Description and Objectives

“By the end of the day both sides had seen, in a sad scrawl of broken earth and murdered men, the answer to the question. No road. No thoroughfare. Neither race had won, nor could win, the War. The War had won, and would go on winning.” –Edmund Blunden, writing about the first day of the Battle of Somme

This class will study more than a dozen English poets who wrote about the First World War either as observers or participants. Our focus will be three-fold: first, we will look at the biographical and historical contexts in which the writer wrote; second, we will consider his or her poetic form, with special attention to authorial techniques such as voice, irony, tone, stanzaic structure, rhyme, and diction; third, we will read each poet in context of each other as we progress through the course in order to highlight the way the art of poetry shattered and reformulated in the blast zone of modern warfare.

Many of the poets we will study brought new forms out of the craters and trenches of the war that ultimately contributed to Modernism, the artistic movement which created fragmented forms to express the fragmentation of Western Civilization. The roots of this process go far back before 1914, though that year accelerated the process in unimaginably vast and deadly measures. In reading the poets of the First World War we will  be pondering modernity itself in which previously trusted narratives of history, politics, morality, and theology are subject to a suspicion which habitually fails to offer an integrated vision of humanity or the world.

Writing assessments will be in blue books, in-class; prompts will be provided for essays which discuss the selected passages based on personal deep reading and class discussion.

Textbooks

Poetry of the First World War: An Anthology (Oxford World Classics)

Course Requirements

Frequent in-class essays explicating the poems we are studying.

Successful Students

Reading closely and repeatedly the poems before you is a great way of learning to read deeply.

Additional Resources

 

Reading Schedule:

Week 1  —  September 9 – 13

Thomas Hardy: “And There Was a Great Calm”; “On the Belgian Expatriation”; “The Pity of It”; “The Convergence of the Twain”

1. E. Housman: “Epitaph on an Army of Mercenaries”

May Sinclair: “Field Ambulance in Retreat”

Week 2  —  September 14 – 20

May Sinclair: “After the Retreat”; “Dedication”

1. B. Yeats: “On Being Asked for a War Poem”; “An Irish Airman Foresees His Death”

Rudyard Kipling: “The Children”

Week 3  —  September 21 – 27

Rudyard Kipling: “My Boy Jack”; “Mesopotamia”; “Gethsemane”

Laurence Binyon: “For the Fallen”

Charlotte Mew: “May, 1915”

Week 4  —  September 28 – October 4

Charlotte Mew: “June, 1915”; “The Cenotaph”

Robert Service: “Tipperary Days”

Edward Thomas: “A Private”; “The Owl”

Week 5  —  October 5 – 11

Edward Thomas: “In Memoriam”; “This is no case of petty right or wrong”; “Rain”; “Roads”; “The Cherry Trees”

Week 6  —  October 12 – 18

Edward Thomas: “No one cares less than I”; “As the Team’s Head-Brass”; “The Trumpet”

Wilfred Gibson: “Breakfast”; “Hit”

Week 7  —  October 19 – 25

Wilfred Gibson: “Between the Lines”; “Air-Raid”

Siegfried Sassoon: “The Redeemer”; “A Working Party”; “The Kiss”

Week 8  —  October 26 – November 1

Siegfried Sassoon: “A Night Attack”; “Christ and the Soldier”; “They”; “Counter-Attack”; “How to Die”

Week 9  —  November 2 – 8

Rupert Brooke: “1914”; “Fragment”

Julian Grenfell: “Prayer for Those on the Staff”; “Into Battle”

Isaac Rosenberg: “Break of Day in the Trenches”

Week 10  —  November 9 – 15

Isaac Rosenberg: “August 1914”; “Daughters of War”

Wilfred Owen: “Anthem for Doomed Youth”; “The Sentry”; “Dulce et Decorum Est”

Week 11  —  November 16 – 22

Wilfred Owen: “Insensibility”; “Greater Love”; “Disabled”; “Apologia Pro Poemate Meo”; “The Show”

Week 12  —  November 23 – 29

Wilfred Owen: “I Saw His Round Mouth’s Crimson”; “Exposure”; “Miners”; “Strange Meeting”; “Mental Cases”

Week 13  —  November 30 – December 6

Wilfred Owen: “The Parable of the Old Man and the Young”; “Spring Offensive”

Robert Graves: “It’s a Queer Time”; “A Dead Boche”; “Corporal Stare”

Week 14  —  December 7 – 11

Robert Graves: “A Child’s Nightmare”; “Two Fusiliers”; “Sergeant-Major Money”; “Recalling War”

David Jones: from In Parenthesis

Edmund Blunden: “Illusions”