The Great War and Modern Memory
and over one million other books are available for Amazon Kindle .
Learn more
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||
 Trade In this Item for up to £1.50
Get an extra £5 when you trade in books worth £10 or more until June 30, 2012. Trade in The Great War and Modern Memory for an Amazon.co.uk gift card of up to £1.50, which you can then spend on millions of items across the site. Trade-in values may vary (terms apply). Find more products eligible for trade-in.
|
Frequently Bought Together
Product details
|
More About the Author
Product Description
Review
...a model of intelligence and fine writing that will remain a key text in our culture for decades to come (John Keegan, The London Review of Books, Vol 29, No 5 )
...one of the most deeply moving books I have read in a long time (Lionel Trilling, The London Review of Books, Volume 29, No 5 )
...one of the most deeply moving books I have read in a long time (Lionel Trilling, The London Review of Books, Volume 29, No 5 )
Product Description
The year 2000 marks the 25th anniversary of one of the most original and gripping volumes ever written about the First World War. Fussell illuminates a war that changed a generation and revolutionised the way we see the world. He explores the British experience on the western Front from 1914 to 1918, focusing on the various literary means by which it has been remembered, conventionalized and mythologized. It is also about the literary dimensions of the experience itself. Fussell supplies contexts, both actual and literary, for writers who have most effectively memorialized the Great War as an historical experience with conspicuous imaginative and artistic meaning. These writers include the classic memoirists Siegfried Sassoon, Robert Graves and Edmund Blunden, and poets David Jones, Isaac Rosenberg, and Wilfred Owen. In his new introduction Fussell discusses the critical responses to his work, the authors and works that inspired his own writing, and the elements which influence our understanding and memory of war. Fussell also shares the stirring experience of his research at the Imperial War Museum's Department of Documents. Fussell includes a new Suggested Further Reading List.
Inside This Book
(Learn More)
First Sentence
By mid-December, 1914, British troops had been fighting on the Continent for over five months. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
By mid-December, 1914, British troops had been fighting on the Continent for over five months. Read the first page
Explore More
Concordance
Browse Sample PagesConcordance
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
Suggested Tags from Similar Products(What's this?)Be the first one to add a relevant tag (keyword that's strongly related to this product)
|
What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?
Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
23 of 24 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This book is deservedly a classic. It explains how the experience in the trenches resulted in the classic works of poetry, novels and memoirs that emerged from British soldiers who endured WWI. At the same time, it shows how pre-war literature impacted the way that young British soldiers viewed the war, and how even the "common soldier" used literary references and frameworks to help understand the unimaginable events of warfare. Finally, as the title suggests, Fussell relates the literary tradition of WWI to "Modern Memory," the way that (particularly in Britain) the literature of the war has helped affect Britain view of warfare, struggle and history ever since. This "literary history" of WWI is a thought-provoking look at one of the last century's great tragedies, and will help you understand how and why the war impacted history and literature ever since.
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
It's almost impossible to overstate the importance of this book. It's definitely one of the landmark publications on Great War literature, and Fussell's arguments and conclusions are so lucid and compelling that you almost find it strange that no-one else thought of it before him.
Each chapter draws on a central theme found throughout the war poetry; the binary oppositions of 'us' and 'them', the troglodyte horrors of the trenches, the comparison of the war to theatre, the homoeroticism of soldiers as comrades and brothers, the pastoral imagery used as a contrast to the industrial machinery of war, the prevalence of myth and romance - and he uses an enormous swathe of literature to illustrate his points. I found upon finishing this book that I had a shopping list as long as my arm of books mentioned in these pages that I want to go on to read.
Fussell's central argument seems to be that WW1, more than any other war, was a literary war, both in the way that those who fought in it used literature as a tool to help them understand what was happening, but also in the way that we ourselves have to come to remember it. Most people's impressions of the Great War have not come from the history books; they've come from the literature that came out of the war - from Graves and Sassoon and Owen. Our very memories of that war have been shaped by literature: think of the very words we use on Remembrance Day from the poem by Laurence Binyon - 'at the going down of the sun and in the morning we will remember them'.
Each chapter draws on a central theme found throughout the war poetry; the binary oppositions of 'us' and 'them', the troglodyte horrors of the trenches, the comparison of the war to theatre, the homoeroticism of soldiers as comrades and brothers, the pastoral imagery used as a contrast to the industrial machinery of war, the prevalence of myth and romance - and he uses an enormous swathe of literature to illustrate his points. I found upon finishing this book that I had a shopping list as long as my arm of books mentioned in these pages that I want to go on to read.
Fussell's central argument seems to be that WW1, more than any other war, was a literary war, both in the way that those who fought in it used literature as a tool to help them understand what was happening, but also in the way that we ourselves have to come to remember it. Most people's impressions of the Great War have not come from the history books; they've come from the literature that came out of the war - from Graves and Sassoon and Owen. Our very memories of that war have been shaped by literature: think of the very words we use on Remembrance Day from the poem by Laurence Binyon - 'at the going down of the sun and in the morning we will remember them'.
7 of 8 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
The study of war literature does not end with Fussell. Things went on in the Anglospeaking world and elsewhere. Now there are many essays on war and literature, some with sounder judgements on single authors and books, though probably not as well written as The Great War and Modern Memory. However, no one can deny the simple fact that we wouldn't be discussing the issue of war and literature hadn't Fussell published this essay in the 1970s.
Having said that, I'd like to point out what aspects of the book are dated, since other readers have listed its merits.
First of all, the purely British canon Fussell analysed led him to some conclusions which are highly questionable when one takes into account the French, Italian, German, American, and Austrian classics of W.W.I literature. Let me say it clearly: an essay on the Great War and how it is remembered which does not take into account Remarque, Barbusse, Hemingway, and Lussu, is definitely too parochial.
Second: the idea that only "plain" narratives are faithful to the experience of fighters is definitely naive. Hence Fussell's bashing of David Jones, who wrote one of the most fascinating war novels (In Parenthesis), and possibly his decision to ignore the Americans (Hemingway, Dos Passos, and cummings being probably a tad too modernist to his taste).
Third: sometimes Fussell's use of Frye is persuasive, sometime it seems a bit stretched. To me Frye remains one of the great critical minds of the 20th century, whatever the bigots of po-mo in US campuses may preach; but the idea that irony explains everything written in this century, and that the main source of this ironic mood/mode is the Great War is a bit too
simplistic.
This doesn't mean I consider The Great War and Modern Memory unworthy of attention. It remains a must-read for all those who want to understand British W.W.I fiction and poetry. But it should not be read as an explanation of what W.W.I really was, and it should be read with other, more up-to-date books, like A.D. Harvey's excellent A Muse of Fire, who also works on non-British texts and offers a much wider and persuasive map of the relationship between war(s), literature, and the arts.
Having said that, I'd like to point out what aspects of the book are dated, since other readers have listed its merits.
First of all, the purely British canon Fussell analysed led him to some conclusions which are highly questionable when one takes into account the French, Italian, German, American, and Austrian classics of W.W.I literature. Let me say it clearly: an essay on the Great War and how it is remembered which does not take into account Remarque, Barbusse, Hemingway, and Lussu, is definitely too parochial.
Second: the idea that only "plain" narratives are faithful to the experience of fighters is definitely naive. Hence Fussell's bashing of David Jones, who wrote one of the most fascinating war novels (In Parenthesis), and possibly his decision to ignore the Americans (Hemingway, Dos Passos, and cummings being probably a tad too modernist to his taste).
Third: sometimes Fussell's use of Frye is persuasive, sometime it seems a bit stretched. To me Frye remains one of the great critical minds of the 20th century, whatever the bigots of po-mo in US campuses may preach; but the idea that irony explains everything written in this century, and that the main source of this ironic mood/mode is the Great War is a bit too
simplistic.
This doesn't mean I consider The Great War and Modern Memory unworthy of attention. It remains a must-read for all those who want to understand British W.W.I fiction and poetry. But it should not be read as an explanation of what W.W.I really was, and it should be read with other, more up-to-date books, like A.D. Harvey's excellent A Muse of Fire, who also works on non-British texts and offers a much wider and persuasive map of the relationship between war(s), literature, and the arts.
Would you like to see more reviews about this item?
Were these reviews helpful?
Let us know
Most Recent Customer Reviews
Absorbing lit crit
I heard about Paul Fussell from watching an Adam Curtis BBC documentary about the memory of the war and how the official 'stories' told about what happened in the Second World War... Read more
Published 6 months ago by William Cohen
Good lit' crit', but very bad history.
This is an extensive and scholarly work of literary criticism. Within those limits it is a good general guide to the British literature of WW1, and its influence on later writings. Read more
Published 7 months ago by Allan Atkinson
One of the very finest works on how the Great War was remembered by...
Paul Fussell's The Great War and Modern Memory is possibly the finest, most scholarly source on the way in which the Great War was remembered by its participants. Read more
Published 18 months ago by Ann Margret Murray
The Great War by Paul Fussell
I needed this book for an online course and ordered a copy from the library. I found it very interesting and decided to buy my own copy for future use. Read more
Published on 23 Mar 2010 by N. Carey
Enlightening
Although it is advisable to have a reliable volume on the history of the Great War near at hand, Paul Fussel's book is certainly enlightening and concentrates on the influence of... Read more
Published on 6 Jan 2010 by Silent Wolf
a definitive account of this human tragedy
If you only read one account of the Great War, this should be the one.
So often you have to stop reading and just put the incredible statistics into some kind of personal... Read more
So often you have to stop reading and just put the incredible statistics into some kind of personal... Read more
Published on 18 Dec 2009 by Mr. A. L. Browne
A masterpiece of military literatiure
First published in 1975, "The Great War And Modern Memory," is a study of the influence of the literature of the Great War on modern perception. Read more
Published on 6 Feb 2003
If mere words could cope...
To this day the Great War has remained as unnerving and far-reaching an experience as mankind has ever faced. Read more
Published on 7 Oct 2000 by "chris-spriet"
A book to read and reread with enjoyment
..This book is singly, the most important resource for Historians and Literature teachers that you are likely to find. Read more
Published on 15 July 1999
Listmania!
Look for similar items by category
Look for similar items by subject
Feedback
- Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
- I am the Author, and I want to comment on my book.
- I am the Publisher, and I want to comment on this book.
|
