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The collapse of the heroic tradition in 20th century war poetry
Bibliography: 344-355.
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| Format: | Thesis |
| Language: | English |
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Department of English Language and Literature
2015
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| _version_ | 1867613214079975424 |
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| access_status_str | Open Access |
| author | McArthur, Kathleen Maureen |
| author2 | Birkinshaw, Philip |
| author_browse | Birkinshaw, Philip McArthur, Kathleen Maureen |
| author_facet | Birkinshaw, Philip McArthur, Kathleen Maureen |
| author_sort | McArthur, Kathleen Maureen |
| collection | Thesis |
| description | Bibliography: 344-355. |
| format | Thesis |
| id | oai:open.uct.ac.za:11427/12592 |
| institution | University of Cape Town (South Africa) |
| language | eng |
| last_indexed | 2026-06-10T12:32:34.479Z |
| license_str | Not specified — see source repository |
| provenance_str_mv | Harvested via OAI-PMH from UCTD — University of Cape Town Open Access Repository |
| publishDate | 2015 |
| publishDateRange | 2015 |
| publishDateSort | 2015 |
| publisher | Department of English Language and Literature |
| publisherStr | Department of English Language and Literature |
| record_format | dspace |
| source_str | UCTD — University of Cape Town Open Access Repository |
| spelling | oai:open.uct.ac.za:11427/12592 The collapse of the heroic tradition in 20th century war poetry McArthur, Kathleen Maureen Birkinshaw, Philip English Literature Bibliography: 344-355. In the last two decades there has been a growing interest in the English poetry of the First World War. One of the products of this interest has been a great deal of literary criticism culminating in three major studies: by John H. Johnston in 1964; Bernard Bergonzi in 1965; and John Silkin in 1972. All of these critics have felt the need to look back to the past to establish the literary forebears of the trench poets. Johnston believes that the roots of war poetry are in the Germanic and Greek epics; Bergonzi that they are in the anti-heroic poetry of the Elizabethans; and Silkin, in the liberal, humanitarian poetry of the Romantics. Their approaches are valuable in giving new insight into the poetry of the First World War and helping to place it in an historical perspective, but their surveys seem inadequate and even misleading. There is, for instance, no epic war poetry in English literature, and so Johnston's criticism of the trench poets for failing to maintain epic standards seems unjust; and while it is true that Owen, Sassoon and Rosenberg's work proceeded from the same impulse that stimulated the humanitarian poetry of Shakespeare and the Romantic poets, neither Bergonzi nor Silkin recognizes that the dominant tradition in English war poetry, from the Battle of Maldon to the outbreak of the First World War, was an heroic one, and that the poets of the Great War wrote largely in reaction to this tradition. 2015-03-13T14:01:58Z 2015-03-13T14:01:58Z 1979 Master Thesis Masters MA http://hdl.handle.net/11427/12592 eng application/pdf Department of English Language and Literature Faculty of Humanities University of Cape Town |
| spellingShingle | English Literature McArthur, Kathleen Maureen The collapse of the heroic tradition in 20th century war poetry |
| thesis_degree_str | Master's |
| title | The collapse of the heroic tradition in 20th century war poetry |
| title_full | The collapse of the heroic tradition in 20th century war poetry |
| title_fullStr | The collapse of the heroic tradition in 20th century war poetry |
| title_full_unstemmed | The collapse of the heroic tradition in 20th century war poetry |
| title_short | The collapse of the heroic tradition in 20th century war poetry |
| title_sort | collapse of the heroic tradition in 20th century war poetry |
| topic | English Literature |
| url | http://hdl.handle.net/11427/12592 |
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