Oxford Handbook Of British And Irish War Poetry, The

Description:
Thirty-seven chapters, written by leading literary critics from across the world, describe the latest thinking about twentieth-century war poetry. The book maps both the uniqueness of each war and the continuities between poets of different wars, while the interconnections between the literatures of war and peacetime, and between combatant and civilian poets, are fully considered. The focus is on Britain and Ireland, but links are drawn with the poetry of the United States and continental Europe. The Oxford Handbook feeds a growing interest in war poetry and offers, in toto, a definitive survey of the terrain. It is intended for a broad audience, made up of specialists and also graduates and undergraduates, and is an essential resource for both scholars of particular poets and for those interested in wider debates about modern poetry. This scholarly and readable assessment of the field will provide an important point of reference for decades to come.

Review:
...Kendall has assembled a wide range of fresh and important critical persepctives of a remarkably high quality. Tom Walker The Cambridge Quarterly Kendall has assembled a wide range of fresh and important critical perspectives of a remarkably high quality. Tom Walker, Cambridge Quarterly rich and wide ranging... a thorough, inclusive and invaluable guide to the field, combining accessible and informative overviews with original and insightful research. Jo Gill, Modern Language Review If a definitive edition of Great War poetry criticism were possible, then this would be it... a vast scholarly effort...a large and rich achievement, with an infectious quality of 'browsability'... it addresses an academic need ambitiously and comprehensively. James Bridges, Ivor Gurney Society Journal ...the real quality of most of the essays. Again and again they are illuminating, thoughtful, and challenging. The array of contributors that Kendall has assembled is stellar, and the result a fine collection, one that will reward turning to again and again. Janis P. Stout, Review of English Studies ...for the non-specialist, this Handbook acts as a master-class in the reading and understanding of the works considered, whether familiar or not. For the specialists, it promises a never-ending source for debate... For once I have to agree with the publisher's claim that this Handbook 'is an essential resource for both scholars of particular poets and forthose interested in wider debates about modern poetry.' I should add that it provides much of value to the non-academic also. David Page, Kipling Journal

Table of Contents:
Introduction; BEGINNINGS; 1. Fighting Talk: Victorian War Poetry; 2. Graver Things, Braver Things: Hardy's Martial Zest; 3. From Dark Defile to Gethsemane: Rudyard Kipling's War Poetry; THE GREAT WAR; 4. First World War Poetry and the Realm of the Senses; 5. Many Sisters to Many Brothers: Woman Poets of the Great War; 6. Wilfred Owen; 7. Shakespeare and the Great War; 8. Was there a Scottish War Literature? Scotland, Poetry, and the First World War; 9. War Poetry, or the Poetry of War? Isaac Rosenberg, David Jones, Ivor Gurney; 10. The Great War and Modernist Poetry in England; 11. A War of Friendship: Robert Graves and Siegfried Sassoon; 12. 'Easter, 1916': Yeats's World War I Poem; ENTRE DEUX GUERRES; 13. 'What the dawn will bring to light': Credulity and Commitment in the Ideological Construction of 'Spain'; 14. Unwriting the Good Fight: Auden's 'Spain' and its Contexts; 15. War, Politics and Disappearing Poetry: Auden, Yeats, Empson; THE SECOND WORLD WAR; 16. 'Others have come before you': the Influence of the Great War on Second World War Poets; 17. Death's Proletariat: Scottish Poets of the Second World War; 18. New Territory: Alun Llywelyn-Williams and Welsh Poetry of the Second World War; 19. The Muse that Failed: Poetry and Patriotism during the Second World War; 20. 'Since Munich, What?': Louis MacNeice's Poetry of the Second World War; 21. Sidney Keyes in Historical Perspective; CONTINUITIES IN MODERN WAR POETRY; 22. Anthologizing War; 23. Mina Loy and E. J. Scovell: Defining Women's War Poetry; 24. War Pastorals, 1914-2004; 25. The Poetry of Pain; 26. 'Down in the terraces between the targets': Civilians; 27. Complicate Me When I'm Dead: The War Remains of Keith Douglas and Ted Hughes; 28. 'For Isaac Rosenberg': Geoffrey Hill, Michael Longley, Cathal O'Searcaigh; 29. The Fury and the Mire; 'POST-WAR' POETRY; 30. 'This is plenty. This is more than enough': Poetry and the Memory of the Second World War; 31. British Holocaust Poetry: Songs of Experience; 32. Quiet Americans: Responses to War in some British and American Poets of the 1960s; 33. Pointing to East and West: British Cold War Poetry; 34. Dichtung und Wahrheit: Contemporary War and the Non-Combatant Poet; NORTHERN IRELAND; 35. Constructing and Deconstructing the Epic - Contemporary Northern Irish Poetry; 36. 'Stalled in the Pre-Articulate': Heaney, Poetry, and War; 37. Unavowed Engagement: Paul Muldoon as War Poet; Notes on Contributors