Recreating the Unthinkable: Imagining the Great War ENGL188 SP

How can the horrors of modern mechanized warfare be imagined and interpreted artistically? The First World War marks in countless ways both the end of one era and the beginning of another. What seemed absolute and certain before August, 1914 was transformed and illusive afterwards. How writers responded to their experiences in the Great War and prepared our understanding of the modern will be the subject of this course. Using the historical record, letters, newspaper articles, posters, and propaganda the course will begin with an examination of the experience of the War itself. We will then look at the War Poets--Brooke, Owen, Rosenberg, and others--memoirists Graves, Brittain, Sassoon and novelists Ford and Remarque to evaluate the literary reflections of the War. The course will conclude with the effects of War, reflected in examples of later treatment of the war in the novel (Hemingway's A FAREWELL TO ARMS and MRS. DALLOWAY by Virginia Woolf) and in film, Kubrick's PATHS OF GLORY.

MAJOR READINGS

EXAMINATIONS AND ASSIGNMENTS

ADDITIONAL REQUIREMENTS and/or COMMENTS

COURSE FORMAT: Discussion

REGISTRATION INFORMATION

Level: UG Credit: 1.00 Gen Ed Area & Dept: HA ENGL

Prerequisites: None

Last Updated on MAR-10-1997