggle to make a home in the machine-age metropolis was to find its most powerful expression in the photographs and paintings of children sleeping in the Underground, created by Bill Brandt and ... More

The struggle to make a home in the machine-age metropolis was to find its most powerful expression in the photographs and paintings of children sleeping in the Underground, created by Bill Brandt and Henry Moore during the Blitz. Chapter Five investigates how artists and writers, such as Graham Greene and Elizabeth Bowen, made sense of the impossible spectacle under the capital. The pictures are revealed to exploit religious imagery, transforming sleeping children, who embodied national unease at the threatened erasure of the individual, into a metaphor possessing the power to transmute even the space of non-place into the cradle for a redemptive and radical future.Less