WWI and Poetry

This study will examine the poetry which was written as a result of and in response to World War I. The study will consider the effects of the horrors of modern war on poets such as Wilfred Owen and Rupert Brooke, the impact of nationalism, the value of the considered poems both aesthetically and politically, and the mutual impact of the poems and society (i.e., what impact did these poems have on society, and what impact did society have on these poems).

What the first World War did was to alter the perception of what war is and what role men played in making war. The first World War brought an end, says Bergonzi, to the notion that war was a context for heroism, for fighting and dying valiantly and proudly for country and other high ideals.

Writing specifically of the British experience (the poets to be discussed are British), Bergonzi says that "The war of 19141918 can still very properly be referred to by its original name of the Great War; for despite the greater magnitude of its more truly global successor, it represented a far more radical crisis in British civilization. In particular, it meant that the traditional mythology of heroism and the hero . . . had ceased to be viable." Since that war, says Bergonzi, "Anti-heroic attitudes to war have become dominant . . ." (17).

One critic compared the poetry of the Victorian Age with that of the poetry which issued from British poets who actually fought in war: "The Victorian poets wrote of war as though it were

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here is arguing that there is no place for the kind of hero-worshipping attendant on the return of the dead soldier from the war front. He is saying that even to offer a prayer or ring a bell for such young dead is an affront to their death because their death seems to have as its only significance and value the silent declaration that there is no God to offer prayers to or to hear the ringing of a bell. It is no great leap to conclude that Owen and his poetic kin in responding with such rage and grief to the war cut themselves off from any tie to British authority. After all, it was British authority which sent them to die in such hellish conditions for who knew what purpose. In the trenches of warfare, there are no classes, no races, no religions but one--the fear of death and the desire to live. Nationalism is reduced to the level of a bad joke, and it is certain that if Brooke were a true poet he would have radically altered his view had he lived long enough to experience the true horrors of modern warfare. Owen's "Dulce et Decorum Est" is a powerful poem aimed directly at the lie of nationalism and patriotism. It is the story of a young man who dies in agony because he cannot get his gas mask on in time to escape po

Category: Literature - W