World War One British Poets: Brooke, Owen, Sassoon, Rosenberg and Others (Dover Thrift Editions: Poetry Ser.)

Synopsis

A complex series of treaties, tensions and alliances involving the major and minor European states led to the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria by Gavrilo Princip, a Serbian nationalist, on June 28, 1914. In response, the armies of Europe were mobilized and by summer's end, the world was at war. But no one could have foreseen the apocolyptic degree of destruction that ensued. By the time the Armistice was signed on November 11,1918, more than nine million military personnel and five million civilians had been killed. In Great Britain and Europe, an entire generation of young men was wiped out. Most of the poets in this anthology participated in what came to be called the Great War; many of them did not survive to see its end. Some, like Rupert Brooke and John McCrae, believed their services were part of a noble and just cause. Others - most notably Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen - entered the military through a sense of duty, though both poets came to see Britain's participation in the war as unnecessarily prolonged. Antiwar sentiment was not uncommon among soldiers, particularly when it became clear that the war was one of attrition. By September 1914, the Allied and Central Powers were locked into trench warfare, and 1915-1916 were years of stalemate characterized by Pyrrhic victories such as that won by the Allies in Champagne, where 500 yards of ground was gained over the course of two months - at a cost of 50,000 men. Such results contributed to a sense of futility experienced by frontline soldiers, and chlorine gas, first deployed on the Western Front on April 22, 1915 at the Battle of Ypres, intensified the horrors of battle. The initial patriotic fervor that compelled many young men to enlist in the summer of 1914 had, in most cases, by 1916 collapsed into cynicism and anger, as reflected in a saying that circulated among the British troops: "Went to war with Rupert Brooke, came home with Siegfried Sassoon." While not all of the poets contained in this anthology served combat duty, all were touched by the devastation that changed the world's perception of war. Despite the propaganda and intense anti-German sentiment that proliferated during the war, "this was no case," as Edward Thomas wrote, "of petty right or wrong." All of the poetry - whether the manifestation of the poets' despair, outrage or patriotism -- stands as a memorial that has outlasted the battle lines of World War One.

Copyright:

1997

Book Details

Book Quality:

Publisher Quality

Book Size:

73 Pages

ISBN-13:

9780486113234

Related ISBNs:

9780486295688

Publisher:

Dover Publications

Date of Addition:

04/11/22

Copyrighted By:

Dover Publications, Inc.

Adult content:

No

Language:

English

Has Image Descriptions:

No

Categories:

History, Military, Poetry, Literature and Fiction

Grade Levels:

Ninth grade

Reading Age:

14 and up

Submitted By:

Bookshare Staff

Usage Restrictions:

This is a copyrighted book.

Edited by:

Candace Ward