by Paul Fussell
First published 2021
Paul Fussell studies how World War I fundamentally altered human consciousness and literary expression. He examines the works of soldier-poets like Siegfried Sassoon, Wilfred Owen, Robert Graves, Edmund Blunden, David Jones, and Isaac Rosenberg to show how they captured the war's unprecedented horror. Fussell argues that these writers created new forms of memory and meaning from the trenches of the Western Front. He connects their poems, diaries, novels, and letters to the actual conditions of trench warfare, demonstrating how the conflict changed not just literature but language itself. The book shows how these authors gave artistic shape to an experience that shattered traditional ways of understanding war, heroism, and civilization. Fussell reveals how the Great War created modern consciousness and established the literary frameworks we still use to comprehend industrial warfare and mass death.
Genres: history, literary-criticism, 20th-century, non-fiction, world-war-i, academic
Vibes: emotional, intimate, thought-provoking
Tropes: historical, literary-analysis
Period: Western Front
1 pages · Audio CD · Tantor and Blackstone Publishing