First World War Poetry

What is it about?

Article on First World War poetry that looks closely at poems by Wilfred Owen, Ivor Gurney, Isaac Rosenberg, and David Jones in terms of war technology and technoculture

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Why is it important?

The chapter gives an overview of the criticism of First World War poetry since Paul Fussell's The Great War and Modern Memory; suggests that the “post-Fussellian” reaction wentgone too far censoring attention to the war poets. It looks closely at poems by Owen, Gurney, Rosenberg, and David Jones in terms of witnessing and resisting a newly emergent war technology and technoculture and argues that war poetry scholarship might profit from a revisionary turn back to combatant war writing.