Carol Jacobs
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- May 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780231171823
- eISBN:
- 9780231540100
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Columbia University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7312/columbia/9780231171823.003.0004
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
This is a reading of Sebald's “Air War and Literature” that questions our ability to move from observation to realistic representation.
This is a reading of Sebald's “Air War and Literature” that questions our ability to move from observation to realistic representation.
Simon J. James
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- May 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780199606597
- eISBN:
- 9780191738517
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199606597.003.0005
- Subject:
- Literature, 20th-century Literature and Modernism, 19th-century and Victorian Literature
In spite of its meliorist tendencies, Wells’s work also contains a strongly pessimistic strain, and frequently stages scenes of warfare and violent destruction. The War in the Air predicts an aerial ...
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In spite of its meliorist tendencies, Wells’s work also contains a strongly pessimistic strain, and frequently stages scenes of warfare and violent destruction. The War in the Air predicts an aerial war with Germany, and once the Great War actually came to pass, Wells became even more convinced that the world had to adopt his ideas, or civilization would perish. The creation of a world state would end warfare between nation states, and after the First World War Wells campaigned for the teaching in schools of the universal teaching of humanity’s common origin over national histories; and he co-wrote the textbooks that would establish a global commonwealth. Seeking a larger audience still, Wells also collaborated on the film Things to Come, a future history that sees utopia arising after a destructive World War.Less
In spite of its meliorist tendencies, Wells’s work also contains a strongly pessimistic strain, and frequently stages scenes of warfare and violent destruction. The War in the Air predicts an aerial war with Germany, and once the Great War actually came to pass, Wells became even more convinced that the world had to adopt his ideas, or civilization would perish. The creation of a world state would end warfare between nation states, and after the First World War Wells campaigned for the teaching in schools of the universal teaching of humanity’s common origin over national histories; and he co-wrote the textbooks that would establish a global commonwealth. Seeking a larger audience still, Wells also collaborated on the film Things to Come, a future history that sees utopia arising after a destructive World War.
Vincent Sherry
- Published in print:
- 2004
- Published Online:
- September 2007
- ISBN:
- 9780195178180
- eISBN:
- 9780199788002
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195178180.003.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 20th-century Literature and Modernism
The Prologue presents the need for a historically informed reading of the modernist literature prompted by the Great War of 1914-1918. The prominence of Paul Fussell's The Great War and Modern Memory ...
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The Prologue presents the need for a historically informed reading of the modernist literature prompted by the Great War of 1914-1918. The prominence of Paul Fussell's The Great War and Modern Memory has allowed critical attention to be focused on the combat writing of the war. But the proper contemporary context for reading and understanding the modernist literature of the war, which was prompted by the civilian circumstances of urban London and the policy documents of the partisan Liberal press, has still to be reconstructed. This work of historical reconstruction and critical analysis is the major project of The Great War and the Language of Modernism.Less
The Prologue presents the need for a historically informed reading of the modernist literature prompted by the Great War of 1914-1918. The prominence of Paul Fussell's The Great War and Modern Memory has allowed critical attention to be focused on the combat writing of the war. But the proper contemporary context for reading and understanding the modernist literature of the war, which was prompted by the civilian circumstances of urban London and the policy documents of the partisan Liberal press, has still to be reconstructed. This work of historical reconstruction and critical analysis is the major project of The Great War and the Language of Modernism.
Steven Belletto
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- May 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780199826889
- eISBN:
- 9780199932382
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199826889.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 20th-century and Contemporary Literature, American, 20th Century Literature
This book argues that chance became a complex yet conflicted cultural signifier during the Cold War, when a range of thinkers—politicians, novelists, historians, biologists, sociologists, and ...
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This book argues that chance became a complex yet conflicted cultural signifier during the Cold War, when a range of thinkers—politicians, novelists, historians, biologists, sociologists, and others—contended that totalitarianism denied the very existence and operation of chance in the world. This contention often worked by claiming that the Soviet system perpetrated a vast fiction on its population, a fiction made visible by the Soviet view that there is no such thing as chance or accident, only manifestations of historical law (hence the refrain from which the title is taken: “It was no accident, Comrade,” which encapsulates a popular American understanding of Marxism). No Accident, Comrade explains how the association of chance with democratic freedom and the denial of chance with totalitarianism circulated in Cold War culture, and then uses this opposition as a starting point for a discussion of the period’s literature. I show how writers innovated strategies for dealing with and incorporating chance, which allowed them to theorize the ever-changing relationship between the individual and the state during a largely rhetorical conflict. Indeed, by emphasizing the Cold War’s narrative quality—that is, by viewing it as a rhetorical field—this book likewise argues that pressure was put on fictional narratives in general, and that if we attune ourselves to the uses of chance in such material, we can understand how the Cold War encouraged new relationships between aesthetics and politics.Less
This book argues that chance became a complex yet conflicted cultural signifier during the Cold War, when a range of thinkers—politicians, novelists, historians, biologists, sociologists, and others—contended that totalitarianism denied the very existence and operation of chance in the world. This contention often worked by claiming that the Soviet system perpetrated a vast fiction on its population, a fiction made visible by the Soviet view that there is no such thing as chance or accident, only manifestations of historical law (hence the refrain from which the title is taken: “It was no accident, Comrade,” which encapsulates a popular American understanding of Marxism). No Accident, Comrade explains how the association of chance with democratic freedom and the denial of chance with totalitarianism circulated in Cold War culture, and then uses this opposition as a starting point for a discussion of the period’s literature. I show how writers innovated strategies for dealing with and incorporating chance, which allowed them to theorize the ever-changing relationship between the individual and the state during a largely rhetorical conflict. Indeed, by emphasizing the Cold War’s narrative quality—that is, by viewing it as a rhetorical field—this book likewise argues that pressure was put on fictional narratives in general, and that if we attune ourselves to the uses of chance in such material, we can understand how the Cold War encouraged new relationships between aesthetics and politics.
Steven Belletto
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- May 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780199826889
- eISBN:
- 9780199932382
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199826889.003.0006
- Subject:
- Literature, 20th-century and Contemporary Literature, American, 20th Century Literature
Chapter six argues that many of the themes and concerns that preoccupied thinkers during the Cold War persist after 1989, a persistence that it visible both in the ways the conflict is explicitly ...
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Chapter six argues that many of the themes and concerns that preoccupied thinkers during the Cold War persist after 1989, a persistence that it visible both in the ways the conflict is explicitly thematized, and in the ways that chance is tied to the sorts of narrative concerns animated by the Cold War. It begins with a discussion of Paul Auster’s writing, which is concerned with questions of chance and coincidence. By reading Auster in light of the preceding chapters, it becomes clear that his preoccupation with chance and his metafictional tendencies are related. From Auster’s writing, the chapter analyzes Chang-Rae Lee’s novel Native Speaker (1995), which brings tropes of accident and espionage into the present in order to analyze causal systems underwritten by the Cold War. The chapter ends with a look at My Life in CIA (2005), by Harry Mathews, a long-time expatriate and the only American member of the French avant-garde literary group, Oulipo. I show how the book turns on questions of chance and coincidence to show, in retrospect, their thematization was of a piece with the fabric of Cold War logic.Less
Chapter six argues that many of the themes and concerns that preoccupied thinkers during the Cold War persist after 1989, a persistence that it visible both in the ways the conflict is explicitly thematized, and in the ways that chance is tied to the sorts of narrative concerns animated by the Cold War. It begins with a discussion of Paul Auster’s writing, which is concerned with questions of chance and coincidence. By reading Auster in light of the preceding chapters, it becomes clear that his preoccupation with chance and his metafictional tendencies are related. From Auster’s writing, the chapter analyzes Chang-Rae Lee’s novel Native Speaker (1995), which brings tropes of accident and espionage into the present in order to analyze causal systems underwritten by the Cold War. The chapter ends with a look at My Life in CIA (2005), by Harry Mathews, a long-time expatriate and the only American member of the French avant-garde literary group, Oulipo. I show how the book turns on questions of chance and coincidence to show, in retrospect, their thematization was of a piece with the fabric of Cold War logic.
Giorgio Mariani
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- April 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780252039751
- eISBN:
- 9780252097850
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Illinois Press
- DOI:
- 10.5406/illinois/9780252039751.003.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, American, 20th Century Literature
This chapter discusses the ghostly nature of anti-war literature. Even though anti-war literature remains until now largely untheorized, the label continues to be employed and to complicate most ...
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This chapter discusses the ghostly nature of anti-war literature. Even though anti-war literature remains until now largely untheorized, the label continues to be employed and to complicate most discussions of both war literature and war cinema. This is evident in countless Western narratives dealing with war—Homer's Iliad, William Shakespeare's history plays, Leo Tolstoi's War and Peace, Ernest Hemingway's A Farewell to Arms, just to name a few examples. This chapter considers the incorporeal notions associated with the anti-war concept by looking at two texts: Kate McLoughlin's Authoring War: The Literary Representation of War from the Iliad to Iraq and Cynthia Wachtell's War No More: The Antiwar Impulse in American Literature, 1861–1914. It argues that war novels should always be read also as war-and-peace novels and concludes with two examples of American literature that are unquestionably anti-war: Mark Twain's “War Prayer” and Hemingway's A Farewell to Arms.Less
This chapter discusses the ghostly nature of anti-war literature. Even though anti-war literature remains until now largely untheorized, the label continues to be employed and to complicate most discussions of both war literature and war cinema. This is evident in countless Western narratives dealing with war—Homer's Iliad, William Shakespeare's history plays, Leo Tolstoi's War and Peace, Ernest Hemingway's A Farewell to Arms, just to name a few examples. This chapter considers the incorporeal notions associated with the anti-war concept by looking at two texts: Kate McLoughlin's Authoring War: The Literary Representation of War from the Iliad to Iraq and Cynthia Wachtell's War No More: The Antiwar Impulse in American Literature, 1861–1914. It argues that war novels should always be read also as war-and-peace novels and concludes with two examples of American literature that are unquestionably anti-war: Mark Twain's “War Prayer” and Hemingway's A Farewell to Arms.
Steven Belletto
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- May 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780199826889
- eISBN:
- 9780199932382
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199826889.003.0004
- Subject:
- Literature, 20th-century and Contemporary Literature, American, 20th Century Literature
Beginning with a discussion of Colson Whitehead’s more recent novel The Intuitionist (1999), chapter four covers a range of works, from the most influential African-American novels of mid-century, ...
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Beginning with a discussion of Colson Whitehead’s more recent novel The Intuitionist (1999), chapter four covers a range of works, from the most influential African-American novels of mid-century, Richard Wright’s Native Son (1940) and Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man (1952), to less frequently discussed works such as Wright’s own second novel, The Outsider (1953), and John A. Williams’ The Man Who Cried I Am! (1967). The chapter demonstrates how African Americans writers dramatized a sense of being caught between the competing systems of control represented by Communism on the one hand, and the promise of American democratic freedom on the other. Tracing an arc from Native Son to The Man Who Cried I Am!, the chapter demonstrates the ever-changing relationship between the individual and political rhetoric by showing how the denial of chance was first attributed to Communists, who in Invisible Man simply want to control African Americans for their own purposes, and then moves finally The Man Who Cried I Am!, which shows that, from a black perspective, American democracy masks a fantasy of complete control.Less
Beginning with a discussion of Colson Whitehead’s more recent novel The Intuitionist (1999), chapter four covers a range of works, from the most influential African-American novels of mid-century, Richard Wright’s Native Son (1940) and Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man (1952), to less frequently discussed works such as Wright’s own second novel, The Outsider (1953), and John A. Williams’ The Man Who Cried I Am! (1967). The chapter demonstrates how African Americans writers dramatized a sense of being caught between the competing systems of control represented by Communism on the one hand, and the promise of American democratic freedom on the other. Tracing an arc from Native Son to The Man Who Cried I Am!, the chapter demonstrates the ever-changing relationship between the individual and political rhetoric by showing how the denial of chance was first attributed to Communists, who in Invisible Man simply want to control African Americans for their own purposes, and then moves finally The Man Who Cried I Am!, which shows that, from a black perspective, American democracy masks a fantasy of complete control.
Alice Fahs
- Published in print:
- 2001
- Published Online:
- July 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780807825815
- eISBN:
- 9781469604268
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of North Carolina Press
- DOI:
- 10.5149/9780807899298_fahs.4
- Subject:
- History, American History: Civil War
This introductory chapter sets out the book's purpose, which is to explore the imaginative dimensions of shared Northern and Southern literary sensibilities by examining several themes and genres of ...
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This introductory chapter sets out the book's purpose, which is to explore the imaginative dimensions of shared Northern and Southern literary sensibilities by examining several themes and genres of popular war literature. It does not argue that there was a unified “American mind” discernible in popular war literature or a unified “American imagination”—both modes of approaching literature that are artifacts of an older, consensus-oriented school of American studies. But the chapter does recognize that there was a set of shared rhetorics in popular war literature and argues that it is crucial to understand how Northern and Southern popular literary cultures were alike in order to understand their differences.Less
This introductory chapter sets out the book's purpose, which is to explore the imaginative dimensions of shared Northern and Southern literary sensibilities by examining several themes and genres of popular war literature. It does not argue that there was a unified “American mind” discernible in popular war literature or a unified “American imagination”—both modes of approaching literature that are artifacts of an older, consensus-oriented school of American studies. But the chapter does recognize that there was a set of shared rhetorics in popular war literature and argues that it is crucial to understand how Northern and Southern popular literary cultures were alike in order to understand their differences.
Debbie Pinfold
- Published in print:
- 2001
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780199245659
- eISBN:
- 9780191697487
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199245659.003.0006
- Subject:
- Literature, European Literature, 20th-century and Contemporary Literature
This chapter considers the extent in which the German preoccupation with the child is embedded in the deeper artistic and moral concerns of post-war German literature. The interest in the childlike ...
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This chapter considers the extent in which the German preoccupation with the child is embedded in the deeper artistic and moral concerns of post-war German literature. The interest in the childlike can be explained by the association between the artist and the child, for the child is symbolic of the artistic tenor of the post-war era just as it is of the Romantic period. The childlike element in modern German literature is important in a very broad sense, for if the reassertion of the positive myth of childhood reaffirms the German belief in the artist, then the dominance of the childlike in literature reasserts the belief in culture as a means of preserving human values. At a time of rapid social and political change the child is a perfect vehicle for suggesting openness to change while also representing certain constants of human existence and indeed of cultural and literary values.Less
This chapter considers the extent in which the German preoccupation with the child is embedded in the deeper artistic and moral concerns of post-war German literature. The interest in the childlike can be explained by the association between the artist and the child, for the child is symbolic of the artistic tenor of the post-war era just as it is of the Romantic period. The childlike element in modern German literature is important in a very broad sense, for if the reassertion of the positive myth of childhood reaffirms the German belief in the artist, then the dominance of the childlike in literature reasserts the belief in culture as a means of preserving human values. At a time of rapid social and political change the child is a perfect vehicle for suggesting openness to change while also representing certain constants of human existence and indeed of cultural and literary values.
Alice Fahs
- Published in print:
- 2001
- Published Online:
- July 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780807825815
- eISBN:
- 9781469604268
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of North Carolina Press
- DOI:
- 10.5149/9780807899298_fahs.5
- Subject:
- History, American History: Civil War
This chapter discusses the impact of war on popular literary culture. War changed what people read, what was available to read, and how, where, and with what expectations they read it. It altered the ...
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This chapter discusses the impact of war on popular literary culture. War changed what people read, what was available to read, and how, where, and with what expectations they read it. It altered the plans and prospects of publishers, pushing some to the brink of failure while giving new energy to a few well-positioned firms. War reshaped literary careers, forcing established authors to reconsider their writing plans, inspiring new authors to enter the literary marketplace, and deeply affecting what both found possible to imagine. Most profoundly, it catalyzed a rethinking of prevailing beliefs about the connecting links between literature and society, and between individual and nation. Both north and south, war became not just an obsessive, all-consuming subject but also a mode of perception and way of life that disrupted and reorganized authors' and readers' conceptions of identity, nationhood, and even time itself.Less
This chapter discusses the impact of war on popular literary culture. War changed what people read, what was available to read, and how, where, and with what expectations they read it. It altered the plans and prospects of publishers, pushing some to the brink of failure while giving new energy to a few well-positioned firms. War reshaped literary careers, forcing established authors to reconsider their writing plans, inspiring new authors to enter the literary marketplace, and deeply affecting what both found possible to imagine. Most profoundly, it catalyzed a rethinking of prevailing beliefs about the connecting links between literature and society, and between individual and nation. Both north and south, war became not just an obsessive, all-consuming subject but also a mode of perception and way of life that disrupted and reorganized authors' and readers' conceptions of identity, nationhood, and even time itself.
Syrine Hout
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- January 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780748643424
- eISBN:
- 9780748676569
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748643424.003.0008
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Middle Eastern Studies
The Afterword sums up the permutations of homeness found in these examples of post-war Anglophone Lebanese literature. The connotative range of ‘home’ is wide, extending from the most private and ...
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The Afterword sums up the permutations of homeness found in these examples of post-war Anglophone Lebanese literature. The connotative range of ‘home’ is wide, extending from the most private and concrete to the large and possibly elusive, metaphorical, and idealist. It also raises, and tries to answer, the question about the future of this new foreign-language variant of contemporary Lebanese literature which seems so far to be still steeped in the memories of war(s). The unfinished trauma of this harrowing experience for those who do remember, however little that may be, has predictably been showing its narratological symptoms in the post-war, here synonymous with the post-traumatic, phase. By expressing what has been silenced and repressed, the Anglophone literary constructions of the selected authors' generation-based experiences amount to testimonies that will be required to achieve so much as an outline of Lebanon's possible futures.Less
The Afterword sums up the permutations of homeness found in these examples of post-war Anglophone Lebanese literature. The connotative range of ‘home’ is wide, extending from the most private and concrete to the large and possibly elusive, metaphorical, and idealist. It also raises, and tries to answer, the question about the future of this new foreign-language variant of contemporary Lebanese literature which seems so far to be still steeped in the memories of war(s). The unfinished trauma of this harrowing experience for those who do remember, however little that may be, has predictably been showing its narratological symptoms in the post-war, here synonymous with the post-traumatic, phase. By expressing what has been silenced and repressed, the Anglophone literary constructions of the selected authors' generation-based experiences amount to testimonies that will be required to achieve so much as an outline of Lebanon's possible futures.
Gerhard P. Gross (ed.)
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- May 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780813175416
- eISBN:
- 9780813175447
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University Press of Kentucky
- DOI:
- 10.5810/kentucky/9780813175416.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, Military History
This book presents research on the eastern front of World War I, a subject comparatively eclipsed by scholarly study of the western front. Focusing on the first two years of the war, the volume ...
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This book presents research on the eastern front of World War I, a subject comparatively eclipsed by scholarly study of the western front. Focusing on the first two years of the war, the volume concentrates primarily on elements of the conflict between the Central Powers (specifically Germany and its ally Austria-Hungary) and pre-revolutionary Russia. The book approaches topics of interest through a tripartite structure, addressing the operational conduct of the war, the combatants’ cultural conceptions of themselves and the enemy, and how the conflict has been understood and commemorated in the years since the end of the war. The volume concludes with a chapter that brings together themes studied throughout the book in a discussion of the potential continuities between the German conduct and perception of war from the First World War to the Second.Less
This book presents research on the eastern front of World War I, a subject comparatively eclipsed by scholarly study of the western front. Focusing on the first two years of the war, the volume concentrates primarily on elements of the conflict between the Central Powers (specifically Germany and its ally Austria-Hungary) and pre-revolutionary Russia. The book approaches topics of interest through a tripartite structure, addressing the operational conduct of the war, the combatants’ cultural conceptions of themselves and the enemy, and how the conflict has been understood and commemorated in the years since the end of the war. The volume concludes with a chapter that brings together themes studied throughout the book in a discussion of the potential continuities between the German conduct and perception of war from the First World War to the Second.
Andrew Frayn
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- January 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780719089220
- eISBN:
- 9781781707333
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9780719089220.003.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, European Literature
The introduction sets forth a genealogy of disenchantment, from mid and late nineteenth-century fears of degeneration as a consequence of anthropological work, anxieties about increasing ...
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The introduction sets forth a genealogy of disenchantment, from mid and late nineteenth-century fears of degeneration as a consequence of anthropological work, anxieties about increasing mechanisation and the concomitant growth of mass culture. The ways in which the theories of social reformers such as C. F. G. Masterman and declinists such as Oswald Spengler prefigure and inform First World War literature are outlined. The increasing predominance of mass culture, in line with improvements in literacy, meant that the novel was becoming the form in which matters of note were discussed, and writers’ views on writing are mobilised to support this analysis. Typically British pre-war enchantments are sketched out, and the book is situated within the current field of First World War Studies. A chapter outline is provided.Less
The introduction sets forth a genealogy of disenchantment, from mid and late nineteenth-century fears of degeneration as a consequence of anthropological work, anxieties about increasing mechanisation and the concomitant growth of mass culture. The ways in which the theories of social reformers such as C. F. G. Masterman and declinists such as Oswald Spengler prefigure and inform First World War literature are outlined. The increasing predominance of mass culture, in line with improvements in literacy, meant that the novel was becoming the form in which matters of note were discussed, and writers’ views on writing are mobilised to support this analysis. Typically British pre-war enchantments are sketched out, and the book is situated within the current field of First World War Studies. A chapter outline is provided.
Syrine Hout
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- January 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780748643424
- eISBN:
- 9780748676569
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748643424.003.0001
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Middle Eastern Studies
The introductory chapter is divided into two sections: the first one, focusing on roots, is a review of Arabic-language Lebanese war literature of the 1970s and 1980s, its main authors, and trends, ...
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The introductory chapter is divided into two sections: the first one, focusing on roots, is a review of Arabic-language Lebanese war literature of the 1970s and 1980s, its main authors, and trends, with some references to Francophone Lebanese literature; the second one, focusing on routes, is an overview of post-war Anglophone literature as a phenomenon of the last fourteen years. It explains why and how, emerging a few years after peace had been achieved in Lebanon in 1990, these narratives display a newer version of ‘survivor memory’, as defined by Marianne Hirsch, in the form of a generation-specific consciousness, one alternatively replete with irony, parody, nostalgia, and critiques of self and nation. It focuses on the cross-cultural aspect of these texts in two ways: on these authors' views on writing in a foreign language; and on several critics' observations on the increased diversification of Lebanese literature. Drawing on theories of transnational literatures, it argues that these novels characterise a new literary and cultural phenomenon, and have founded what is predicted to become a fuller-fledged branch of Lebanese diasporic literature. By questioning home from a spatial and a temporal distance, these texts offer different visions of ‘Lebaneseness’ in the twenty-first century.Less
The introductory chapter is divided into two sections: the first one, focusing on roots, is a review of Arabic-language Lebanese war literature of the 1970s and 1980s, its main authors, and trends, with some references to Francophone Lebanese literature; the second one, focusing on routes, is an overview of post-war Anglophone literature as a phenomenon of the last fourteen years. It explains why and how, emerging a few years after peace had been achieved in Lebanon in 1990, these narratives display a newer version of ‘survivor memory’, as defined by Marianne Hirsch, in the form of a generation-specific consciousness, one alternatively replete with irony, parody, nostalgia, and critiques of self and nation. It focuses on the cross-cultural aspect of these texts in two ways: on these authors' views on writing in a foreign language; and on several critics' observations on the increased diversification of Lebanese literature. Drawing on theories of transnational literatures, it argues that these novels characterise a new literary and cultural phenomenon, and have founded what is predicted to become a fuller-fledged branch of Lebanese diasporic literature. By questioning home from a spatial and a temporal distance, these texts offer different visions of ‘Lebaneseness’ in the twenty-first century.
Igor Narskij
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- May 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780813175416
- eISBN:
- 9780813175447
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Kentucky
- DOI:
- 10.5810/kentucky/9780813175416.003.0013
- Subject:
- History, Military History
Arguing that the war in the east has been overshadowed in public remembrance by literary depictions of the war on the western front, Eva Horn delves into novelistic portrayals of the eastern front. ...
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Arguing that the war in the east has been overshadowed in public remembrance by literary depictions of the war on the western front, Eva Horn delves into novelistic portrayals of the eastern front. The chapter finds that, in contrast to the traumatic technologized trench warfare of the west, the “wild war” on the eastern front was “not a war of machines but a war of bodies and mentalities, not a war of nations but of ethnicities, not a war of destruction from a distance but a dirty, destructive interaction between enemies.”Less
Arguing that the war in the east has been overshadowed in public remembrance by literary depictions of the war on the western front, Eva Horn delves into novelistic portrayals of the eastern front. The chapter finds that, in contrast to the traumatic technologized trench warfare of the west, the “wild war” on the eastern front was “not a war of machines but a war of bodies and mentalities, not a war of nations but of ethnicities, not a war of destruction from a distance but a dirty, destructive interaction between enemies.”
Stacey Peebles
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- August 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780801449468
- eISBN:
- 9780801460944
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Cornell University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7591/cornell/9780801449468.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, American, 20th Century Literature
Our collective memories of World War II and Vietnam have been shaped as much by memoirs, novels, and films as they have been by history books. This book examines the growing body of contemporary war ...
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Our collective memories of World War II and Vietnam have been shaped as much by memoirs, novels, and films as they have been by history books. This book examines the growing body of contemporary war stories in prose, poetry, and film that speak to the American soldier’s experience in the Persian Gulf War and the Iraq War. Stories about war always encompass ideas about initiation, masculinity, cross-cultural encounters, and trauma. The book shows us how these timeless themes find new expression among a generation of soldiers who have grown up in a time when it has been more acceptable than ever before to challenge cultural and societal norms, and who now have unprecedented and immediate access to the world away from the battlefield through new media and technology. Two Gulf War memoirs provide a portrait of soldiers living and fighting on the cusp of the major political and technological changes that would begin in earnest just a few years later. The Iraq War, a much longer conflict, has given rise to more and various representations. Books and other media emerging from the conflicts in the Gulf have yet to receive the kind of serious attention that Vietnam War texts received during the 1980s and 1990s. The book provokes much discussion among those who wish to understand today’s war literature and films and their place in the tradition of war representation more generally.Less
Our collective memories of World War II and Vietnam have been shaped as much by memoirs, novels, and films as they have been by history books. This book examines the growing body of contemporary war stories in prose, poetry, and film that speak to the American soldier’s experience in the Persian Gulf War and the Iraq War. Stories about war always encompass ideas about initiation, masculinity, cross-cultural encounters, and trauma. The book shows us how these timeless themes find new expression among a generation of soldiers who have grown up in a time when it has been more acceptable than ever before to challenge cultural and societal norms, and who now have unprecedented and immediate access to the world away from the battlefield through new media and technology. Two Gulf War memoirs provide a portrait of soldiers living and fighting on the cusp of the major political and technological changes that would begin in earnest just a few years later. The Iraq War, a much longer conflict, has given rise to more and various representations. Books and other media emerging from the conflicts in the Gulf have yet to receive the kind of serious attention that Vietnam War texts received during the 1980s and 1990s. The book provokes much discussion among those who wish to understand today’s war literature and films and their place in the tradition of war representation more generally.
Alice Fahs
- Published in print:
- 2001
- Published Online:
- July 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780807825815
- eISBN:
- 9781469604268
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of North Carolina Press
- DOI:
- 10.5149/9780807899298_fahs.8
- Subject:
- History, American History: Civil War
This chapter focuses on stories and vignettes on the role of women in the war effort. Articles, illustrations, and stories emphasized the importance of women's domestic labor for the war effort, ...
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This chapter focuses on stories and vignettes on the role of women in the war effort. Articles, illustrations, and stories emphasized the importance of women's domestic labor for the war effort, whether in preparing and packing provisions, sewing uniforms and havelocks, or knitting socks and mittens for soldiers. Other writings stressed the central importance of women in supporting men's enlistment, at times explicitly drawing parallels to the actions of Revolutionary mothers.Less
This chapter focuses on stories and vignettes on the role of women in the war effort. Articles, illustrations, and stories emphasized the importance of women's domestic labor for the war effort, whether in preparing and packing provisions, sewing uniforms and havelocks, or knitting socks and mittens for soldiers. Other writings stressed the central importance of women in supporting men's enlistment, at times explicitly drawing parallels to the actions of Revolutionary mothers.
Alice Fahs
- Published in print:
- 2001
- Published Online:
- July 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780807825815
- eISBN:
- 9781469604268
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of North Carolina Press
- DOI:
- 10.5149/9780807899298_fahs.11
- Subject:
- History, American History: Civil War
This chapter focuses on sensational wartime literature. Sensational literature stressed the romance, excitement, and adventure of war. Sensational novels occupied a particular niche in commercial ...
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This chapter focuses on sensational wartime literature. Sensational literature stressed the romance, excitement, and adventure of war. Sensational novels occupied a particular niche in commercial literary culture in wartime, distinguished from other popular literature by a set of conventions including price, physical appearance, subject matter, and distribution. They emphasized bold action, striking effects on the emotions, sharply drawn heroes and villains, and highly conventionalized, florid, even lurid language.Less
This chapter focuses on sensational wartime literature. Sensational literature stressed the romance, excitement, and adventure of war. Sensational novels occupied a particular niche in commercial literary culture in wartime, distinguished from other popular literature by a set of conventions including price, physical appearance, subject matter, and distribution. They emphasized bold action, striking effects on the emotions, sharply drawn heroes and villains, and highly conventionalized, florid, even lurid language.
Alice Fahs
- Published in print:
- 2001
- Published Online:
- July 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780807825815
- eISBN:
- 9781469604268
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of North Carolina Press
- DOI:
- 10.5149/9780807899298_fahs.12
- Subject:
- History, American History: Civil War
This chapter focuses on war literature for children in the North. Titles such as Charles Carleton Coffin's My Days and Nights on the Battlefield and Oliver Optic's The Sailor Boy and The Soldier Boy ...
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This chapter focuses on war literature for children in the North. Titles such as Charles Carleton Coffin's My Days and Nights on the Battlefield and Oliver Optic's The Sailor Boy and The Soldier Boy were an important part of a burgeoning juvenile war literature that, from 1863 to the end of the war, marked an emerging wartime shift in the imagined relationship between child, family, and nation.Less
This chapter focuses on war literature for children in the North. Titles such as Charles Carleton Coffin's My Days and Nights on the Battlefield and Oliver Optic's The Sailor Boy and The Soldier Boy were an important part of a burgeoning juvenile war literature that, from 1863 to the end of the war, marked an emerging wartime shift in the imagined relationship between child, family, and nation.
Andrew Frayn
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- January 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780719089220
- eISBN:
- 9781781707333
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9780719089220.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, European Literature
This book argues that disenchantment is not only a response to wartime experience, but a condition of modernity with a language that finds extreme expression in First World War literature. The ...
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This book argues that disenchantment is not only a response to wartime experience, but a condition of modernity with a language that finds extreme expression in First World War literature. The objects of disenchantment are often the very same as the enchantments of scientific progress: bureaucracy, homogenisation and capitalism. Older beliefs such as religion, courage and honour are kept in view, and endure longer than often is realised. Social critics, theorists and commentators of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries provide a rich and previously unexplored context for wartime and post-war literature. The rise of the disenchanted narrative to its predominance in the War Books Boom of 1928 – 1930 is charted from the turn of the century in texts, archival material, sales and review data. Rarely-studied popular and middlebrow novels are analysed alongside well-known highbrow texts: D. H. Lawrence, Virginia Woolf, H. G. Wells and Rebecca West rub shoulders with forgotten figures such as Gilbert Frankau and Ernest Raymond. These sometimes jarring juxtapositions show the strained relationship between enchantment and disenchantment in the war and the post-war decade.Less
This book argues that disenchantment is not only a response to wartime experience, but a condition of modernity with a language that finds extreme expression in First World War literature. The objects of disenchantment are often the very same as the enchantments of scientific progress: bureaucracy, homogenisation and capitalism. Older beliefs such as religion, courage and honour are kept in view, and endure longer than often is realised. Social critics, theorists and commentators of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries provide a rich and previously unexplored context for wartime and post-war literature. The rise of the disenchanted narrative to its predominance in the War Books Boom of 1928 – 1930 is charted from the turn of the century in texts, archival material, sales and review data. Rarely-studied popular and middlebrow novels are analysed alongside well-known highbrow texts: D. H. Lawrence, Virginia Woolf, H. G. Wells and Rebecca West rub shoulders with forgotten figures such as Gilbert Frankau and Ernest Raymond. These sometimes jarring juxtapositions show the strained relationship between enchantment and disenchantment in the war and the post-war decade.
