The Oxford Handbook of British and Irish War Poetry

by Tim Kendall (Editor)

Overview

Thirty-seven chapters, written by leading literary critics from across the world, describe the latest thinking about twentieth-century war poetry. The book maps both the uniqueness of each war and the continuities between poets of different wars, while the interconnections between the literatures of war and peacetime, and between combatant and civilian poets, are fully considered. The focus is on Britain and Ireland, but links are drawn with the poetry of the United States and continental Europe.

The Oxford Handbook feeds a growing interest in war poetry and offers, in toto, a definitive survey of the terrain. It is intended for a broad audience, made up of specialists and also graduates and undergraduates, and is an essential resource for both scholars of particular poets and for those interested in wider debates about modern poetry. This scholarly and readable assessment of the field will provide an important point of reference for decades to come.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780199559602
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	05/01/2009
Series:	Oxford Handbooks
Pages:	772
Product dimensions:	6.70(w) x 9.70(h) x 1.80(d)

About the Author

Tim Kendall is Professor of English Literature at the University of Exeter. He has published a book of poems, Strange Land, with Carcanet, and full-length studies of Muldoon and Plath. From 1994 until 2003 he edited the international poetry magazine, Thumbscrew. His latest monograph is Modern English War Poetry (OUP, 2006).

Table of Contents

Introduction, Tim KendallBeginnings1. Fighting Talk: Victorian War Poetry, Matthew Bevis2. Graver Things, Braver Things: Hardy's Martial Zest, Ralph Pite3. From Dark Defile to Gethsemane: Rudyard Kipling's War Poetry, Daniel KarlinThe Great War4. First World War Poetry and the Realm of the Senses, Santanu Das5. Many Sisters to Many Brothers: Woman Poets of the Great War, Stacy Gillis6. Wilfred Owen, Mark Rawlinson7. Shakespeare and the Great War, John Lee8. Was there a Scottish War Literature? Scotland, Poetry, and the First World War, David Goldie9. War Poetry, or the Poetry of War? Isaac Rosenberg, David Jones, Ivor Gurney, Vivien Noakes10. The Great War and Modernist Poetry in England, Vincent Sherry11. A War of Friendship: Robert Graves and Siegfried Sassoon, Fran Brearton12. 'Easter, 1916': Yeats's World War I Poem, Marjorie PerloffEntre Deux Guerres13. 'What the dawn will bring to light': Credulity and Commitment in the Ideological Construction of 'Spain', Stan Smith14. Unwriting the Good Fight: Auden's 'Spain' and its Contexts, Rainer Emig15. War, Politics and Disappearing Poetry: Auden, Yeats, Empson, John LyonThe Second World War16. 'Others have come before you': the Influence of the Great War on Second World War Poets, Dawn Bellamy17. Death's Proletariat: Scottish Poets of the Second World War, Roderick Watson18. New Territory: Alun Llywelyn-Williams and Welsh Poetry of the Second World War, Gerwyn Wiliams19. The Muse that Failed: Poetry and Patriotism during the Second World War, Helen Goethals20. 'Since Munich, What?': Louis MacNeice's Poetry of the Second World War, Peter McDonald21. Sidney Keyes in Historical Perspective, Geoffrey HillContinuities in Modern War Poetry22. Anthologizing War, Hugh Haughton23. Mina Loy and E. J. Scovell: Defining Women's War Poetry, Simon Featherstone24. War Pastorals, 1914-2004, Edna Longley25. The Poetry of Pain, Sarah Cole26. 'Down in the terraces between the targets': Civilians, Peter Robinson27. Complicate Me When I'm Dead: The War Remains of Keith Douglas and Ted Hughes, Cornelia D. J. Pearsall28. 'For Isaac Rosenberg': Geoffrey Hill, Michael Longley, Cathal O'Searcaigh, Tara Christie29. The Fury and the Mire, Jon Stallworthy'Post-war' poetry30. 'This is plenty. This is more than enough': Poetry and the Memory of the Second World War, Gareth Reeves31. British Holocaust Poetry: Songs of Experience, Claire M. Tylee32. Quiet Americans: Responses to War in some British and American Poets of the 1960s, Alan Marshall33. Pointing to East and West: British Cold War Poetry, Adam Piette34. Dichtung und Wahrheit: Contemporary War and the Non-Combatant Poet, David WheatleyNorthern Ireland35. Constructing and Deconstructing the Epic - Contemporary Northern Irish Poetry, Paul Volsik36. 'Stalled in the Pre-Articulate': Heaney, Poetry, and War, Brendan Corcoran37. Unavowed Engagement: Paul Muldoon as War Poet, April WarmanNotes on Contributors