Sacrifice And Modern War Literature

Download or read book Sacrifice and Modern War Literature written by Alex Houen and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2018-06-14 with total page 297 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sacrifice and Modern War Literature is the first book to explore how writers from the early nineteenth century to the present have addressed the intimacy of sacrifice and war. It has been common for critics to argue that after the First World War many of the cultural and religious values associated with sacrifice have been increasingly rejected by writers and others. However, this volume shows that literature has continued to address how different conceptions of sacrifice have been invoked in times of war to convert losses into gains or ideals. While those conceptions have sometimes been rooted in a secular rationalism that values lost lives in terms of political or national victories, spiritual and religious conceptions of sacrifice are also still in evidence, as with the 'martyrdom operations' of jihadis fighting against the 'war on terror'. Each chapter presents fresh insights into the literature of a particular conflict and the contributions explore major war writers including Wordsworth, Kipling, Ford Madox Ford, and Elizabeth Bowen, as well as lesser known authors such as Dora Sigerson, Richard Aldington, Thomas Kinsella, and Nadeem Aslam. The volume covers multiple genres including novels, poetry (particularly elegy and lyric), memoirs, and some films. The contributions address a rich array of topics related to wartime sacrifice including scapegoating, martyrdom, religious faith, tragedy, heroism, altruism, 'bare life', atonement, and redemption.

Download or read book Sacrifice and Modern War Writing written by Alex Houen and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2024-08-27 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sacrifice and Modern War Writing presents the most extensive study to date of twentieth- and twenty-first-century war writing. Examining works by over 110 authors, Alex Houen surveys how war writing explores sacrifice in relation to major modern and contemporary conflicts, from the First World War to the War on Terror. Various conceptions of sacrifice are examined, including Christian, Jewish, Islamic, and secular. The discussion ranges across literary portrayals of multiple sacrificial practices, including ancient rituals of child sacrifice, martyrdom, scapegoating, and suicide bombing. Houen builds an innovative interdisciplinary approach to how war, sacrifice, and their representations interrelate, and a wide range of Anglophone literature is discussed, including novels, memoirs, short stories, essays, manifestoes, elegies, ballads, and lyric poetry. Whereas critics and theorists have tended to emphasize that war's reality exceeds any attempt to represent it, Houen contends that political, religious, and cultural frames of sacrifice have continued to play a significant part in shaping how war's reality is shaped and experienced. Those frames are inextricably tied to modes of representation, which include symbolism and mimesis. Sacrifice and Modern War Writing explores how sacrificial killing in war is itself riddled with symbolic transfigurations and mimetic exchanges, and it builds a fresh approach by arguing that the figurative and imaginative aspects of literary writing ironically become its very means of engaging closely with the reality of war's sacrifices. That approach also develops by using the literary analyses to critique and revise various prominent theories of sacrifice and war.

Download or read book Bloody Good written by Allen J. Frantzen and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2004 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the popular imagination, World War I stands for the horror of all wars. The unprecedented scale of the war and the mechanized weaponry it introduced to battle brought an abrupt end to the romantic idea that soldiers were somehow knights in shining armor who always vanquished their foes and saved the day. Yet the concept of chivalry still played a crucial role in how soldiers saw themselves in the conflict. Here for the first time, Allen J. Frantzen traces these chivalric ideals from the Great War back to their origins in the Middle Ages and shows how they resulted in highly influential models of behavior for men in combat. Drawing on a wide selection of literature and images from the medieval period, along with photographs, memorials, postcards, war posters, and film from both sides of the front, Frantzen shows how such media shaped a chivalric ideal of male sacrifice based on the Passion of Jesus Christ. He demonstrates, for instance, how the wounded body of Christ became the inspiration for heroic male suffering in battle. For some men, the Crucifixion inspired a culture of revenge, one in which Christ's bleeding wounds were venerated as badges of valor and honor. For others, Christ's sacrifice inspired action more in line with his teachings—a daring stay of hands or reason not to visit death upon one's enemies. Lavishly illustrated and eloquently written, Bloody Good will be must reading for anyone interested in World War I and the influence of Christian ideas on modern life.

Download or read book Sacrifice and Modern War Literature written by Alex Houen and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2018-06-17 with total page 447 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sacrifice and Modern War Literature is the first book to explore how writers from the early nineteenth century to the present have addressed the intimacy of sacrifice and war. It has been common for critics to argue that after the First World War many of the cultural and religious values associated with sacrifice have been increasingly rejected by writers and others. However, this volume shows that literature has continued to address how different conceptions of sacrifice have been invoked in times of war to convert losses into gains or ideals. While those conceptions have sometimes been rooted in a secular rationalism that values lost lives in terms of political or national victories, spiritual and religious conceptions of sacrifice are also still in evidence, as with the 'martyrdom operations' of jihadis fighting against the 'war on terror'. Each chapter presents fresh insights into the literature of a particular conflict and the contributions explore major war writers including Wordsworth, Kipling, Ford Madox Ford, and Elizabeth Bowen, as well as lesser known authors such as Dora Sigerson, Richard Aldington, Thomas Kinsella, and Nadeem Aslam. The volume covers multiple genres including novels, poetry (particularly elegy and lyric), memoirs, and some films. The contributions address a rich array of topics related to wartime sacrifice including scapegoating, martyrdom, religious faith, tragedy, heroism, altruism, 'bare life', atonement, and redemption.

Download or read book War Stories written by Frances M. Clarke and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2012-07-24 with total page 267 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This “layered, nuanced, and focused study” of Civil War era writings reveals a popular sense of patriotism and hope in the midst of loss (Journal of American History). The American Civil War is often seen as the first modern war, not least because of the immense suffering it inflicted. Yet unlike later conflicts, it did not produce an outpouring of disillusionment or cynicism in public or private discourse. In fact, most people portrayed the war in highly sentimental and patriotic terms. While scholars typically dismiss this everyday writing as simplistic or naïve, Frances M. Clarke argues that we need to reconsider the letters, diaries, songs, and journalism penned by Union soldiers and their caregivers to fully understand the war’s impact and meaning. In War Stories, Clarke revisits the most common stories that average Northerners told in hopes of redeeming their suffering and hardship—stories that enabled people to express their beliefs about religion, community, and personal character. From tales of Union soldiers who died heroically to stories of tireless volunteers who exemplified the Republic’s virtues, War Stories sheds new light on this transitional moment in the history of war, emotional culture, and American civic life.

Download or read book Forgotten Sacrifice written by Michael G. Walling and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2012-10-20 with total page 365 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Award-winning historian Mike Walling captures the essence of the Arctic Convoys of World War II. In 1941, Germany invaded the Soviet Union in the largest offensive operation ever undertaken. Operation Barbarossa saw defeat after defeat heaped on the Soviet army. With Russia's forces left staggering under the strain and in desperate need of supplies, Britain and the United States launched an ambitious operation to resupply the Soviet Union using convoys sent through the Arctic. Their journey was punctuated by torpedo attacks in freezing conditions, Stuka dive bombers, naval gun fire, and weeks of total darkness in the Arctic winter, with ships disappearing below the waves weighed down by the ice and snow on their decks. Drawing on hundreds of oral histories from eyewitnesses and veterans of the convoys, plus original research into the Russian Navy archives at Murmansk, historian Michael G. Walling offers a fresh retelling of one of World War II's pivotal yet largely overlooked campaigns.

Download or read book War and American Literature written by Jennifer Haytock and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2021-02-04 with total page 698 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines representations of war throughout American literary history, providing a firm grounding in established criticism and opening up new lines of inquiry. Readers will find accessible yet sophisticated essays that lay out key questions and scholarship in the field. War and American Literature provides a comprehensive synthesis of the literature and scholarship of US war writing, illuminates how themes, texts, and authors resonate across time and wars, and provides multiple contexts in which texts and a war's literature can be framed. By focusing on American war writing, from the wars with the Native Americans and the Revolutionary War to the recent wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, this volume illuminates the unique role representations of war have in the US imagination.